WSN: Janie Cooper is a member of both NYU’s track and field and cross country teams, specializing in the mile, 3,000m, and 5,000m. She earned Second Team All-America honors at last year’s Division III National Championship and holds multiple UAA academic and athletic honors. Embodying the true spirit of a student athlete, Janie aspires to one day become a wealth manager and open her own bakery specializing in French pastries, and will most likely force her favorite books onto all of her customers.

Listen to today’s In the Huddle to find out how she balances both her hopes and her qualms, and all of the things she loves most, on and off the track.

Okay, thank you, Janie, for coming to speak with me today. How are you? How is your indoor season coming along? 

Cooper: I’m doing good. Thank you so much for having me on. Indoor is started, yeah, just in the brinks of, uh, preseason. We’re getting ready for nationals.

WSN: Yeah, do you have any big overarching goals, um, on the ways you want to finish out the season, the indoor season at least.

Cooper: Honestly, this year, the end goal is to make it outdoors, outdoors healthy and ready to go. So indoors is trying to stay as calm as possible, just building up good weeks of training. Staying healthy is probably the number one goal, and then secondly, I, of course, I’d love to make it to nationals. And, ideally the, like, 3K or the mile, maybe the 5K, but yeah. That’s where we’re at. 

WSN: Yeah, I mean for the people who don’t know, outdoor is typically the main season in track. And the indoor length of the track is shorter. There’s like the ramp that you have to — I remember when I ran my first indoor meet in high school.

Cooper: Oh, you ran in high school? 

WSN: Yeah, I did. I ran my first indoor meet, I was running the 200, and a lap in the 200 — like you know this, but for people who don’t know — a 200 is the entire lap. 

Cooper: Yeah. 

WSN: Instead of a 400 in outdoor being the entire lap. But I remember coming down the ramp for the first time and tripping over myself. Because I wasn’t used to, like, I wasn’t used to that kind of acceleration coming down the ramp. 

Cooper: It’s so nice, like, in a workout, like, you get a little boost of — or, I guess in a race as well — but a little, it’s a nice little boost. 

WSN: Like, indoor times are usually a little bit slower than outdoor. 

Cooper: Yes! Weirdly.

WSN: But yeah, can you explain these main differences, and like, are there any challenges that arise? 

Cooper: Yeah, for sure. I mean, as you said, the track is 200 meters. So an outdoor is 400, indoor is 200, which just means double the amount of laps, right? So mentally, that’s a lot more challenging. And for someone like me, well I guess for everyone in general, but I really struggle with the 5K on a track. And so the 5K on a track, and then on a 200 meter track — really, really struggle with that. And it’s weird because in cross country, it’s 6K right, but it’s in the trails, it’s in the trees, beautiful, it’s nice, but yeah, so that’s been very difficult. 

WSN: How many laps is a 5K indoor, if you know? 

Cooper: So, let’s, let’s do the math real quick. Three miles, right? Three miles is normally four laps. Twelve, double that, twenty four. And then you add a little bit, so like, twenty four and a half, twenty five. 

WSN: I can imagine that gets kind of boring. Right, or no? 

Cooper: Yeah, I mean, boring, I don’t know if boring, more just like painful. You finish, you get 10 laps out of the way, you’re chillin’, you’re fine, and then you look up and you have like 14, 13, 12 laps left.

WSN: And I can imagine you can distract yourself a little bit easier when you’re outdoors, like you said, in cross country, the trees and everything.

Cooper: Yes, exactly. And even outdoors, it’s just — I don’t know — but I guess in the indoor it’s, you know, everyone’s louder. It’s generally a much smaller stadium. It’s indoors, of course, and everything’s controlled, which is quite nice. No wind, no weather. And then also, it’s nice to have my coach every 200 meters, which might sound like a lot, but mentally, it’s everything and it’s so, so comforting and nice to have.

WSN: You mentioned cross country, you run both, as a distance runner, you run cross country and track. How is it having a year-long athletic schedule? Because most athletes at this school don’t experience that.

Cooper: Okay, well, you have to love the sport of running. And I’m so grateful that I really have fallen in love with running. I came into NYU thinking I would only do a year of running, which I don’t think I’ve actually told my coach that, but the goal was to get into the best academic school I could, and using sports to my advantage, to get into a school. So that was the original mindset, and this team, the program that Tyler [head coach] ha’s built, and then also just, like, I love track and I love cross country.

