March 27, 2008

A Brief Chat With Renee Metivier

By Peter Gambaccini

Photo by Victah Sailer

Renee Metivier, who finished second to Shalane Flanagan at the USA Cross Country Championships on  February 16, is part of the U.S. team at the World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Sunday. It will be the fourth straight year Metivier has competed at these Championships. Now 26 - she was born on Christmas Day - she began her collegiate career at Georgia Tech and then transferred to the University of Colorado and was an NCAA Cross Country Championships runnerup once for each of those schools. In a strong 2005 indoor season, she was the Big 12 champion in the 3000 and 5000 and won the 3000 at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Metivier was fourth in the 5000 at the 2005 NCAA Championships outdoors on the track; she set her personal best of 15:15.78 in ‘05 for that distance. She’d gotten off to a promising collegiate career as a 3000-meter steeplechaser, too, running 10:12.85 as a sophomore at Georgia Tech. After a long stint living in Boulder, Colorado, she is now residing in Flagstaff, Arizona, but is still coached (via long distance) by her University of Colorado mentor Mark Wetmore. She had been a volunteer assistant to Wetmore before leaving for Flagstaff in December. She is married to former CU runner Austin Baillie, a massage therapist. We squeezed this interview in with Metivier while she was on a cell phone in airports in Flagstaff and Phoenix on her way to Edinburgh.