Photo courtesy of Beverly Schaefer

Princeton standout Alex Banfich recently won the Heptagonal Championships, hosted by Columbia at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx with a time 16 minutes, 58.9 seconds of over the 5,000-meter cross country course—20 seconds ahead of her closest competitor. Princeton's women's squad will next compete in the Mid Atlantic NCAA Regional Meet at Penn State and then, they hope, at the NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, Indiana—Banfich's native state, where she's considered one of the best in the state's history.

The weekend before the NCAA regional Meet, what did you do and are you nervous?

We had fall break this weekend. We didn't have classes this past week, which was really nice. We had midterms the week before our conference meet, before Heps. So, everyone was pretty stressed last week. This week has been just about practice and relaxing. Most people live off campus, so we've haven't been on campus this past week. Classes start again on Monday, though.

Did you log your long run this morning? Were you watching the NYC Marathon?

Yeah. Two girls on our team were watching the marathon. We had a former teammate running in it. The rest of us met at 10 a.m. for the long run. It was just 12 miles. Pretty normal. We have a few big loops that we usually go on. This morning, we did “mystery brook”. That's what we named it. (Laughs)

You run along the canal a lot—away from the those crazy geese?

Those geese are definitely a problem. I've never been attacked, but some of my teammates have. We've kind of made it a joke to see who can touch them along the run without getting flown at. We didn't go on the tow path today. It's really a great resource. It's great to have that soft surface and it goes for miles and miles. It does get a little boring sometimes, not to complain about what a great resource we have, but we went the other direction today...north of campus. We did these windy roads in neighborhoods and stuff. It's a pretty big loop. We do have quite a few runs on the tow path, always incorporating at least a few miles of it.

Do you do a lot of workouts and faster stuff on it?

Yeah, the only workouts we really do on the tow path are either progression runs or continuous runs where it's marked off every half mile, so you can check your mile splits. If we want to do a run where every mile gets faster or just a tempo run, it's good for that. Then again, our coach likes to be able to clock us on our tempo runs. Just this last Friday was a workout, like a tempo run on the course. It was good that we were on the course, because he could see us at different times during that. The tow path is good for that, too, but usually we just use it for our moderate days. It's an option for soft surface.

Is it a selling point for recruits?

That's our go-to run with recruits. It incorporates that, it goes through the trails and then partly on the roads, so we can get all the parts. It's our recruit run.

This week, are you doing anything different? Bringing down your mileage?

In our coaches words, “you don't play all your cards at regionals.” I don't think we're going to decrease or workload or taper so much for the regional. Obviously we're looking to qualify and then for nationals, we will. I think we see regionals as a step in the process of getting to nationals. We're not going to compromise how we're looking at nationals, though, I guess.

Your mileage is going to stay up there. What's your mileage usually at?

I'd say I'm typically—well, I don't go above 75 and on race weeks, I take a day off, once every two weeks. So it will go down to 60-65 during race weeks.

You said you're not nervous at all, not showing your cards until NCAAs?

I don't get extremely nervous, but I like to use them (nerves) as a motivating thing. We lost some people, but we've got a bunch of really good girls and it's really exciting. Nerves come with the territory, but I don't think we're overly “stimulated”, as Coach likes to say. I have a little bit of nerves going into this, but I'm trying to use that as a positive and getting motivated and excited for it.

With regionals being a stepping stone, where are you setting your team goals and where are you setting your individual goals?

Villanova's got a lot of talent on that team, obviously. So, I don't think we're looking to compete with them. I don't know that it's our goal to beat them at this point. We aren't quite that deep. We're looking at Georgetown, as we were pretty close to them at the pre-regional meet—the Spiked Shoe Invitational, I think it was. We're looking at them as our main competition and we'd love to beat Penn State going into this. I think that's where we're at, looking at that number two or number three spot. Number two would obviously be our main goal, but we're hoping that number three could get us through with some at-large points with our ranking right now.

Princeton took fifth at NCAAs last year. How does this team compare to last year's?

We have to be pretty practical. Goals change from year to year. People graduate and teams are different every year and you just have to adjust your goals to work with what you've got. We've got a great group of girls, but you can't really deny that we're not quite at the level we were last year. The key to our team this year is, well, last year we had a lot of experienced girls. This year, it's more that we have a strong top three with Ashley Higginson, Sarah Cummings and I, that kind of stick near the top. Then, we have a large group of underclassmen. The key to our team has been that seven-six-five-four spot. That's really changed a lot this season. We've got girls at number four who can come in at seven and then the opposite way. I think we're hoping for a consistent performance from Ashley, Sarah and I and then hoping that those underclassmen—which they did at Heps, which speaks really well for them—are consistent. That's what we're hoping for, for our team dynamic. I think we lost experience with Liz Costello, who had four years at nationals and Reilly Kiernan—a consistent performer. She was out for a few years in there. We lost some experience with our seniors, but that's part of the challenge, developing underclassmen. They're ready to step up for the last two meets in the season. I've got confidence in them.