They’re so different, which really helps, from an outside perspective, it might seem like they’re very similar, but the differences and then the — yeah, it’s just the team, like, it’s my family and it’s, I love seeing them every morning. We get a little bit of a break but yeah, I also, if you know anything about running, you can’t really take a break from running. 

WSN: You’ll lose everything. 

Cooper: Yeah, exactly. Not to be super dramatic with that, but you do have to continually do it. But that’s kind of the beauty of it, you know, it just builds on top of each other.

WSN: So you were only gonna run for one year? 

Cooper: Yeah. My parents said I could quit. 

WSN: And you were expecting that you were gonna want to, also.

Cooper: I mean, knowing myself, I probably was never going to. Because I love, I mean, I grew up doing sports in general. 

WSN: Was NYU always your dream school? 

Cooper: To be honest, I learned about NYU pretty late in the game. Probably like beginning to midway through my senior year of high school. I’m from Georgia, Atlanta. UGA was a big school of mine. Both my sisters went there. Their running, no offense, sucks, program, it’s not very good, but… 

WSN: Really? They have a great sprint program. 

 Cooper: Sprint, incredible. Yes. Distance, trash. 

WSN: Really? I didn’t know that. I would assume they’d all be good. 

Cooper: Anyways, yeah, Georgia, and then some smaller schools. 

WSN: Yeah, so you were recruited during the pandemic? That’s a risky choice. I mean, did you get to visit the school? 

Cooper: I did once, yes. After I had emailed Tyler, the coach. 

WSN: What was the main draw? 

Cooper: Honestly, Tyler was a big draw. And then, of course, being in New York City. I just, being able to say that I lived in New York for my college years is something you don’t get to, a lot of people get to say. Yeah. I would like to mention that I was recruiting for, soccer, but because of COVID, it kind of messed everything up. And so, thank goodness for running because running is beautiful because it’s just numbers. It’s objective. You send your numbers. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

WSN: Wait, so you wanted to play collegiate soccer? Wow. 

Cooper: I wanted to do both soccer and running at NYU, actually. I asked Tyler and he said no. 

 WSN: Yeah, it must make recruiting easier because you send your times. If your times are great, then it’s like… 

Cooper: And then, of course, you have to have, like, a great personality and all that.

WSN: No one was worried about that. Now to some more fun stuff. I read you’re a book lover. Is there a book you’re reading right now or something that you bring to the hours-long track meets? Like, what’s your favorite genre? 

Cooper: Well, I’m sort of reading, I don’t know, actually, not really, but this is one of my favorite books and I want to talk about it.

It’s called “The Art of Racing in the Rain.” 

WSN: Oh wow, that’s beautiful. I don’t know it. 

Cooper: You haven’t read it? 

WSN: No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. 

Cooper: You call yourself a book lover. Anyways, you should read it. Everyone should read it. It’s a beautiful story. There’s a dog, but it’s like, it’s not, it’s not some cheesy dog one. It’s the most beautifully written story about a man. He’s a race car driver, and it’s this whole thing, and I won’t say any more, but you should read it. 

WSN: All right, it’s on my list. Also, is it true you want to open up your own small bakery, specializing in French pastries?

Cooper: Yes, it is. It has been a lifelong goal of mine. I like croissants. I’d like to make coffee. I bought an espresso machine for my home now. I think that’s the first step, and I’m gonna become a master at that, and the next step is learning how to do croissants. 

WSN: What’s your favorite French pastry? 

Cooper: Definitely a chocolate croissant. [Librae Bakery]. 

WSN: Oh, in the East Village. 

Cooper: Yes. 

WSN: Okay, yeah.

Cooper: Highly recommend.

WSN: Now on the topic of food. What’s your go to meet day snack or [pre-race] meal? I know there probably is like a lot of, there’s a lot more advice in the distance world on nutrition than there is in any other sport or anything, because you’re burning so many calories a day. 

Cooper: I mean, on race day, you gotta keep it safe. So normally I’m a, normally it’s like a bagel, you know, just keep it clean. I like dried fruit a lot, so, dried mango, or like, raisins, and then walnuts.

