University of North Carolina senior Lauren Holesh and her Tar Heels are looking for another appearance at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships in November. Holesh took 30^th place last year and is looking for a significant individual improvement with the help of new head coach Peter Watson.

How did your summer go? How did you spend most of your time?

Summer went really well. I took summer school for the first session. And Carolina is actually in pretty early. I got done with my first session of summer school in early June and then I worked at the campus center at UNC Hospital for a month or so. Then I headed out to Colorado to work a running camp out there for the rest of the summer. It was fun and mostly involved with running. My family and friends and boss were all pretty flexible with my running schedule. It was good.

What was a typical week of summer running for you?

We went through a coaching change this year, so typically I would pound out the mileage, increasing each week. This year, Coach (Peter) Watson from Auburn, he walks in and is our new coach. He sent out a new training program after nationals in June and it had a couple of progression runs and a couple of interval workouts—really long interval workouts, probably seven minutes on, three minutes off kind of thing. I did the progression run on Tuesday, interval on Friday, then just a really long run on Sunday. In between was just however I felt.

What kind of mileage will you typically hit?

I've hit 85 miles a week for the last month or so. I was just building up all summer long, increasing by about five miles each week. It got to be a lot in July. June wasn't too bad. I'm doubling right now...pretty much every day except obviously my long run day. To do morning practice then afternoon practice, it helps out.

How is your team shaping up? Do you have team goals set?

It's kind of funny because all the girls are so young. I'm the only senior. Then we have probably only two juniors and three sophomores...then 10 freshman. As far as team goals go, they don't even know how to get to the national meet. It's hard to explain to them that regionals is where it counts, but we really want to do well at ACC's, but then Florida State is in our conference, so it's hard to win the whole thing. But as far as team goals go, this could be a good team. In my past three years at North Carolina, I had felt that our team wasn't as close as it could have been. Right now we do team dinners and stuff. I think the goal is to get back to nationals. If that happens while I'm here then great. But, if it happens next year when I've graduated...that's great too! It would be great to get back on the national scene. We've kind of taken a detour from that recently.

Being the lone senior, are you taking the bull by the horns and forcing that team chemistry?

It's been a group effort. Everyone wants to do something. It's funny how you'll throw out and idea and think, “no, no one will want to do that.” After practice one day I was like, “you know I've really craving sushi lately. Would anyone be up for dinner tomorrow night at Sushi Thai?” People said that they would love that and next thing you know, you've got a table full of 12 girls on a Wednesday night. And that's pretty hard when you've got labs, classes and practice. As far as taking the bull by the horns...I'm old and I feel really old with these girls, but it's easy for me because I have a car on campus and I live off campus and I can have more people over to my house. I guess you would say I'm taking the bull by the horns, but everyone else is helping so much. Other upperclassmen are helping out, offering their cars like, “hey, I can pick people up if you need help.” It's been a group effort and it's been great.

30^th last year. What are your individual goals this year?

I would love to repeat as All-American. My real goal is to break the top 20. I'm hesitant in saying that because I've got higher goals. Top 20 would be awesome to be with such an elite group of girls. I would love to be a part of that.

What do you do when you get free time? What are your hobbies?

That's a funny question because I haven't had much recently. I love to go to the beach. My parent's were down this past weekend. If I have a free day where practice is really early in the morning and I won't have practice until the afternoon the next day, I'll bolt down to the beach and spend the day there...just reading and getting away. It's so much fun and it's my favorite place in the world.

I bet it's not hard getting your teammates to join you there for some team bonding.

Not at all. I kind of threw the idea out there thinking that no one would want to do that this summer and everyone was like, “YES, when can we go?”

You're from North Carolina. Why did you decide to stay in state for college?

My dad went to Carolina and I grew up a Tar Heel. I had the little cheerleader outfit when I was like two years old. My picture books when I was little were Carolina picture books. It just the legacy. Chapel Hill is far enough where my parents are like, “do you mind if we pick you up and go to dinner?” It's close enough where if I needed anything, I can be home in heartbeat. It's a great school. I want to go to pharmacy school and Carolina has a great pharmacy school and a great pre-pharmacy program. Like I said though, I went out to Colorado this summer and I've never been out that far west...so maybe graduate school will bring me somewhere else, but for now, I couldn't ask for a better location with family and the beach.

What kind of year has it been for you as a basketball fan at UNC?

