Oral History Program Paul Pilkington Interviewed by Marina Kenner 21 June 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Paul Pilkington Interviewed by Marina Kenner 21 June 2022 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Pilkington, Paul, an oral history by Marina Kenner, 21 June 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Paul Pilkington conducted on June 21, 2022 by Marina Kenner. Pilkington discusses his running career, his work as a coach, and how Weber State’s programs have evolved over the years. Also present is Chloe Thompson. MK: Today is June 21, 2022. It's 1 P.M, and we are doing an oral history with Paul Pilkington. We are in the Stewart Library. I am Marina Kenner doing the interview, and with me is Chloe Thompson doing the video technician stuff. So when and where were you born? PP: I was born in Tachikawa, Japan in 1958. My dad was stationed there in the Air Force. I have a sister a year older that was born there also. I was the fourth of five kids. MK: Okay, that's cool. Do you want to talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? PP: Yeah. My dad got out of the Air Force. I can't remember how old I was when he got out, but we moved to Utah; we'd been all over the world, obviously, prior to that. I went through fifth grade in Utah, went to elementary school in Tremonton, Utah. Then my dad took a job as an elementary school principal in Blackfoot, Idaho. So my high school days, junior high, high school was in Blackfoot, Idaho. MK: Did you live in any other countries growing up? PP: Just Japan. MK: Okay. What was the name of your high school? PP: Blackfoot High School. MK: Blackfoot. I thought you said that. I apologize. What started your interest in running? PP: I had some friends that were right in our neighborhood that were very good runners. They had won the state cross-country championship in Blackfoot three years in a row going into my senior year; and all of us in Blackfoot at the time in the summer, 1 we would move irrigation pipe out on the Indian reservation in the potato fields. The bus would pick us up at four in the morning around town. We'd go out and move our lines, they called them. A quarter mile worth of irrigation pipe, 32 rows over, connect the pipe, run back, and you got paid by the line. So as we got older and stronger, we would run those lines, we'd pick the irrigation pipe up and run with them and then run back. So I was running every summer for three-plus months from eighth grade on, but it wasn't really training. My senior year I worked for Dole Pineapple in Hawaii on the island of Lanai, planting pineapples. Same type of thing; you got paid based on how many pineapples you plant during the day. But at the end of the summer, there was a high school football team from Honolulu who had been picking pineapples, which is the easier of the jobs. Then they'd have football practice, and they ate in the same cafeteria with us, and they were kind of obnoxious and cocky, arrogant. Dole put on, at the end of the summer, just a weeklong competition, all kinds of different sporting events. One of them was a three-mile run. All of the football players, all their receivers, running backs, defensive backs, ends, they all were entered in this three mile run. I decided that I was going to do it and beat them. So anyway, I ran for two weeks. I didn't know anything about training and I ended up beating them. So when I came back in the fall, I just said, “Well, I'll go run cross-country,” because the team, their coach had been trying to get me to do it. I mean, my whole high school career, I just didn't want to. So that's when I started, just my senior year of high school. MK: Okay. What year was that? PP: Fall of 1975. MK: Well, that's good weight training. PP: Yeah. 2 MK: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? PP: Yeah. My mom and dad both were educators. My dad was a principal and my mom was an elementary school teacher, so there was an emphasis in our home on education. MK: Okay, so after graduating from high school, where did you attend college? PP: I went to College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, Junior College, and I had never thought that I'd run, but I ran cross-country in the fall. We won the state championship again, and then I wrestled in the wintertime, and then I decided to run the outdoor track and ended up fourth in state. I remember our high school coach saying, you know, you could be good if you work at this because it was just that I hadn't developed much. So he called up the coach at College of Southern Idaho and I ended up going there and running for two years. It was all-American there, and then Weber State recruited me and that's how I ended up here. MK: Okay. What did you study at Weber? PP: Secondary Education. My bachelor's was in history and minor in reading. Then I went through the education program here. MK: Okay. My bachelor's was in history from here as well. PP: Right? MK: Yup. It's a good program. What was Weber like when you first started here? PP: We didn't have near the