Notre Dame senior Lindsey Ferguson opened up her final cross country season with a win at the National Catholic Championships, covering the 5,000-meter course in 17 minutes, 33.1 seconds for her second straight title. The former high school national record holder in the 2,000-meter steeplechase is looking to go out in style while hopefully leading the Fighting Irish to the NCAA National Championships this year.

After opening up with a win this year, have you set your ultimate individual goals for this season?

Yes. I guess individually, I'd like to do well, obviously at Big East and Regionals. My big goal is for our team to make it to nationals and for me to get All-American. That would be awesome.

How did you spend your time this past summer? Did you have a job or anything?

I did. We have this thing called a "Summer Service Learning Program". It's through Notre Dame and you get to pick where you want to go. They set you up with alumni and you (interview interrupted by my barking dog, Maddy)...do some type of service, wherever you are for eight weeks. I chose to go to Denver, Colorado. I got to work with children who were in the impoverished areas in Denver. I'd do reading with them and help them with technology and all that sort of stuff. It was really cool. Plus I got to train at altitude. It was a pretty cool summer.

What kind of mileage would you hit at altitude?

I was doing in the 70s.

How much different was it for you to run your miles at altitude?

It was different. The first couple of weeks where I was building up my miles, that was kind of tough. I've never been up that high before. It was weird. Running just felt a lot different. It wasn't anything like hard, it just felt different. The last week coming back to New York, I felt like I was flying. The only bad thing about going back to New York was that it was so humid. I felt good, but I felt so hot and humid. Miserable conditions.

Did you run by yourself or did you have people who would run with you?

I did run by myself...all alone in Denver. That was kind of the down part of it. We have a team email and are always talking with our teammates and encouraging and motivating, so that was helpful.

Does Notre Dame have a lot of team bonding stuff? Dinner and all that?

We all eat dinner at the dining hall...every night with the guys team. Tuesdays we have, “Team Tuesdays” and we make sure everyone attends. Sometimes on the weekends, we have a brunch after a hard, long run. We have it at our house—because I live off campus. Me and my roommate Molly, who's also a senior, we had all the girls come over and we made omelets and French toast and muffins and everything. We have really good team unity.

Can you explain a typical week of training for you?

Yeah. I'm keeping my miles at 65-70. Usually Mondays are regular runs, just going out for about 60 minutes, then strides and drills. Tuesday is usually a workout. I'll shake out in the morning and I think we usually do some sort of fartlek, sometimes a fartlek where there are some hills. Sometimes we do it on the flat stuff. Wednesday is our recovery day. We don't have practice that day. Some people swim. I run because I come from a high school program where I'm used to running seven days a week. I do another hour run...but it's more relaxed. Thursday is another regular run. Friday is usually some sort of interval workout, like mile repeats or "ks" or eights or something like that. Saturday is another recovery run and Sunday is our long run which is usually another hard day. We usually have to drive to go find hills...which is hard, because Indiana doesn't really have hills. We don't have too many hills around here.

You said you're use to running seven days a week. How often do you take days off?

I don't take many days off. In the season, it's usually close to none. There are obviously days where I'll have a ton of miles and my legs feel like...dead. My coach will tell me to go in the pool and I'll do just that. In high school, even between seasons, my coaches were against taking time off. I was used to just...running. Taking time off, I don't usually do that.

You were part of the what's considered to be the greatest high school distance team ever, Saratoga Springs, how was the transition to a different program at Notre Dame?

High school was like...we'd dominate wherever we went. But then my freshman year, we had a pretty good team, with some pretty good girls, but we didn't even make it to Nationals. That was kind of a tough transition because I was used to going to all the big meets and running there. It was one of those things where I had to focus more on motivating myself in other ways, I guess. It's also a lot different, because in high school, I was always way in the front at most of my meets. Then you get to college and everyone was the top of their high schools and way in the front. You have to adjust to the new competition. It's kind of rough and tough on your confidence, but now that I'm a senior and have been able to get all the experience in and been able to help teammates who are freshman and going through tough times like that who come from really good programs but struggle a little bit at first. I feel I'm more knowledgeable about that.

What about the differences of coaching styles? Were the Kraniks, from Saratoga, a lot different from the coaches you have now?

Not so much with training. We always did a lot of intervals of "ks" and miles and stuff like that. With the coaching style, it was just different. In high school you have those girls on the team who are just there for social reasons. They were always pushing us and pushing us. We never went out and did runs, we would always do two-mile loops that were timed and in college...it's more of you motivating yourself. I kind of like that. It's not like people pushing you and pushing you and you're like, “well, maybe I don't want to do that.” It was a different transition, but it was easy. There wasn't like anything hard. Well, workouts were harder in college, but there's wasn't anything that was completely different or anything like that.

You were the national record holder in the 2,000 steeplechase in high school and still run a lot of steeplechase races. Do you considered yourself a pure steeplechaser?

