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Interview with Professional Runner, Ann Gaffigan (Part II)

Posted June 5, 2007 at 08:45 AM by Bridget Sullivan

Section: Special Features, Interviews

Her Active Life is excited to share our two-part interview with professional steeplechaser, Ann Gaffigan. In Part I, Ann discusses how she got into the steeple, who inspires her, her training, and her most recent and widely read blog entry from her site, steeplechics.com. In Part II, Ann offers some incredibly insightful remarks about eating disorders and body image, how she handles disappointment, her Olympic goals, and her personal life philosophy.

Ann graduated from the University of Nebraska in 2004, and quickly made her mark in the professional ranks by setting a then American record of 9:39 in the 3,000 m steeplechase at the 2004 US Olympic Trials. She followed that performance in 2005 by finishing 5th in the USA championships. Before becoming a professional runner, Ann was an Illinois state champion, an NCAA All-American, a Big 12 champion, and Nebraska’s female student-athlete of the year in 2004. Under the direction of Nebraska coach Jay Dirksen, and with her sight firmly set on the 2008 Olympic Trials, she trains upwards of 100 miles per week. The Beijing Olympics marks the official inauguration of the women’s steeplechase as an Olympic event.

In addition to her running accolades, Ann is a computer programmer/web systems developer with a degree in Computer Science, and she is webmaster for the popular site, steeplechics.com.

Part II

HAL: The Final Sprint published an article about NCAA runners and eating disorders. How much of a problem do you think eating disorders and body image are in the NCAA, or in elite running in general? Where do you draw the line as an athlete between healthy and unhealthy?

AG: I think it’s a major problem because it’s very under the radar and a lot of athletes may have an issue, but not to the point where they need to be hospitalized. So it’s very hard to tell; someone might seem very healthy, you might see her eat healthy meals, and she continues to run well so you think she must be fine. You usually only think someone has a problem if she is collapsing or if she needs to be taken to the hospital. But it’s hard to see when someone has a problem if she is doing a good job of hiding it, and if she is eating enough to still get by.

So I think sometimes it’s not “eating disorders” that a lot of women have, it’s maybe disordered eating or disordered body image - which is different than an eating disorder, which is a medical condition. I think it’s kind of an obsession and something that they’ve been taught to do in the sport, which is keeping thin. They sacrifice nutrition in order to be thin because a lot of times, unfortunately, it’s rewarded.

You’ll see someone lose a lot of weight, and she will have a really good season all of a sudden. And sometimes it only lasts a season or a year. But if that person has done that in an unhealthy way it’s not going to last very long and she’s going to have some long term damage done to her body. It’s really an issue that needs to be discussed more because it seems like it’s a very taboo topic. It needs to be acknowledged that there is a problem and that women need to quit doing this to themselves.

I know as a high school runner, you don’t meet these professional athlete and you don’t talk to them. You see them in the magazines and they are so skinny and they are so tall, and you just think, “wow, I am nowhere near that, how do I get that way? They must never eat.” That is the assumption: they must never eat, or they must eat very little. And that’s so the opposite of the truth. I am a professional runner now, and like I said before, you think when you become a professional runner, “poof,” you do everything right and everything works. That’s not true. It’s also not true that professional women don’t eat or don’t eat very much. It’s not true at all. The reality of it, is that it takes many, many years to get that lean and that toned and that in shape. For some women, it’s just not their body type [to get that lean].

Sometimes we see what we want to see, and we see that all the distance runners are really skinny. Well, if you really line them all up and look at all of them in a row, they vary in body type and in their bone structure. Some of them have wider hips, some of them wider shoulders. Some of them have bigger legs, some of them are bigger in the upper body. It’s really a wide range, and it is something that should be talked about more often so that women, especially the younger women, don’t have to learn the hard way. It’s not about eating less; it’s about eating healthily and making the right choices and training hard.

And you brought up a good point where it’s a line between healthy and unhealthy, and it’s a fine line. There’s no magic formula and there’s no magic formula for one person. I could write down what I eat everyday and put it up on my website and it wouldn’t be right for most other people.

For me, it was a transformation between being really strict with myself and really hard on myself . . . It was between that attitude and an attitude of “okay, I really need to take care of myself. I had a really hard run. What do I need to give my body to recover?” When you look at food in that way, you’re going to treat yourself better.