facilities or buildings that we have now. I mean, as far as the development of buildings and classrooms and facilities, it's changed dramatically. I mean, the Dee Events Center was new or fairly new when I got here. But I think the biggest change is probably just on the facilities, the growth and the development. There weren't the dorms like there are now. There's no university buildings. None of the other dorms existed at the time either. MK: Was building one through four still here while you were here? 3 PP: Yes. MK: Okay. I like those buildings. What year did you start here at Weber? PP: 1978. MK: What was the track and field and cross-country team like? PP: We had a good distance program. At that time, we weren't a well-rounded track and field program, but we did have good distance runners. We had three of my teammates from Mexico—Javier, who owns Javier's restaurant, he was one of our teammates. MK: Oh, I didn't know that. PP: Yeah, Javier, we were teammates together. So the distance program was very good, but it was not as well-rounded in the other events as it is now. MK: Okay. Who was your coach? PP: Chick Hislop. He was here 38 years. MK: Do you have any favorite professors from your time here? PP: I really like Lou Farrand, who is in the education. It's funny, because I ended up teaching one of his kids in school. Then there's a Dr. Dixon in the history department that's real good. Doctor Ibarra in the history department. MK: Were you involved in any other student organizations? PP: No, just the school and the training that went off and the track and field team. Yeah. MK: How many hours per week would you say you spent on the track and field team back when you were here? PP: I was running 100 miles a week. I mean, twice a day, so 30 minutes in the morning, an hour in the afternoon, hour-and-a-half on Saturdays to two hours. So it's around 20 hours a week. MK: Like a part-time job? PP: Yeah. 4 MK: So what did you do after you left Weber State? PP: I taught school. My first teaching job was in Delta, Utah, in 1981; I taught high school there for a year, and then came back to Ogden, and I taught school at Mound Fort Junior High for six or seven years. Then I went into the Marine Corps for a while. I had an injury in that. So when I got out, I went back and taught school for a couple more years, and then I started making more money running because they made it legal for runners to make prize money and still compete in the Olympics. So the road racing took off, and I started making more money running than I was teaching school. So I ran full-time and went back to graduate school. MK: Okay. When you were teaching, were you coaching any sort of... PP: I coached two years at Ben Lomond and then I coached individuals privately for 28+ years. MK: Okay, and then you taught history as a main subject? PP: I taught English. I really didn't teach history. With that reading minor, I had a background that taught English and some life sciences and stuff. MK: Okay, that's cool. So you were in the Marines and then you came back, taught for a little bit, and then you started your running career? PP: Well, I was running the whole time, and then after going to grad school, ran fulltime, and then later put my graduate degree to work. MK: Okay. What really kicked off your professional career as a runner? Was there anything… PP: No, I mean, I was teaching school, so I'd get up and run at 6 A.M. in the dark most of the time, and then again after school. Over time, I just got better and better and stronger and started to get to a world-class level. Probably the biggest thing is when I won in 1991, the Houston Marathon. Then in 1994, I won the Los Angeles 5 Marathon. I was the U.S. National Champion twice, and it just kind of developed over that time. MK: Okay. And you ran for some of the Olympic qualifiers? PP: Yeah. I made the U.S. team for the World Championships. Qualified for four Olympic trials; they have the World Championships every two years, the Olympics every four. MK: Okay. What was that process like? PP: It was good. I mean, it's a different lifestyle when I was running full-time, because I had to go. I was married and had three kids for that period of time. I had a shoe contract, but it wasn't enough to live off of, so I had to go make prize money. So there's a certain amount of pressure when you know that kids need new shoes for school and you better make money in this race, than having a normal job where you know that you have set income and you live off this and budget that way. In the running world, it was a little different. The great thing is I got to see the world. I raced all over the world. MK: What were some of your favorite international races that you had to participate in? PP: London Marathon. I did Venice. Venice is probably one of the funnest. The race started in Italy and finished in Venice, and so the last three miles were up, going up and down cobblestone steps, which really hurt. Yeah. The end of a marathon. But, yeah, I was there. I ran in the first prize money sporting event they ever had in Russia, in Moscow, and raced there twice. I liked racing in Japan a lot because they like road racing and they have tens of millions of people watching on TV and lighting the course too. MK: That's cool. Going back a little bit, you kind of made a splash with your L.A. Marathon win. