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.