HAL: Turning back toward your goals, I’m not sure about all of your training plans, but you recently ran the Houston half marathon [Gaffigan ran 1:17]. Do you plan to eventually migrate toward the marathon?

AG: I do, actually. I see it as something that is probably 3-5 years down the road. But I’ve been on that road ever since I was young. My parents did marathons when I was 3,4,5 years old so I grew up thinking that’s what I wanted to do one day.

HAL: So will that be an Olympic goal for 2012?

AG: Well, I’m not going to say that [laughing] because I haven’t even done one yet so who knows how successful I will be. I have always thought the longer the distance the better for me. The steeplechase is hard on the body – NOT that the marathon isn’t – but I’ve always been someone who can handle high mileage and I think I am fit for the marathon down the road. It’s something that I could see myself doing for a long time.

HAL: What has been the biggest highlight of your running career so far? What are your goals between now and Beijing?

AG: In terms of my highlights so far, definitely being able to travel to countries I wouldn’t have traveled to otherwise because of money. Overall, the biggest highlight of my career was running for Nebraska on a team; I really miss running for a team. Running on a team and having teammates – that is something that you never get back, even if you have a training group as a professional.

My immediate goal is just to get back to feeling like myself again. I feel like when I get back to feeling like myself, the sky is the limit. That’s my number one priority right now. So I’m working on that. I’m not really sure what my problem is, but I’m working on fixing it. Once I get back to feeling like myself, then I’ll really get excited about Beijing and the inaugural women’s steeplechase in the Olympics.

HAL: Speaking of a team, do you still run with your team at Nebraska? Do you plan on joining one of the new distance projects in the U.S.?

AG: I kind of train with the team, but I end up training on my own just because our training schedules are different, and I help coach them. Sometimes I am coaching them so I cannot train with them, but it is nice to at least have a group to meet with everyday. I do a lot of hard workouts on my own, but not all of them.

I’ve been at Nebraska since 2000 so I am allowed to use all the facilities, no questions asked, and I am working with the same coach that I have worked with for almost 7 years. It’s very familiar so I wouldn’t change anything about that so close to the Olympics.

I don’t necessarily love training on my own, but I don’t really feel like there’s a place that is right for me. The steeplechase women are scattered throughout the country so there’s not a place I could go to join; we’re kind of loners right now.

HAL: How do you balance training with your career [Gaffigan works as a web systems developer]?

I only work about 20-hours/ week so I am not working 8 hours per day and then training. It’s really just as much as if someone were taking classes. It works out pretty well because I work from home and I get to set my own schedule. If I need to sleep in late one day or everyday, then I can. I work around my running schedule so it works out pretty well. It’s an ideal situation; it’s about the most I could ask for because I make a living, but at the same time I’m not hindering my running.

HAL: Do you have a certain life philosophy that you try to live by?

I would say that it changes every few months. I really think for me that I have to remind myself to believe in myself and believe in who I am. I wrote that blog on Steeplechics and a lot of people sent comments to me, and it was really flattering and I was touched by the support from people. They had some inspiring words and one of them said to remember who I am. I think back to when I was a little kid and all of these dreams that I had about what I was going to do, and I think about how, when I came to college as a freshman, I thought, “I’m going to be an NCAA champion one day,” and I got to my senior year and thought, “what was I thinking? I am nowhere near that.”

When you’re a kid, you dream big and you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Then in July [2004], I was the Olympic Trials champion and American Record holder. So that was really a life lesson for me that I need to believe in who I am and never doubt that. No matter how bad things might seem, I am eventually going to come out of them. I have to remind myself of that because it’s easy to say and harder to actually live by.

HAL: Final question, and this might be a fun one. Is there any question that you have always wanted reporters to ask you that they’ve never asked you? What question would you ask yourself?

AG: That’s a good question. I wish I had thought about it beforehand. I guess I would ask me, who inspired me as a kid growing up, and my answer would be my brother and my sister. When I was 3, I pretty much played with Barbie dolls, colored with crayons, and wrote stories. I was one of those introverted kids who kept to herself. And my brother and sister dragged me out to the soccer field and the softball field and basically made me tough. I don’t like to admit that, but they did. So I really look up to them and I hope I can be successful in life - or half as successful - as they are. All three of us are close and I really thank them for being there for me whenever I am going through tough times.

Photo: courtesy Kathy Green via Steeplechics.com