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? 6 PP: Yeah, I would. The major marathons, they want fast races. It's better for TV. They get better press. So quite often, they would hire a pacesetter or a rabbit because nobody wants to… I mean, if you run a five-minute-mile pace and you're in front, that's a 12 mile an hour headwind that you're braking. So somebody can just sit behind you, and it's just like drafting in auto racing or bike racing. Same thing with running. Nobody wants to be necessarily a sacrificial person that,” Hey, I'll go lead and you guys all just sit on me.” So they would hire pacesetters, and I was real good at just locking into a rhythm and hitting the time that they wanted. I would typically run two marathons a year, but then I'd supplement my income by rabbiting those races. I had rabbited in New York City Marathon five times. Couple in Japan and in Los Angeles. I'd done it in ‘93, was the pacesetter. Then the next year they brought me back again, but I was in the US National Championships, and I decided I was going to taper, and if the weather was good, run the whole race. So I hit the times that they wanted me to hit; I got paid $3,000 to run it. I got paid another three [thousand] if I hit, so $6,000, and then I got paid another three if I went past a half marathon. So it was like a $9,000 weekend, and I can be recovered from that in 10 days or whatever. So in LA, I hit the times they wanted me to, felt very good, and just went on and won the whole thing. They'd never had a rabbit win a major marathon before, so it became big news. I'll always be known as the rabbit. It was a good payday, too, because of the time bonuses and everything else. MK: Did you get the pay for winning the event as well? PP: I did. I made 108,000 out of the whole thing, including my rabbiting money and the overall money for it. But I needed one of those every year, which didn't happen. MK: So you got into your professional running career and then you started grad school. Where did you attend grad school? 7 PP: Utah State. MK: Okay. What was your program? PP: Instructional design. MK: What is that? PP: In my case, it was corporate education programs, and I developed computer-based training. MK: And you coached all through grad school? PP: I did, yeah. I coached individuals. MK: Okay. What did you do after? PP: Well, my career was winding down when I was getting too old to run fast. I went to work for Allen Hall, who started MarketStar. I was their Director of Education, and then I eventually became his assistant to the president, so an assistant to Allen Hall. That got me into the operational side of their business, and I ran a team for Hewlett-Packard for several years. Then we started doing software development, and I was the project manager over all of the software developers, engineers for several years. So I worked at MarketStar for nine, 10 years. MK: Going back—sorry, I'm all over the place today. When did you graduate from Utah State? PP: Let me see. ‘92 or ‘93. At the end of that nine to 10 years when I was at MarketStar, I started as a volunteer coach here at Weber. Then I was a part-time coach. Well, it was all part-time, but it was paid part-time for a couple years. I spent four years helping up here at Weber. Then one of my favorite Packard teams got moved to Salt Lake in one of the HP office buildings there, so I had to start going to Salt Lake every day for work, which means I couldn't come up and coach anymore. So I made the decision. I left MarketStar, and I took a full-time job coaching at University of Illinois. So, yeah, I was there for two years. Then I came back and at that time, 8 Chuck Hislop was about ready to retire. He had been my coach. So I then started full-time coaching at Weber in 2006. It would have been probably December 2006 when Coach Hislop sort of retired. So I've been here since. MK: Was there something that sparked the, “I should go work at Weber”? PP: I really enjoy coaching and watching the development of athletes and thought, “Well, I'll give up a lot of money to just go do what I enjoy.” MK: What was coaching at the University of Illinois like? PP: Oh, it was good, but Weber's program was actually better than their Big Ten program. They had a lot of money as far as travel, and they're very one of the top public universities in the country, so their academics are good. Very good, but still, track and field wise, and in some degree areas, Weber was better. It was a good experience, but I was happy to get back to Utah. MK: Yeah. So you went to New York City, Illinois for a couple of years and then you came back and you accepted that full-time job? Then Coach Hislop left, or did you step into his role? PP: No, I became the head cross-country coach for both men and women and then an assistant track coach. I coached cross-country for both genders for quite a few years, and now I just coach the women. I'm the head women's cross country and the head women's track and field coach. MK: Okay. When did you start in that position? PP: Five years ago, I think. One of the other coaches retired at that time, so when that happened, they separated the men and women’s program. MK: Okay. Did you just fall into the role as the women's [coach] or was that something…? 