How was it for you to step into that leader role after Liz?

Someone has to step up (laughs). Every year changes and you can't just be content with where you are, so I guess it was just one of those things where you've got to jump into a new role and roll with it.

You're from Indiana originally?

Yeah.

So, you were a basketball player.

I did play basketball for one year. I made a basket for the other team. It wasn't the best experience for me, but I had to do it for one year. I have to say that basketball is like a religion out there and we learn about it in classes.

What brought you to Princeton in the first place? Do you mind if I ask where else you were looking and what finally made up your mind?

I took unofficial visits to IU, Notre Dame and Michigan, just because they're all pretty close. Then, I took official visits to Princeton, Duke and UVA. I guess what made me think of Princeton initially was that at Footlocker, I was there at the same time as Liz Costello, Ashley Higginson and Sarah Cummings...and Liz Deir, I think. She's not on the team, but she did Footlocker. So, there were all these great runners going to Princeton and I had honestly never considered it. I said to myself, “these girls are really great and really fun, they're all really good, so there must be something to this program if all these girls are going there.” It was really their influence that made me look at Princeton in the first place. In choosing to go to college, it was the best combination of athletics and academics that I found. The balance, I think, just really struck the right cord for me and really lined up my priorities. That's why I chose it and I think I was a very good fit with the coach and the team.

What's your major?

I'm a history major and a European cultural studies certificate...which is kind of like a minor.

Do you have a dream job with that course of study?

I don't have a specific ambition right now. I'm just looking at internships for next summer. I'm most likely going to be interning at an art auction house in New York City, but I've got lots of possibility with a history degree. A lot of people go the law school track. I don't think I'm really cut out for teaching, but actually, this past summer, I did an internship teaching in Paris, teaching little kids how to speak English. It was a really great experience, but I don't think I see myself doing that in the future. It was nice to try it out. We'll see. There are a lot of possibilities out there.

Did you say you were in Paris teaching kids how to speak English?

Yeah, I did.

How was that? Did you take time off from running or were you training the whole time?

No, I was training the whole time. Athletics in general isn't a huge priority in Paris, as I found out. I found some great parks to run in. There are plenty of loops and pretty monuments. I got on Google Maps and mapped my runs quite a bit. It was a really great experience and I'm glad I got to do it. We can't study abroad as three-season athletes, so that was my opportunity to travel and see another part of the world. A lot of people ask, “where did you run? On the sidewalks?” But, a lot of time I would connect park to park to park and do loops around each one so I didn't get bored.

How was the food?

It was absolutely amazing.

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

As amazing as the food in Paris was, my dad is actually an amazing chef. I went to boarding school and didn't live at home. It was about 15 minutes away. Every Friday night, before my Saturday meets in high school, my dad would make me this amazing pasta primavera with his special sauce and all these special vegetables and pasta and chicken. That's my all-time favorite meal. I'd say that's number one, although there were some great, great restaurants in Princeton and obviously the baguettes and croissants in Paris were like unparalleled. But, I have to give my dad the number-one spot for his meal.

Do you have any time goals set for indoor and outdoor?

This past outdoor season, I was right at 16-flat. That's obviously a really frustrating time to get. I think I finished the race and the clock on the track said “15:59.8” or something. I was so excited and then the guy on the loud speaker said, “oh, this girl is going to kick herself tonight! She actually ran 16:00.4.” Under 16 is obviously my goal right now. That's really close to what I ran. It's one of those things for a girl to get under 16. That's what we're looking at right now. Indoors, I think I'll focus more on the 3k. At least that's what I did last year. I'm not sure if I'll do that 5k as much this year, but under 9:22. It would be great to hit the standard in the 3k and then running in 15s would be awesome for the next outdoor season, but we'll see. Whatever season I'm in is the season I focus on. After cross country nationals, we'll get into more track-related goals, I guess.

Can you share a crazy running-related story?

I have something that happened to me at cross country nationals last year. I get made fun of a lot from being from Indiana, just because we don't have a lot of Midwest people on the team. We have a lot of Californians and East Coast people. Everyone on the team says when I joined the team is when we started going to meets in Indiana. My freshman year, we went to Notre Dame, Pre Nationals, nationals and we've done that ever since. They say that I'm the "Indiana good luck charm" or something. I get made fun of because it's not the most exciting state in the country, which I'll admit. This incident didn't help my Indiana pride at all. We were at nationals and most of the teams go out from the course and go left and go down the same road—like every single team does it. I'm sure you've seen that. We decided to change it up a little bit and go right. I found this road and turned on another one and was just running around because we wanted to be alone. We were running for like 25 minutes and were 10 minutes in and wanted to go a little longer. In the middle of the road, we come upon this donkey...just standing in the middle of the road. None of us had ever touched one before and we weren't really sure what to do. We wanted to go around it, but didn't know if it would chase after us. I get made fun of for that every year...and we named it and everything. It was the donkey that was on the roads of Indiana. Living up to the Indiana standard.

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