Fiona Smith has a tradition of finishing one of her distance races, mingling briefly with the other contestants and teammates, and then taking along a cell phone on her cool-down jog in order to FaceTime with her parents.
These are not overbearing parents who have been in-person witnesses to that day's race and want to offer advice. Mike and Katie Smith generally are located in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, when getting a race review from their daughter.
"It might be the middle of the night, but we get to see almost all of her races on a live feed,'' Katie said. "And then we get her call to get her thoughts on the race. Modern technology is so great.''
Smith has completed her junior year at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn. She is not yet 21 and has established herself as a powerful force in Division III distance running — cross country, the 5K, the 10K and the occasional 3K.
"That's the best part of running an indoor meet,'' Smith said. "You get to run the 3K. I love that race.''
Last fall, Smith finished second to Kassie Parker, a sixth-year senior from Loras College in Iowa, in the D-III cross-country championships. Smith won both the 3K and the 5K in the D-III indoor championships in March. Last week in Rochester, N.Y., she finished second to Parker in both the 5K and 10K in the D-III outdoor championships.
On Tuesday, Smith was with her parents at a home in western Wisconsin that serves as the U.S. headquarters for the family. On Saturday, Fiona will be heading to Baltimore — where brother Connor happens to live — for her internship job in computer science.
Fiona is a 4.0 student with a major in mathematics and minors in computer science and Spanish studies. And the fact that she will be doing her training runs in Baltimore, with its summer combination of grueling heat and humidity, is not at all discouraging.