9 PP: Something I wanted, yeah. For whatever reason, I've had more success. I mean, I have also gotten very good All-Americans on the men's side, but I've had more on the women's side, so I decided to stick with that. MK: Okay. Let me note some of these things that you've answered. Going back a little bit again, what was Weber State like when you started working here as coach? PP: Oh, it's changed, facility-wise, dramatically. I mean, they've, as a track and field coach, we have outstanding facilities; the field over behind University Village is great. Our indoor track is good; our outdoor track in the stadium, the big screens; that's changed. I mean, when we have home meets here, the athletes can look up on the big screen and see who's behind them if it's a distance race. They'll do instant replay up on the boards, and you get [that] at maybe the Power 5 conference schools, typically. Big Sky Conference program wouldn't have facilities that nice. That's all changed since I've been here. MK: How have the track and field and cross-country teams changed over time? PP: I don't know; that's really changed. Other than just changes with different athletes coming through… We've had coaches retire, so it's changed that way. But programwise, I think we're as good or better than we've been, on the women's side, at least. MK: What has it been like training athletes for the Olympic trials and other prestigious running events? PP: My main objective is to have them compete and do well collegiately while they're here. But I'll get a few athletes that I understand or realize that they have the talent level to go on to become national or world-class. Part of that is how you develop them. If they have that ability that, “Hey, I could go run in the Olympics,” or, “I could go make a living running,” I don't want to burn them out in college so that by the time they're done, they're just happy to be finishing out. So it's fun when you get to development and see them do that. 10 I lost track, [but] at one point, I counted how many I'd had in All-Americans. It's probably in my bio somewhere, but it also added up how many Olympic trials qualifiers I've had. And it's a lot, especially for, you know, the program at Weber State. We're not UCLA or Alabama that, you know, if you're a football player, you want to go there. But we still have really good success developing, especially the women that can go on. So it's a fun process for me. I mean, Sarah Sellars, who was second at Boston, she just, Saturday, ran. It's her first marathon since having a baby, and she ran the 15th fastest marathon ever by an American. MK: Oh, that's cool. PP: I was looking at the list, and I've got two other girls that came through Weber. Taylor Ward, Dr. Ward—who teaches in the radiological sciences—she's in the top 30 of all time for the marathon. Then Lexi Thompson, who just graduated last year, ran her first marathon in Philadelphia in November, and she's at the top. She's like 60th in the all-time American list. So it's fun to look at that and go, “Well, they all came, and they all grew up within 50 miles of Ogden.” Yeah, we do have a good program and can develop people that have that potential to go on to either make Olympic teams or be world class. Lindsey Anderson, who did make the Olympic team in world cross-country, she's from Oregon. That's one of the fun parts of my job. Not the only fun part, but… Long answer. MK: No, that's okay. We like long answers. Is there a difference between training men's and women's teams? PP: There is a little bit with the workouts, but not a ton of difference. We do everything based on time, other distance around. So the men's mileage will be, because they run faster workouts, their mileage will be a little higher. But in terms of the type of workouts, very similar. MK: Okay. What does a typical semester look like for you? 11 PP: Well, we start with our distance runners. They train all summer at seven o'clock in the morning; they'll meet, and it's not mandatory until the season starts at the end of August. We really do go year-round. There's a little downtime; in fact, we're in the only downtime right now because the USA Championships are this weekend, and then we'll start with everybody back in July. So there's really only about four to six weeks that they are practicing, at least the distance side of it. Even in the summer, the throwers, the sprinters, the jumpers, they're still practicing on their own or working out. The only thing that changes from semester to semester is we do crosscountry in the fall, and then