Jackie Bauters

Jackie Bauters is a veteran and coach of the Saint Mary's Cross Country team.  A seven time marathoner, Jackie is training to break 3'10 at this April's Boston Marathon.  She acts as the coordinator for the Sole Mates charity leg of the Girls on the Run foundation and reaches out to supporters, friends, and family in her inspirational blog: "The Road to Boston".

How did you get started running?

I actually was just asking my parents about this the other day.  My Dad said, “You know Jackie, you were always running.  You’d run all the time and play relay games even when you were tiny”. 

He was a runner in college, and both my older brothers both ran.

I ran track all the way through grade school and high school, then started cross country in seventh grade.  I went to Miami of Ohio my freshman year of college and it was the first year I wasn’t on a running team, which was pretty hard.  So I joined a running group but it wasn’t the same.  I missed the competitive aspect, so for that and a whole lot of other reasons I transferred to Saint Mary’s and was able to join the cross country program here.  

What led you to coaching?

I went to Ithaca College for my masters in sports psychology and started a graduate assistant program to help out the track coaches.  I went with the team to nationals and had some really cool trips.  It was a phenomenal year at Ithaca, I loved working with the team and it was great for me academically.  That winter, I started exploring the opportunity to come back to Saint Mary’s.  

I figured that I could bring a lot to the program as an alumnus.  The first two years, I worked with my old coach, and then took over the program after that.  

As a relatively new cross country program, how did you develop the team into a more competitive one?

The process of making it a more competitive program was challenging.  The cross country team only got started in the 90s, so when I was here it was more recreational.   In the 7 years that I’ve been here we’ve taking it from a running group mentality to a more competitive atmosphere.  In doing that it’s kind of whittled down the numbers, which it should be.

How do you adopt your prior experience as a runner to coaching at Saint Mary’s?

I think the biggest thing is to know that you don’t know it all.  You always have to continually learn.  I read a lot of research articles on running, training tips, workouts.  Some of it is trial by error.  What I was doing in year one is very different than what I am doing today.  There is no one recipe for success.  If there were, everyone would be doing the same thing.

Right now, minimal shoes in training is a big issue for runners in general, which brings in a whole new element of training.  There’s always going to be hot new issues, so it’s important to keep up on them.

What is the Sole Mates program?

Well I got involved with Girls on the Run last spring in its first year here in the area.  Soul Mates is just the charity leg of Girls on the Run.  As the coordinator of the program, I try to get people involved in it, but I’m also a participant in the program myself.  You register as a Sole Mate and pledge to raise funds for the organization as you train.  I solicit donations from friends, family and coworkers. 

So where does the Blog come in?

The Girls on the Run charity is new to this area, and a lot of people have never heard of it before, unless they lived in a major city that had it.  I figured that if I was going to ask people to give money, they’ll want to know what it’s going towards.  I wanted to kind of give a reason for why they would want to donate.  

The blog has really helped me to share what I’m doing in preparation for this.  It’s a way for me to tell people all of the reasons I believe in this cause, and allow them to realize all of the hard work that goes into training for a marathon.  

I know that some people don’t even read the blog and are still willing to donate, but for some other people it helps them feel more passionate and connected to the organization and carry it forward a little more.  

Does the blog help you in training?

It definitely motivates me to run.  On one hand I’ve put myself out there and I don’t want to let people down.  On the other hand, I don’t want to let myself down and if I have a hard day, writing it down lets me face it.  

A friend emailed me on an early post and said “I really appreciate that you write about the ups and downs because it makes it a little more real”.  I’d be lying if I said that everything that I did was easy and that it’s happy every day.  I have really crappy days sometimes and I try to put a filter on how happy or upset I get about the blog.  I feel like it’s important that it’s there.  If the whole thing is that it’s great every day then it’s not real. It’s important for me because it lets me channel if I’m angry or frustrated.  

How has the rest of the feedback been?

The feedback has been really touching.  A lot of friends have been really appreciative of it.  Some have even learned a lot about themselves through reading it.  I think I wrote to one of them, “I would’ve written this a long time ago if it was going to have such profound effect on people”.

Sometimes I’m sitting there writing, thinking that no one’s going to care about this, but I write it anyway.  But all of a sudden I strike a chord with someone and make their day.  That feels great.

How many marathons have you run?

This will be number 8.  Cleveland was my first marathon, and then I ran Boston, Chicago, Bay Shore, Sunburst, Bay Shore again, and San Francisco.

My favorite was San Francisco.  I had never been to San Francisco before, so it was a running tour of the city.  I ran it with my husband for our honeymoon, and we started and finished together.  It was low stress, there wasn’t really an expectation to do well.  It was really enjoyable.