It's been absolutely incredible. I never thought that they would win a national title while I was here, like Murphy's Law and it wouldn't happen while I was here. They put it together this past season and it was awesome. I'm sure you've seen pictures of Franklin Street. Craziness! Classes were canceled the next day, which is unheard of. We had classes in snow and snow is unheard of in North Carolina as well. To trek into class in four inches of snow and have it canceled the day after a national title is just awesome. The whole program here and the basketball history is incredible.

Does any one workout you've ever done stand out as the hardest you've ever done?

Because I run the 10k, I have to do two-mile repeats on the track. I was thinking that it would be a tempo two miles and then I'll do another. But they were pretty quick. I wasn't an all star in high school, so I was pretty much breaking my two-mile PR with each interval. While you're doing it, you're like, “wow, this is hard!” You see the final time and say, “what did I just do?” Recently, not this past Friday, but the Friday before, I did this workout with Brie Felnagle—she doesn't have anymore cross country eligibility, but still has track and is still training in Chapel Hill—and Shalane Flanagan, who has been helping our team out a lot. We were out on the American Tobacco Trail, which is completely flat. It was one of those interval workouts where it was like three minutes on then a short break. We did nine intervals of it...which is a lot of intervals if you think about it. I thought that was the workout and thought, “nine intervals, I can get through this.” Then he was like “two-mile tempo to start it off.” Wait a minute...it was a harder workout because when you're training with people with that talent you think that you need to perform. It was awesome when it was done and I never felt more accomplished.

Working out with Shalane Flanagan...that's really cool!

Isn't it? I can't believe it. Shalane has been amazing with the freshman girls on our team and motivating us. She is the one who lead our 6 a.m. practice. You're getting up and thinking it's horrible but then you're like, “wait a minute, there's a bronze medalist getting up just like me.” It certainly helps.

You touched on it a little bit, but how hard is it to adapt to changing coaches and different coaching styles?

At first I was so nervous and didn't know what to expect. I love Coach Whitt (Whittlesey). He was great and everything, but Coach Watson is so much younger and he is just so easy to talk to and I can tell him anything. Watson has been great about getting us motivated and getting us excited. He has been so positive. He wants us surrounded by positive people. Anything that has been negative about the program in the past has been totally cut out. I don't know how he's done it, but people are sticking around and showing up at the 6 a.m. practices and Sunday long runs at 6:30 a.m. There's drama with everything, but I think we nipped that in the bud in the first week. He was very open. He was like, “if you have a problem, come and talk to me about it and we'll fix it.” There's a method behind everything he does and he's very open about it. He's got a plan and he'll share it with you. I'm excited about the season.

And where do you open up?

In less than two weeks, up in Notre Dame.

If you could have one meal, prepared by anyone, what would you have and who would make it?

I am such a weird eater. I would say my mom's salmon, everyone knows salmon is my favorite food. Whenever I'm home, my aunts and uncles are like, “oh, we made salmon for you!” I feel like it's overdone. I get it one night and the next night it's the same thing. I would have salmon—made by my mom—tabouli, made by my Aunt Mary Ellen and as a huge fan of ice cream...any sort of ice cream cake, specifically my Aunt Mary Ellen's Pie. It's Oreo, chocolate fudge and vanilla ice cream.

Can you give some sort of crazy running-related story?

My teammates and I took a day trip down to Wrightsville Beach. We left early in the morning and were planning on running at UNC-Wilmington once we got there. It was hot, humid, and we were all tired from the early morning and two-hour drive. My coach was with us and he started out the run at a quicker-than-anticipated pace. We were running through these trails on the campus when one of my teammates started to complain about how something was biting her. Mosquitoes were biting and flies were following us so everyone was uncomfortable...we kind of just figured that my friend Justine was voicing what everybody was experiencing. This was a longer run so her complaining must have lasted at least half an hour. We were about a 200 meters away from our car, in the middle of a huge field with cars driving by all around us, when all the sudden Justine starts screaming. I look behind me to see her ripping off her shorts, throwing them on the ground, and running (in her little g-string) away. Cars driving by lay on the horn and give the thumbs up while my coach yells for her to put her pants on. She refuses and says that there is a hornet in them. This proceeded for about two minutes until we got Justine into the car and calmed down. Turns out a hornet had been biting her most of the run and she didn't realize it was stuck in her shorts until the end of the run. We all felt bad, but the image of her stripping in the middle of the field while my coach tried to get her to put her shorts back on....priceless :).