Arizona's Claire Green sets goal for herself: win national title in senior season

In the last four years, Arizona’s Claire Green has logged roughly 10,000 miles in training runs — enough to have crisscrossed the country at least three times.

Activating a steely determination and following her coaches’ training schedules, Green has advanced from a struggling freshman runner to All-America status.

Green has a final goal as she approaches her final college meets.

“I want to win a national title” in the 5,000 meters, the senior said.

Green and her UA teammates will compete Saturday in Desert Heat, the season’s Senior Day and final home meet. They will line up against athletes from highly ranked Oregon, rival ASU, distance powerhouse NAU, UTEP, San Diego State, Cal State Northridge, New Mexico State and a trio of Stanford runners.

Green is entered to run in both the 800 meters and the mile, where she could face NCAA 800-meter indoor champion Sabrina Southerland of Oregon. James Li, the UA’s distance coach, and Green will decide on race day if she runs in both races.

Green had concentrated on the 1,500-meter run this year, but her performance last weekend at the Mt. SAC Relays changed things. She ran her fastest 5,000 meters ever, clocking 15:45.52, the season’s 11th-fastest NCAA time.

“It was exciting to go out and run the way I did,” Green said. Her time was a pleasant “surprise to everyone.”

Last Friday’s race was only the fifth time Green has competed in the 5,000, and she said she’s still getting used to the event.

Green looks for more excitement in the 5,000 meters at the highly competitive Pac-12 Championships at Stanford in two weeks.

She expects to be in Sacramento on May 24-25 for the preliminary round of the NCAA championships. She needs to finish in the top dozen there to advance to the NCAA championships in Eugene June 6-9.

“Coach Li’s approach is to have his runners ready to peak at the NCAAs,” Green said. She said she looks forward to the weeks after UA classes end, when she can concentrate on training for the NCAA meets.

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Li calls Green “a dream athlete. She’s very talented, level-headed, follows our training schedules and never sabotages her own progress. She’s been able to stay healthy, to improve every year, and now she’s an All American.”

Green’s father, Ashley, was a teammate of UA coach Fred Harvey at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Her mother, Joanie Carew, was a college runner and later a high school track coach. But Green’s first sport was swimming. When she started competitive running, she joined an exceptionally strong high school cross country team in Louisville, Colorado.

When she arrived at the UA, Li said, Green had been a “good runner but not one of the top ones in the country.”

Green recalled being “one of the weakest runners on the cross-country team my freshman year. My focus was just to survive the workouts.”

Her breakthrough came her junior year at the Roy Griak Invitational when, much to her surprise, she “started passing people” on the Minnesota cross country course. She ended up fourth against runners from across the country.

During the ensuing indoor track season, she achieved her top goal by being named second-team All-American.

“To have accomplished that is still really surreal to me,” she said.

Last fall, she placed 24th in the national cross country championships to gain All-America honors again. And during the indoor track season earlier this year, she earned All-America honors once more, this time in the 1,500 meters.

Green cites one of her keys to long-distance running: Keep chugging along when the pain in your body is telling you to quit.

“You’re not just competing with other runners, you are competing against yourself,” she insisted. “Your lungs feel like they’re on fire. Your leg muscles start to burn. As you go into oxygen debt, your muscles tighten up. You are in excruciating pain.”

In short, she said, it takes a special mindset to continue to punish yourself to the physical and mental limit.

“I don’t know why I do it, but I do it because I love it,” she said with a laugh. It helps that she has close friendships with her long-distance running teammates and that they push each other and “hold each other accountable.”