In the second in our series of short interviews with the newest members of Team USA Minnesota, we chatted briefly with former Gopher cross country all-American Antonio Vega.
After finishing up at the U, was Team USA Minnesota the obvious place for you to begin your professional career or did you look into a lot of other training centers and post-collegiate clubs?
After I was done Running at the U, I was actually planning on attending grad school. I was planning on taking a break from running for a while. About a week after the NCAA meet I started to realize how much I was going to miss running and competing. That’s when I started looking into some running clubs around the area. Team USA Minnesota was definitely on the top of my list of teams that I wanted to join.
I know injuries have been a part of your history. Are they largely things of the past or are you regularly taking precautions about them?
I don’t think injuries will ever be a thing of the past for me or any other runner. I have finally come to a point in my running career, where I can tell how my body is feeling and I just kind of know when I need to back off my training a little in order to stay healthy.
When I talked to Steve Plasencia about you prior to the NCAA 10,000, he suggested you had real marathon potential. Is that the event you ultimately see yourself pointing toward?
I think sometime down the road I will start to focus on the marathon, right now I figure I’m only 23 years old and the marathon will always be there. I would like to give myself at least two more years of focusing on the track to see how fast I can get in the 5 and 10k.
Photo courtesy of Team USA Minnesota.
Friday, August 17, 2007
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