Rice senior Lennie Waite ran a personal-best time of 9 minutes, 50.48 seconds for the 3,000-meter steeplechase in Wednesday night's prelim. Her mark improved her Scottish National Record—the country where she was born—and qualifired her for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Waite will compete in the steeple final at 6:25 p.m. on Friday night. This interview was conducted a few days before the NCAA Outdoor Championships. 

Are you intimidated at all by what Jenny Barringer and other steeplechasers have been running this outdoor season?

Obviously Jenny Barringer is in a league of her own. With the other girls, I find it more inspiring. I'm really excited to be able to go out there and race them. I'm glad that people are running great and I'm glad that it's going to be competitive.

What are you specific goals for the meet?

I would obviously like to run faster than I've run all season—I've run 10-flat twice—so that that would be great to go under 10. I would love to be All-American again. I was sixth in the mile indoors, so that would be great to come in somewhere around there again. I guess I just want to mainly focus on competing in the race and finishing and knowing that I gave it everything I had.

Can you go into your training a little bit? Are you tapering a little bit right now?

We're tapering a little bit right now. I actually already have meets planned for after nationals. I'm going to head over to the UK and do some races there. I've taken it pretty easy this week. We did a mini-workout today and I won't run tomorrow and I'll run 30 minutes the day before the race. I haven't done all that much, but we've been keeping my training going a little bit more than we would have because I'm racing the week after nationals and then the week after that, then a week off, then the week after that. I'm going to keep running until July 12, as of right now.

So, does that mean you're not necessarily planning to peak at the NCAA meet?

I think I'm for sure fitter right now than I have been all season. We've just tried to be smart so I'm not burned out or fizzled out. After indoor nationals we took it pretty slow. I still feel like I'm ready to do really well at NCAAs.

What will your situation be with running after college? Are you looking to sign with a company and keep going?

I was born in Scotland, so I've got the Scottish national record in the steeplechase. I'm going to go over there and compete in the Scottish Championships. It will be so awesome to go over there and run. I love to travel. My grandma lives over there and we have family and relatives in the UK and I'm going to hang out with them and I thought, “why not do a couple races while I'm over there?”

Do you know if your Scottish record is safe?

I don't know that much. I've never competed over there and I've never actually met anyone who works in athletics from Scotland. I've just been in contact with them via email. I haven't seen many marks from the steeplechase. I don't know if it's something that not many Scottish girls are doing. I think it's pretty safe because I had it when I ran 10:12 and then again with my 10-flat. I think I have it pretty safely.

You can represent Scotland in international competition?

Yeah, I can. That's also another thing with the steeplechase. The Commonwealth Games are in 2010 and the standard for that is 9:55. That one meet, with that one standard, has made me think I can keep on running and I already have stuff lined up. It keeps me going.

That time and that meet have been the ultimate goal for you?

I've been thinking about it and I think it would be nice to be able to run it at the end of this season. That would be really good.

Do you have any idea what to expect in the steeplechase at NCAAs, if it's going to be fast?

It seems that there will be a pretty good battle for second and people tend to run honest. I think the pace will be there and the race will be there as long as I hang in there, I think I can get that mark.

Rice has a strong distance program. What's the team chemistry like?

It's really fun running at Rice. I absolutely love it. We're all really good friends. Coach Bevan makes it an awesome environment for us. We all laugh and hang out at practice. It's been the type of thing where one person steps it up and everyone else has responded. I remember our 5,000 record coming into this year was like 16:28. We had three girls go under that this year. We have six of the top 10 times of the 5,000 on our team right now that were done this year. It's like one person puts down a mark and someone else responds. We get on a roll and it's really good.

What undergrad degree did you get?

I got a degree in psychology, economics and managerial studies.

You'd much rather pursue running than diving into those fields?

I'm going to school next year. I'm going to keep running while I'm going to the University of Houston for a PhD program. It wouldn't scare me to put everything into running. That's part of the reason I love it. It's something I do because I love it...not because I have to do it. I want it keep it that way. I'm going to be getting my PhD at U of H and continue training with the Rice girls while I'm doing that.

What are you hobbies when you get free time?

I like to spend a lot of time outdoors. Yesterday I went and played disc golf. I like to spend a lot of time on the lake. I'm from Austin (Texas) and on my free weekends I go back to Austin and we go out on the lake and wakeboard and ski in the winter. Mainly anything that involves the outside and moving around...I'm up for.

If you could have one meal, prepared by anyone, what would you choose?

It would probably be the chicken curry that I used to get when I lived in Singapore. We used used eat chicken curry there and now my mom makes it and it's delicious.

Where else have you been?

Well, I was born in Scotland, lived in Switzerland, moved to Austin, then I moved to Singapore, then back to Austin. Now I'm in Houston.

Can you give me a crazy running-related story?

Our team won the Notre Dame Cross Country Invitational in 2007. We went there and it was the beginning of when our program really started taking off. We know we were fit and we know we had a pretty good team, we just didn't know how good. Our coach likes to schedule flights pretty close to after meet time. When we were warming up, he was reminding us that we had five minutes to cool down and then we have to get in the van and drive back to Chicago and get back on the plane so we can get back to Houston without missing our flight. We run the race and it was great. With 1,200 meters to go, I remember him screaming at me that I needed to pick it up and this was our ticket to nationals and I was doing awesome. At the finish line, I was surrounded by my teammates and I knew we did really well. Our coach was like, “I think we may have come in fifth or maybe higher!” We really didn't know. Everyone cooled down and jumped in the van and left. One of the parents of a girl on the team stayed behind to call the coach and tell him where we actually finished. We were 15 minutes on the road when we get the phone call that we had won the meet. We couldn't believe it and we were all screaming in the car. We never expected to win and beat so many ranked teams. Jim, our coach, pulled a U-turn right there and we drove back so we could get our award. It doesn't happen very often that you get to win a cross country meet at Notre Dame. Jim was still determined that we would make our flight. We ended up speeding all the way to the airport in Chicago and didn't have enough time to return our rental van. He ended up pulling it into short term parking and it's 7 o'clock and our flight took off at 7:15 and he left the keys and some dollars in the van and called the rental company to tell them what he'd done with it and we sprinted through the airport and got on the plane maybe two minutes before it took off.