December starts indoor, and it goes through the end of February. Then right in March we go to outdoor and it goes ‘til the end of June. It's more like the changing of the events, switch from cross-country to indoor track to outdoor track. But it's really pretty much year-round. So the semester breaks don't change because school's out the end of April, and we're still competing until right now. But we do have some going to summer school. MK: What kind of events does Weber participate in? PP: Well, the event lists are set by the NCAA. We do all the track events. We do all the events that you see in the Olympics. Outdoor track and indoor track. It changes a little bit, but it's all the main track events. The only thing we don't do collegiately is they don't do the long road races like the marathon, which they have in the Olympics and the world championships. Is that what you meant by events? MK: Yeah. Thank you. Do you have any questions? CT: Yeah. You said you connected more with the women? PP: I had more success with the women. CT: Why do you think that was? PP: Part of it had to do with the scholarships. Women have more scholarships than the men's team do in track and field, so there's more money available to recruit women 12 than there is for men. Unique situation. Within the NCAA, within the university, I mean, they require you to have equal opportunity for men and women. There's no women's team the size of a football team. So to make the difference up and equal out the scholarship opportunity, they give more scholarships to the women's sports to balance out what they give to football. Does that make sense? CT: Yeah. PP: So that's why women's track and field have more scholarships than the men. CT: Okay. Thank you. MK: That's interesting. So that's across the board, not just the NCAA? PP: Yeah, that's correct. The NCAA sets the number of scholarships you can have. You can have less than what they allow, but you can't go over a certain number. MK: Okay, interesting. [To Chloe] Do you have any other questions? Not to throw you on the spot. CT: There were clearly ones I was thinking about while we were talking, but as we continued talking, they just left my brain. MK: It's okay. Let me know if you did have any others. [To Paul] What degrees or certifications do you have? Do you have any others that you didn't mention before? PP: No. MK: Okay. Your department and your training stuff, did it change during the pandemic? PP: It changed dramatically. I mean, first off, we couldn't compete. They could train, but they had to keep a mask on, which, when you're running… So we would meet and talk about workouts, but for the most part, I'd have them do their workouts separately so that they could take their mask off. Or if we did that, we would follow the guidelines and have at least—in fact, we do more than six feet because you're breathing heavy. It changed a lot. 13 The other thing that it did is the NCAA allowed those student athletes to get that eligibility competition, year of competition back. A lot of athletes, instead of graduating with a bachelor's and leaving, they wanted to still compete, so they went to graduate school. So I have at least six to 10 female track and field athletes that got their master's degree as a result of the pandemic. So on one hand, they got their school paid for, grad school, but on the other hand, we couldn't compete for a year and a half. We couldn't train normally. We tested like crazy because our athletic trainers would; I mean, until we could get vaccinated, we were testing every week, every student athlete. Somebody did come down with it, we'd get them. We knew it right away, so they wouldn't infect the entire team. MK: So you guys would test weekly? PP: Until we could get a vaccination, yeah. MK: It's interesting. [To Chloe] Do you have anything? CT: No. MK: All right. What committees and organizations on campus or outside of campus have you been a member of? PP: I've been on hiring committees, but that's been it as far as university goes. I'm part of the US Track and Field Coaches Association and part of the USA Track and Field which oversees the governing; I mean, all events that are NCAA fall under USA Track and Field, and I'm part of that organization also. They do coaches' education, training, that kind of stuff. I've been involved in doing clinics and seminars for young coaches. MK: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? PP: Well, Lindsay Anderson broke the NCAA record in the 3000 meters steeplechase, so she broke the national record while she was at Weber. Two weeks after she graduated, she made the World Championships team, and then the next year made 14 the Olympic team. So probably her making the Olympic team. She's the first track and field, well, first female to make an Olympic team for Weber. Then I had teams in the top 30 at NCAA championships four different times, five different times. So in our sport, we compete against every NCAA Division I program. They don't break it up like they do in football. Football competes down a level. They