Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 4 | March 2019

32 Inside Hokie Sports cross country campaign, though he received a medical hardship waiver to preserve a year of eligibility. Tech’s sports medicine staff wanted him to abstain from training for a month. Instead, he snuck out and started running after two weeks. Thomas and Johannigmeier wouldn’t let him compete, but he got himself into shape for the indoor track season. “It was tough,” Seufer said. “You just sit there. They went to Penn State [for a cross country meet], and you couldn’t stream it, so I was just sitting there refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, trying to find the results [online]. I watched ACCs, and that was really tough. You start looking at stuff, and you start looking at results and start moving places around. You think, ‘If Fits [Seyoum, who was injured] and I were right, maybe we’d go here and here, and how does that impact the team score?’ I think I’ve done that for every ACC championship.” Seufer spent the early part of his career adjusting to his body. He is one of the bigger distance runners in the ACC, standing roughly 6-foot- 3 and carrying a sturdy frame. Think tight end for those with limited track and field knowledge. As a result of his build, he constantly needs to watch his diet, limiting his caloric intake to remain in peak condition. As he matured, he took up cooking as a way to do this, and he enjoys cooking so much that he whips up something every day, avoiding Tech’s nationally acclaimed dining halls. He and roommates Owen Buck and Fitsum Seyoum are known in the track program as the “Culinary Crew,” though Seyoum, according to Seufer, is “there for entertainment purposes.” “I don’t have class Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so it’s pretty easy to go home and make food instead of stopping by a dining hall and grabbing food,” Seufer said. “I feel like the quality of making your own food is so much better than the dining hall can offer, even the West End steak.” Of course, keeping tabs on calories means making sacrifices. To remain in top shape, Seufer gave up his regular trips to Chick-fil-A for his beloved milkshakes. “It’s always been a staple in my life,” he lamented. His body structure also leaves himlonging eachwinter for the outdoor track and field season. That seems counterintuitive, considering his haul of medals at the ACC Indoor Track and Field Championships in Blacksburg in late February, but he offered an understandable explanation for his disdain of indoor track. “The tight turns on the track kill me,” he said. “My stride is so much longer. I don’t have a quick, little stride. It just feels restricting. On an outdoor track, I can generally open up. On an indoor track, I have to run so compact.” It certainly didn’t hinder him in February. On the second night of the ACC Championships, he won a silver medal in the 5,000-meter race, as NC State’s Ian Shanklin slipped past him in the final 100 meters and beat him to the finish line. The following afternoon, Seufer ran toward the front of the 3,000 and eventually took the lead, determined not to let recent history repeat itself. In the final 100 meters, Syracuse’s Iliass Aouani pulled even with Seufer. But Seufer’s size worked to his advantage as he simply refused to let Aouani get to the inside lane in the next-to-last turn. Then finding a burst of speed, he pulled away in the final 30 meters for the gold medal. “I definitely knew somebody was there [next to him], but it was a scenario that, after the 5K and having that guy whip around me, I was saving something,” Seufer said. “I was just cruising along, and if there was somebody that was going to try to come up, I was going to be able to throw it into another gear and crank it up if I needed to. “When I saw him [Aouani] come up on my shoulder right before the turn, in indoor especially, you have to get to the turn first. Whoever is going to get to the turn first, they’re in such a better position. I knew once he didn’t make a full move around me that I could hold him off the rest of the race. I saw the race film, and it looked like he looked Continued from page 30