Vega: "... I started to realize how much I was going to miss running and competing."

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.