don't compete against Alabama or USC or Clemson or whoever, but we compete against everybody. So it's fun to go to a national championship and beat these teams that, in most people's minds, are more prestigious, but in our sport, they're not. We can compete with any of them. Those are fun times. People go beat the ones that are supposed to be the athletic powerhouses. MK: Do you recall how many times Weber's made it to the NCAA? PP: In cross country, I think five times in the last 12 years. I've had individual AllAmericans. I've had athletes be in the top four at the NCAA championships at least five or six times. MK: That's good. Have you written about any topics? PP: No. MK: All right. That one's from our list of just generic, “Ask all the professors this.” What recognition have you received for your accomplishments as an athlete, as a coach, and as a teacher? PP: Oh, I've been National Champion twice. I had two American records and I've been coach of the year in the conference five times, I think? I've been the region coach of the year for the mountain region, which is the best distance program, where we won coach of the year there. What was the rest of that? MK: And as a teacher? PP: Well, I don't teach, I just coach. So it is more like the coaching award work-type thing. 15 CT: Or the teaching that you did. You did some teaching before you- PP: Oh, yeah. I did it at the high school and middle school, but I don't think there were any awards there, you know, no National Teacher of the Year. MK: [To Chloe] Do you have any questions? All right. What mentors and resources did you have available to you in your program and your career? PP: Chick Hislop, who was my college coach, was a great resource. I learned a lot from him. I had a good friend, Paul Cummings, who was older than me. Paul and I, we used to do high school camps and clinics together in the summertime up in Park City. We did it for 16 years, and I learned a lot from Paul. He'd been NCAA champion in the Mile. He'd been the world record holder in the 1500, which is the metric, short of the mile that they run. He broke the world record in the half marathon, and he made the U.S. Olympic team in the 10,000. We would talk training a lot. He was probably one of my bigger influences. When I was at the University of Illinois, I coached the men only at Illinois. The women's distance coach, her husband is a guy named Kevin Sullivan, who was a three-time Olympian for Canada. He was fourth in the Olympics. Kevin and I would go on runs and we'd talk training, and he had a very good collegiate coach. He ran at Michigan and he's, in fact, now the coach of Michigan. But we talked training a lot, so Kevin Sullivan, some of the stuff that he did. I would talk to athletes any time I was at a race to find out what they're doing and why, because at the time, there wasn't the Internet or Strava, where you could go look up somebody's training log. But I'd always try and pick people's brains and ask them what they're doing and why they're doing it, to understand kind of the exercise science behind it. MK: Okay. Do you have a preferred training style, or what is your style? 16 PP: Well, I'm pretty low-key, to a point. I'm not necessarily the warm fuzzy type of coach, but my athletes know that. But I'll always be fair with them, and it will be consistent. They're going to know what to expect from me. They know if they're late for practice, Coach is going to be upset, and that's consistent, no matter who you are. I mean, Summer Allen, who was an all-American last year, made the finals of the Olympic trials. She's the conference record holder in the steeplechase, MultiTime all-American, finished seventh at the NCAA cross-country championships, and she did pushups as much as anybody. It didn't matter who you are. If you're the star like she is, if you were late, they had to do push ups, and so they know he's not going to treat a favorite any different because they're a star. I think maybe that's a style, yeah. MK: Okay. Thank you. How did you become a mentor to others in your field? PP: I've had multiple young coaches that I've helped get into the field; Lindsey Anderson, who is my athlete, worked for me as a volunteer assistant for four years while she was running professionally. Then the college in southern Idaho, that junior college I went to—they dropped their program about 14, 15 years ago, but then they started it back up four years ago—they reached out to me. I put Lindsey in contact with them, and she developed the program, and they won junior college nationals last year in Cross Country. Now she just got hired by the University of Missouri to be their head cross-country coach for both men and women. Weber has a very good distance reputation, and the fact that she came through the Weber State program and then was at CSI, they know she has a good background. For a Power 5 Conference to go after a junior college coach, that doesn't happen very often. Fact, it rarely happens. But the fact that she had coached here and been my assistant got her in the door, and