How are you training for Boston?

I actually purchased a training plan.  You can get customized training plans from coaches, who put together all of your training, based on your goal, ability to train, strengths and weaknesses.  Hopefully it’s been getting on track with what I want to do.  That was going to be one of my blog entries actually, coaches can be coached.  

How do you feel about the 3:10 pace goal for Boston based on that plan?

Boston’s a difficult course.  The whole first mile or so is downhill, and then it gets very flat, and then 16 you start going up and down and up, and then you go up heartbreak.  What’s awful about it is where it’s located in the race.  Because you’ve been going downhill so much you’ve been working different muscles, so your quads are really tired and sore.

I’m nervous about Boston because it’s like a game, you have to not overwork in the first half or else you will really work on heartbreak and suck it up in the last five miles which you really don’t want.  You’ve got to really find your groove.  Just because you’re going downhill doesn’t mean you should be flying.  It’s just a course that you have to kind of temper yourself with.  

This week my long run is 18-20 miles.  I ran up and down Angela for hills yesterday.  I looked like a crazy person.

What is the picture on the front of your blog?

My fifteen minutes of fame.  My girlfriend and I ran Boston together a couple of years ago, and it was horrible.  The nor’easter can through the night before, and the weather was awful.  We were standing out in the rain two hours before the race even started.

So when we finally finished, we were really ready to be done.  We held our hands through the line together, and someone snapped a picture of us.  Several months later someone asked if they could use our picture as promo for the Boston outdoor campaign for 2008.

My friend and I went back to Boston for the Olympic trials that year.  In addition to seeing Dina win the trials, we got to see thousands of tiny Jackie and Kelly’s plastered all over Boston.

What was the inspiration for the post “30 Things I’ve Learned in 30 Years”?

It was kind of funny, because I needed some catch for turning thirty.  I’m not really into birthdays, but I didn’t fear thirty.  I wanted to be thirty like four years ago.  I thought, “maybe people will start taking me a little more seriously and not treating me like a college student”.  I feel like a lot of people are negative about getting older, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot in 30 years.

My girlfriend wrote me after and told me how much she loved that post.  She said “I laughed, I cried, and I said ‘yep, that’s exactly how I feel’”.  It’s very validating when you hear that kind of stuff.  

You wrote a few things about Girls on the Run in that post.  What have you learned from that?

I just love sports.  I know that Girls on the Run is not a “running” program but it obviously taps into athleticism.  When I look back to my upbringing, I didn’t get caught up in a lot of the girl drama because I was in sports.  I played with boys instead and didn’t want to worry about which ones liked me. 

You can still be girly though.  I mean, I’m married, I wore the white dress! I wear running skirts, I do girly things too.

But I hope I have kids who are into sports, I don’t know what I’d do otherwise…

But really, I think it’s important to not squelch whatever your kids want to do.  I had a girlfriend who was the same way, and turned out her daughter loved pink and dressing up as Disney princesses! I think it’s important to not squelch that, just like I wouldn’t have wanted my parents to squelch me playing sports.

It’s like what we preach at Girls on the Run, don’t fall into a pigeonhole.  

What advice would you give to any new runner?

Don’t give up.  It sounds so cliché, but I think back to when I started running distance, and I remember one run I went on with my Dad.  It was so hard, so painful, I couldn’t do it.  And you’d never think that talking to me today. Everybody starts somewhere.

It’s like the girls we coach at Girls on the Run, you don’t know what you can do until you let your mind go there.  I can do five miles if I want to, but I have to WANT to.  

Make it what you want it to be.  The nice thing about running is that there is a lot of camaraderie, it can be very team, group oriented, but at the end of the day it’s just you doing the work.  So you know, do it for you, don’t compete with other people.  If running 4 miles at 12 minute pace is what makes you happy, do it.  If running a 3’10 marathon makes you happy, do it.

Just know that it takes a little bit of time for it to feel good, and then once it feels good you’ll never want to stop. 

David Lewin

David Lewin, the owner of South Bend’s Metro Run and Walk, is an active member and sponsor of the Michiana Runners Association.  Beginning his running career at 34 years old, Dave has seen many changes in the running world.  Read on for some insight into the business of running and his resume of 30 + marathons.

 How did you get started running?

I actually didn’t start running until I was about 34.  A lot of people in my family ran, and my doctor said I better start taking care of myself, so running seemed like a great way to cure my health problems.  That was during the first “running boom”, and things were a lot different.  Back then there were more 5 and 10 mile races, not as many 5Ks.  I think it all started to change with the Olympics and marathons.  People started to run more competitively. 

