Player of the Pack: Megan Billington

Megan Billington is a junior on the cross country team majoring in kinesiology and sport science.

Karina Dufoe: What was the experience of running at Regionals like? How do you feel about your performance?

MB: It was a really rewarding experience to be part of the USD team that placed the highest that we ever have as a team at regionals. It was fun to see how much everyone who ran at this meet last year improved to this year, time and placewise. Personally, I was just OK with my performance. I actually got tripped and fell down in the middle of the pack in the first 1k. So that set me back pretty far place-wise by the time I got back up, which caused me to have to work back up the rest of the race. But there is nothing that I could do about that so I just have to roll with it. The team competed extremely well though all the way across the board from our No. 1 to No. 7.

KD: What was your favorite part of this year’s cross country season?

MB: I would have to say my favorite part of the cross country season would’ve been one of our Sunday long runs when Fitz (head coach Dan Fitzsimmons) sent us on this route that we call bridges and it had just rained the day before. One of the roads we ran on was super muddy and the mud was like clay so it just kept building up on our shoes while we were running. It literally felt like we were running in high heels and we were all laughing so hard we ended up stopping like three times to get the mud off and contain ourselves.

KD: What do you do after your season finishes?

MB: I do not have a postseason tradition besides finally taking a day or two off sometime throughout the two weeks after the season, since the last day I took off was sometime this summer. Basically when the season gets over we continue to do easy runs though and roll right into indoor season.

KD: What’s the most mileage you’ve put in during a week?

MB: The highest amount of miles I’ve put in in one week was 69.8. I expect to exceed that this coming spring in prep for the 10k, though.