But like a couple of those, so you can’t, you don’t want to have too many of those. Anyways, and then also, yeah, oatmeal, of course, sometimes. And then, our team, our girls, are big on GUs. 

We love our GUs. Especially the ones, so, 30 minutes before, so, we start our warm up an hour before. We go run, do like two to three miles, and then we’ll come back. Immediately, I have my espresso GU. And there’s caffeine in there, there’s the sodium, there’s the carbs, and it’s an infection. 

WSN: Do you ever, um, like, take a GU while you’re running?

Cooper: We do on our long runs, yes. 

WSN: Where do you, where are your running routes for cross country? 

Cooper: Our runs on average, right? So, it’s a normal run, easy, or it’s whatever. We’re going to the west side. Our runs on average, right. So [if] it’s a normal run, easy, or it’s whatever, we’re going to the West Side, West Side Highway. 

Anyways, and then for workouts, we’ll either go to the East River. There’s a public track out there, for those that do not know, and yes, public means that there’s always people on it, so yeah, we have to, you know, do our yelling lane one, get people…

WSN: Oh, really? You can’t, like, rent out the track or anything?

Cooper: No, no, no. Yeah, I don’t even know what that costs. I don’t think we can rent it out. We’ll, you know, run around people — we make it work. And then we also go up to Central Park a lot. And then also we’ll drive, we’ll take vans up to New Jersey — there’s a trail called Columbia Trail in New Jersey. Um, it’s, it’s a down-and-back. And then we’ll go to the Rockies. It’s just Upper State New York, Upper New York. Yeah. That’s hilly. It’s hard. But it’s great. Oh, I will say, because of the recent snow and ice, we’ve had to do the treadmills, which has been interesting. 

WSN: Interesting in a bad way?

Cooper: Interesting. Well, personally, I love the treadmill, but a lot of my teammates don’t.

WSN: What are you listening to on these runs? Like, what’s your go to running playlist?

Cooper: We don’t listen to music on our runs. We just listen to our thoughts. No, I’m kidding. We’ll chit chat. We like to chit chat. I will say I love the silence when I’m running. I love to listen to my breathing, my footsteps. I love to listen to the trees or birds and then just things that are happening around me. It’s quite beautiful. 

WSN: That feels kind of like meditative. 

Cooper: Yeah, you get in that state of mind. 

WSN: Do you experience runner’s high? 

Cooper: So, people like to ask that. 

WSN: Because I’ve never experienced that. I personally think it’s a myth.

Cooper: Okay, it’s not a myth, but I think people have a misconception of, I don’t know. Like once you’re in a certain kind of shape, you don’t really experience a, quote, runner’s high anymore unless it’s like all of my runs, because I feel good all the way. I don’t know. So I don’t know if you consider that runner’s high, but…

WSN: I guess my last question is, what is the best thing about running for NYU?

Cooper: I mean, I said it before in this, earlier in this podcast, but I think just the people that I’ve met here, I think truly like running with these girls and guys that I’ve met. Running for Tyler and Joanna [Thompson] and [John] Trautmann, and Grace [Richardson], our other assistant coach, has truly been what has made this experience for me.What has, it’s been what NYU has been for me as well — just their mentorship, their guidance, and then the friendships and connections and memories that I’ve made with my teammates. And I, that does sound cliche, but it’s just so true. And I think you can definitely see that. We have people from the year 2008, 2007, they’re the national championship winning team for NYU for the men’s side.They came and supported us, at last year’s nationals and this year’s nationals. And just to see their friendship is still so strong, that they’re coming to our silly little still races that are happening now. They’re coming as a group, as a family, and supporting us. And it’s like, okay, I want that.

And I feel so grateful to say that I have that. Like, we have that kind of connection and bond. On this year’s and last year’s and I guess every year so far that I’ve been here at NYU. So that’s definitely been the best thing. 

WSN: Yeah, and just think if you would have quit after one year. You wouldn’t have had that.

Cooper: I know, or like if I did soccer, like it would have been all different. I’m glad I didn’t. 

WSN: Well, I’m glad you didn’t either. And then we could have had this conversation. Well, thank you so much. 

Cooper: Absolutely.

Contact Levi Langley at [email protected]