she knows her stuff. I had a volunteer assistant that CSI just hired as her replacement now, who came 17 through, ran for me at Weber. Ginny Richardson just got hired. She worked for a minute here last year for me. MK: Okay. That's cool. What advice would you give to students starting in your field? PP: Ask a lot of questions. Try and understand why you're doing [things] so you get a good background in understanding exercise science. Instead of just, “Okay, Coach says, do this, do this, do this,” if you want to be a coach, ask the questions, and do it in the correct way so it's not sounding like a challenge to the coach. It's one thing to be able to just walk up and the coach says, “Do this, this and this.” It's another thing if you want to be that coach making those decisions, you better understand the science behind it and what you're doing and why. So say yes and find a mentor that you can ask those questions to and bounce things off of. A mentor would probably be the biggest thing I'd say. MK: Mentors are good. [To Chloe] Do you have any questions? CT: No, you literally asked my question. MK: Okay. So your master's degree wasn't in anything exercise science related? PP: It was not. MK: Was there anything you had to do to get the repertoire under your belt before you started officially coaching here? PP: No, because I'd had a lot of success coaching already before I came here. I had multiple Olympic trial qualifiers. I mean, I coached myself after I got out of school. So, no, the big thing was just to come in here and to start. That's why I worked as a volunteer. I wasn't being paid, but it was part of the learning process. Hislop was my mentor, that coach. So it was really just a matter of being the unpaid volunteer to learn everything I could. Like I said, everywhere I go, even when I was racing, I'd be asking questions. MK: Okay, and developing those skills? 18 PP: Yep. MK: What advice would you give to female runners? PP: Well, if you want to really be good, find a good coach so that you don't have to make all those decisions yourself on what you should be doing. It doesn't matter if it's male or female. In fact, I just read a post from a friend of mine who was a world class marathoner, and he was talking about when he coached himself for six years, he ran 2 hours and 11 minutes, he coached himself. Then he got a coach and eventually was second at Boston, went 2:08. He was talking about the importance of having and finding a good coach, because he said, “You don't make good decisions yourself always.” I had the luxury of training with Ed Eyestone, who's the director at BYU and of their track and field program. Ed and I would really coach each other because we did it all for 12 years. We ran together during that professional career, and we would bounce ideas off of each other, workouts. He's one of the better distance coaches in America and has won NCAA championships. So yeah, I would just say find a good coach. Female runner or male runner? Doesn't matter. MK: That was my last question. [To Chloe] Do you have anything you want to ask? CT: What typically goes through your mind when you're on these runs, when you're either just practicing or getting ready for a big run or actually on the day? PP: Well, the distance runners on their distance runs, they'll daydream, they'll think of whatever they are thinking about, whatever's going on in their life, their assignments they have. I mean, your mind will wander, and that's okay. But once it's time to race and run fast, they're just focusing on what they're doing. You can't daydream. On a training run you can space off, think about whatever. But once you get in the race, it's a total focus of, “What am I feeling like? Am I running the pace I'm supposed to? What's going on? What's this person doing? Should I cover this move or they go 19 faster?” I mean, you're totally focused on executing what your race plan is, and if you let your mind wander, you're going to be slow. Then in the longer races, sometimes that will get difficult if you're out there a long time, but you can't. You have to just, “Boom,” focus, especially on the longer runs, not worrying about how far you have to go or how bad you're hurt. When you do start to hurt, it's like, “Okay, get this next step on. Okay, get this next lap on.” MK: I do have a follow-up question to that. So what is your personal running looking like these days? PP: Slow. MK: Okay. I am slow too. PP: I still run every day. But it's really slow. MK: That's fair. PP: It used to be that I could run with the athletes, but now it’s to the point that I'm too slow to even do a distance run. But I still run every day. MK: Are you participating in any races? PP: No, I don't race anymore. MK: I'm sorry. PP: It hurts too bad and I'm too slow. Now I get beat by the ladies pushing the baby jogger. But I love the trails here. We have a great trail system. MK: It's gorgeous. [To Chloe] Do you have anything else? CT: No. MK: Okay. I don't either. Thank you so much for your time. PP: You're welcome. Thank you for doing this. 20