The first running boom refers to Bill Rodgers in the 1970s which ran all the way into the 80s.  There was a guy named Jim Fixx who had written some books and was very well known.  He was probably in his late 40s, early 50s.  Back then a lot more people smoked, and there were a lot of people who smoked and ran.  One day, Jim Fix, who had written all of these books about running, died from smoking problems and everybody realized that wasn’t how you were supposed to do it.

And it just kind of waned there in the mid nineties.  Fewer and fewer people were running.  After the 90s it started to pick back up again.   And I think that one of the drivers now that wasn’t there back then is that a lot of people are health conscious now: people your age, people my age.  And it’s easy.  Walking and running is the least expensive form of exercise there is.

How were the races different back then?

I could remember when there was no nutrition technology at all.  Just flat coke, oranges and bananas, that’s all they would have in races. That and water stops.  No Gatorade.

The shoes today are much better.  Back then everybody had a cyst on the front of their foot.  You had to tie them so tight.  And today there are perfect fits for everybody.

So what was after that first marathon?

Well the first marathon was three years after I started running.  Then after that I kept racing, probably three a year, 10Ks all the time, a few half marathons.  

What were the best and worst marathons you’ve ever run?

Best marathon? Probably the Dallas White Rock Marathon or the Marine Corps Marathon. In Dallas, the weather is always perfect and it’s such a pretty course.  It's is a great city and the race goes through different neighborhoods.  It’s not so big like Chicago, which is shoulder to shoulder sometimes.  

The Marine Corps is cool because of where it is.  It starts out in Arlington at the Iwo Jima monument, then crosses the Potomac, runs through Georgetown and through downtown DC.  It’s a beautiful course.

The worst? Probably New York.  It’s so crowded, and such a logistical nightmare.  There are no hotels close to the start, you’ve got to take a bus or a taxi.  It’s in November, cold, you’re out there 3 or 4 hours before it even starts.  It’s so crowded, and there are so many places where the road is 6 lanes wide, 2 lanes wide. 

It’s amazing to think that the city can just shut down like that, but the sheer mass of it makes it really difficult to maneuver.  Once you finish in Central Park you’ve got to walk a mile right back there, and then you’ve got to get a cab all the way back.  Probably the least enjoyable one.

I did the Disney marathon too.  Half marathon on Saturday and the full marathon on Sunday.  That one was tiring.  

When did you start Metro Run and Walk?

I’ve had this store for ten years.  One of my sisters had three stores like this in Northern Virginia and Maryland so I opened one up here.  

How is the business?

It’s very seasonal.  March, April, and May are the busiest, winter and middle of the summer are the most difficult.

Although this winter hasn’t been so bad because it’s been so nice out. People are running outside, which is unusual.  That always helps.  They are outside running 5 miles instead of 3 miles on the treadmill.  But when we have a fall like we did last year, going along having a nice transition, all of a sudden it goes below freezing before October, people don’t buy clothes, anything, just go right indoors.

If we have a nice gentle transition into winter like this year, people stay outdoors longer.  When that happens, I should just sell gloves and hats and forget about the rest!  Everybody loses their gloves.

What about competition with some of the bigger sports stores out there?

Well, there’s always competition with places like Dicks and New Balance.  Dicks is a little bit of competition because they are always cutting prices, but we set ourselves apart from them by providing service and personalization.  Those bigger stores are a certain type of competition, but on the other hand they're not.  We send people up there, and they send people down here.

What about the clothing side of the business?

Clothing is more of a headache, you’ll never know what people will like, what colors they’ll want.  It used to be that these kinds of stores were the only ones who made microfiber clothes.  There wasn’t any Under Amour. Now everyone's making it.  You go up to the bigger department stores, and they’ve all got their own brand of microfiber.  But if you go feel that microfiber, then go feel the stuff from Brooks and Mizuno, you'll see that the running brands are much nicer.

Back when I started running, clothing had just started coming out made of polyester and polypropylene.  And if you were running a marathon, you’d end up getting bloodied from the abrasion.  So it kept you cooler than a cotton shirt but the fibers were still large. Now the fibers are very small and feel quite smooth. 

Do you find that difficult?

It’s a little easier to define what people will want in a shoe. Whereas trying to say “Don’t you like this pink shirt?” is a little harder.

The other problem with winter clothing is that people say how much am I gonna do that? Here, once the weather gets bad, a lot of people go inside on the treadmill.  They don’t even bother going outside.  Except for this winter.

