Sheila Reid, 23, a two-time NCAA Cross country champion and the sole female 2012 Olympic 5000-meter runner for Canada, is now a Nike-sponsored pro living and training in the Philadelphia area and planning an active indoor track season. She is coached by former mile great Marcus O’Sullivan. Reid won her NCAA cross country crowns in 2010 (leading Villanova to a team title) and 2011; in the spring of 2011, she won a 1500/5000 double at the outdoor NCAA Track & Field Championships. Reid was 15th in her 5000 qualifying heat at the Olympics. She has personal bests of 15:23.64 for 5000 meters and 4:07.07 for 1500.

You did very well with Gina Procaccio as your college coach at Villanova. But after that, were there pro teams in other parts of the country bidding for you?
Sheila Reid:
To some degree. I think a lot of them went through my college coaches, perhaps. I never spoke to anyone directly a whole lot. I did spend some time with Terrence’s [Mahon’s] group [the Mammoth Track Club] in Europe last summer. But for the time being, I really do have everything I need here at Villanova and I’m really lucky that Marcus O’Sullivan has taken me on as an athlete. I couldn’t tell you a more loyal person than he.

It definitely had crossed my mind to shop around. It’s like going on college visits again, with these groups. For now, I didn’t want to change too much all at once, because it has been a huge adjustment going from college to professional life.

What’s the significance of your switching from being coached by Gina Procaccio to being coached by O’Sullivan?  Does Gina just work with her college teams?
SR:
I still talk to Gina every day. But going forward, Marcus had a bit more of a plan, I think. I have introduced a little bit more of the type of training he does. It was almost as a result of my [outdoor track] season last year, which didn’t really go as I wanted, partly as a result of overtraining on my part. A lot of the stuff Marcus works on, the threshold and heart rate stuff, just naturally reins you in a bit, and I think that’s something I really did need last year.

So the goal is to get a lot of quality work in without being overtrained.
SR:
Exactly. Your heart rate is your heart rate. You can’t work outside yourself, unless you’re actually just kind of lying to yourself about what you’re reading on the heart rate monitor.

You did the 1500/5000 double at the 2011 NCAA Championships on the track and then won your second NCAA cross country title. I know the 2012 outdoor season was a disappointment. Did you have an indoor season first?
SR:
Not really. I just ran one indoor race as a checkpoint.

And in the 5000 at the outdoors NCAAs [where she finished tenth], did you just tire out on the last couple of laps?
SR:
Yeah. I was training really hard. Probably my number one goal was to get those Olympic qualifiers [for the 1500 and 5000]. I came back in January and had that full focus, and when you don’t have any races to almost taper for, it’s easy to get a little bit carried away, especially when you have this one goal in your head. It’s not just something I’d been thinking about for a year. It’s the Olympics, it’s something I’d been working for almost my whole life, since I saw my first Olympic Games. I think I peaked a little bit, almost, in March, and when it came to the actual racing season, I was quite stale.

It’s really hard to come back from that because the natural instinct when you’re not going well, you almost push a little bit harder, and I ended up digging a bigger hole for myself. Some lessons learned, and I’m feeling a lot better now about what I’m doing.

Is Frances Koons [a 2009 NCAA 500-meter runner-up who attended Villanova] part of your training group now?
SR:
She is. She helps coach the men’s team. We train together on workout days. It’s actually been a really good situation. She’s gearing up for the USA Cross [Country] so I think our workouts are diverging a little bit at this point because I’m dropping down more to 3-K stuff.

What are your race plans for right now?
SR:
The two things on my schedule for sure are Millrose Games [in New York on February 16] and Boston [the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix on February 2]. I’m hoping to do the 3000 at Boston and the mile or 1500 at Millrose.

What was the London Olympic experience like for you? Were you thinking, “I’m glad this is just the beginning of my career?” Did you feel completely out of your element and not ready for that level yet?
SR:
I didn’t want to put myself in the category of “just happy to be there,” but I think that’s all I could hope for at that point in the season. I was already a few months beyond my best. I got into that semifinal and was already in over my head. But I ended up running another “B” standard [her Olympics time of 15:27]. I wasn’t super-psyched about it and it wasn’t super-impressive but I guess it was okay that I was able to squeeze out another sub-15:30.

While the race should have been totally discouraging because I was absolutely hammered in the last 1000, I still came out of it – and whether this is totally delusional or not, I don’t know – with the idea that in four years, this is really doable. And probably not in the 5-K. I’m really hoping to focus more on the 1500, at least for this outdoor season. But I wasn’t totally smacked down [by the London showing]. I felt like if I really did get a good block of training behind me and do everything right, there’s no reason why I can’t be up there in the future.

How much time do you spend in Canada these days?
SR:
I’m not sure how much time I will be spending there, just because I’m still ironing out the details of the direction that my career will take. But I do hope to do more racing in Canada. They do have the national track series. There are a few good races on the West Coast, in Vancouver and Victoria. I have been in the United States for a long time and it would be nice to race some different competition for a little bit.

In college, there was an accepted notion that you could rely on your kick to handle that level of competition. Now you’re in another arena entirely. For the next couple of years, against women close to 4:00 in the 1500 and 15:00 in the 5000, you’re going to have to rely on something other than your kick, aren’t you?
SR:
Yeah. I’m certainly not naïve about that. It’s a lot different  to close in 60 or 62 [for the last 400] when you’re running 4:12 or 4:15 pace [for the 1500] as opposed to running 60 or 62 when you’re running 4:00 flat. It’s a totally different universe. The biggest thing is getting strong enough to run that pace, because if you can’t, you’re not going to be with them anyway to kick.

But that’s just the way we always ran in college. There was no one in my era who would take the pace out, so it always ended up being a sit-and-kick race. It would seem that played into my advantage, but the only reason I was able to have such speed and power at the end was because the pace was one that came easily to me.

I don’t want to sell myself short, but I know that there’s a lot of work to do. But I don’t think it’s totally out of the question that I could run under the “A” standard [in the 1500] this year. I’m in a much better place than I was last year, when I somehow managed to squeeze out a 4:07 – I still don’t know how I did it, judging how I felt, day in and day out. The best thing is that I do have a lot more time now to do the extra things that I just was not doing in college – whether that’s doing core, or weights, which were never something integrated into my program. And drills, and all sorts of different things that make the best people in the world the best.

It sounds like one of the key things for you is to learn how, in the 1500, to be racing harder between 600 and 1000 meters.
SR:
Exactly. In college, you had time to wind up and gather yourself, but that doesn’t really happen these days. There’s always someone who’s going to be pressing. And it was a little more strung out in college, too, whereas now, there are going to be people all bunched together. Nobody is going to be dropping off the pace if you go through 1200 in 3:15, because everyone can do that.

It’s also learning to race with a lot of bodies around you. It’s certainly more physical. There are a lot of adjustments, and some I haven’t learned to do yet. Yeah, I think the fact that I’m well aware that I’m very much outmatched at the moment is to my advantage.