Umm, I don't know. (Laughs) I have a love/hate relationship with the steeplechase. Obviously, high school was really awesome, being able to have a national record. In college it was a bit different, again with the competition. I was used to running a steeple and having no one around me ever. It was just me running. That was a lot easier. No one in your way, you don't have to stutter step to a barrier, you can just run fast and go over everything. I moved to the 3k steeple and that was bit harder mentally...knowing that I had to go another “k” and having all of that competition. I've also had some great times falling in the steeple. (Laughs) At Regionals my sophomore year, I completely fell on the last water jump and that was kind of awful. Then right before Big Easts this past season, I was practicing and stepped funny on the barrier and rammed my shin into the barrier and I probably should have gotten stitches because I have the grossest scar right now. Big Easts were in like two days and I thought, “whatever, I'll be fine!” I had the trainers look at it and it was just bulging out. It looked like you could see my bone because it was just white. I was freaking out. They bandaged it up and I took a day off and ran at Big Easts. It didn't go as well as I wanted it to. I wouldn't say I'm just a steepler. (Laughs)

If I'm not mistaken, there's an AWESOME picture of your fall at Regionals. Are you a fan of that picture or do you hate looking at it?

I remember falling into the water and getting up and running and thinking that it was awful. Even my teammates after the race didn't know how to react. I'm the type of person who can just shake it off and laugh about it. Obviously there's nothing you can do...it happened. Then I saw the pictures and was like, “Oh, my God! That is hilarious!” I don't even know how I did that...how it was possible, but they're funny.

It's one of those bad-ass events where stuff like that happens and that's what makes it cool.

Yeah, I would much rather run a steeplechase than running a 5k around a track. It really mixes it up and makes it more of a challenge.

What do you do when you get free time?

We really don't get that much free time. Well, there are football games here on the weekends. That's always fun in the Fall. I definitely take tons of naps. I'm usually just hanging out or going shopping sometimes. South Bend is not the type of place where you'll just hang out. On campus there's always something to do. I usually just spend my time around there.

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

That's a tough one. It would probably be by my mom. She makes really good salmon. It would be salmon, brown rice and a sweet potato.

Can you explain the “almost getting abducted after track practice” story that happened to you in high school?

It was on Halloween and it was right after practice. It was dark, around 6 o'clock. The sun had set and I was walking out to my car with my two teammates. We were obviously discussing what we were going to do for Halloween and we parted our ways. I was walking to my car. There was another car that was parked kind of close to it. I saw someone in it and thought, “oh, it must be someone's dad.” I was putting my bag into my car and I hear the van door slide open. I'm thinking, “oh, they're probably trying to go get their kid.” I scooted a little closer to my car so they could get around me and all of a sudden, he grabbed me and tried to force me into his car. My initial reaction was just to scream. It's kind of funny—well, it's NOT kind of funny—at the time I was thinking, “maybe this is a joke” and then, “there's no way!” I was just screaming and there were a lot of people in the parking lot at the time, scattered around their cars. Once I started screaming, my high school coach started walking over toward me and the guy who grabbed me kind of freaked out and pushed me. I ended falling into the front seat of my car and kicked him away to push him back. He said something to me and I don't really remember what it was, but it was like, “don't tell anyone about this!” or something really weird. Then he ran back into his car and someone was getting his license plate and someone was on the phone with the police. Then my high school coach jumped into his car and pulled over to where I was and was asking what happened and if I was all right. At this point, I'm realizing that someone just tried to abduct me and I was crying and was like, “I don't know!” My coach drove and followed the van and ended up pulling the van over by beeping his horn and flashing his lights. He pulled over and my coach was on the phone with the police when he was following the car. The police came and arrested him and I had to do a drive-by and make sure that that was him. And...now he's in jail.

He's still in jail?

He's in jail for...12 years.

That's insane!

I know! It's funny because people are like, “ I can't believe that happened!” It was actually on Dateline last week. They were playing it at our student center. I don't know why they were playing NBC's Dateline (Dateline Interview about Lindsey and the crazy dude) anyway. A lot of my teammates didn't know about it. It's not something that I would say like, “oh, guess what happened to me?” They can't believe it happened to me. It's really fine...it happened a long time ago.

You thought it was a Halloween prank at first?

Yeah! Thinking about it now, I think, “why would I think that?” I don't know...your initial reaction is that something like that wouldn't happen to you. The fact that someone was trying to pull me into their car. I wasn't even going to scream at the time. I thought it was maybe my boyfriend.

He wasn't wearing a “Scream Mask” or anything like that?

No, but I saw him when I was walking to my car. I remember everything I thought, thinking it was somebody's parents. He was an older guy...in his late 40s...like someone's dad. A regular looking guy. It seemed pretty stupid to me because there were people all over the parking lot. People now are like, “what if he had a weapon?” And it's like, “I didn't even think of that! I didn't even think of it at the time. Maybe he has something that could hurt me!”

Do you do Tae-Bo now or anything like that?

No, but my parents wanted me to go to counseling to make sure things were OK and after two sessions, I was like, “I really am fine.” She was pulling at things that weren't even worth trying...I was fine. I'm definitely more aware of things. Even when I pass people who look a little sketchy, I'm like, “what if they...” and then mind my own business and walk away fast. (Laughs)