What about shoes?

It’s getting in the right kind and shape of shoe.  People really tend to prefer the type of cushioning system the company uses.  So when people say Asics works for me it’s like saying a Chevrolet works well.  All those companies, Asics, Brooks, Mizuno, Nike make these technical shoes, stability shoes, motion control shoes and these days they’re all making light weight shoes.  But it’s the shape of the shoe and the cushioning system that makes a difference in how the shoe works. 

You shouldn’t pick shoes by what your friends run in.  That’s not really the way to pick your shoes based on somebody’s recommendation.  They are so similar in so many ways but have so many different features. Some people like a more pillowy feel and some like more firm.  After they’ve been running they kind of develop a preference for it.  

Nobody's feet are the same.  You’re lucky if your two feet are the same, much less the same as somebody else’s!

How do you fit new customers with shoes?

We put them in a neutral shoe, a real soft and flexible shoe, and watch them run outside or on the treadmill.  We watch for their foot strike and how much flexibility they have in their ankles.  If they’re brand new, they should be doing a walk run, a program where they are walking five minutes, run for a minute, etc.  We make sure that they are comfortable walking and running in the shoe.  These days there are so many features in a shoe that I have plenty of shoes I like to run in but don’t like to walk in because of the way they hold your foot.  After that we look at their arches, the shape of their feet and see what shoes will fit their foot properly.  Look at them walk or run in the shoe and see how it helped them keep their stride.

The biggest problem in a new runner is shin splints of knee pain.  A lot of the time knee pain will subside, or you get used to it.  If it’s caused by not enough support, then a shoe can help that.  When you over pronate, your leg twists on hard surfaces.  We try to get them into the right kind of shoe that way, something with the right arch in it.

How do you keep up on the new trends?

Companies come around and have reps that show us catalogs about twice a year.  The Dicks buying is all done in Pittsburgh, whereas we buy them right here in store.

The companies usually have an idea of what will be the more popular colors.  This is a more conservative area of the country, especially for men, so you’ve kind of got to keep it toned down.  You just kind of learn what the colors are.  The colors are becoming brighter, a lot more different.  The other thing that’s been changing is that with a lot of the colors nowadays, you can’t tell the difference between men and women.  That benefits the companies in generating costs, but makes it a bit more difficult on us, because when I opened we’d never buy some of these colors.  Ten years ago there’s no way I would’ve bought a mens shoe in white and turquoise.

All the interest is in lightweight zero drop shoes where your heel is lower to the ground.  There are a lot of new companies getting into it.

How do you find mixing a business with pleasure?

That’s a little bit of a problem that a lot of people have who get into this kind of a business.  They get into trouble because they are mixing their pastime with business.  You have to keep the business side of it separate from your enjoyment.  I was always into marketing and sales, and that has helped quite a bit, but you’ve got to keep that separate.  A lot of people say, oh it’d be great to be you and go running all the time, but even at my age I’m working 70 hours a week.

What do you like most about running Metro?

It’s fun helping new runners who come in with problems, or when people come in and say “I heard this stuff, it’s called Glide…?” It’s kind of fun doing that.  Most of the people who come in here are customers who really want to be here, rather than working at a grocery store where it’s kind of a chore for the customers.

How did you get involved with Michiana Runners Association?

We’ve been the main sponsor ever since it started, four years ago.

For Sunburst, the first weekend in June that Friday, they have an expo in South Bend at the Football Hall of Fame.  We take all of our sales shoes and bits and pieces of this and that and sell them there.  People come from all over the country and say “oh they’ve got my shoe”! The one that was two generations back and we’ve got it.  We put a big tent up there and haul all of these boxes down there.

Once we had a woman who came to run the Sunburst marathon, whose daughter had left to go back to school the same morning she came here.  Her daughter had taken her mom’s shoes with her by accident, and the mom came in panicking about running the marathon in a different pair of shoes than the pair she’d been training in.  Luckily we had her shoe, so she came down to the store that day to buy a new pair.  I’m sure she had a few words with her daughter after that!

What advice would you give to any new runner?

Biggest thing is to not do too much too soon.  Sometimes new runners tend to go out and run with somebody who’s a lot more experienced.  You’ve got to increase slowly to refrain from injuries.  Especially when you’re over 30. 

I can remember this one 15K I ran where I lived called the Roseville Crooksville race.  It was the pottery capital there and they made all of this pottery stuff and dinner wear.  It was so HOT.  That was the first race besides a 5 mile race that I’d ever run.  And I was the first one in front of the last person.  I didn’t want to be the last person ever again.