Editor’s Note: Athlete of the Week features Natalie Picchetti, a senior All-American on the cross country team. After winning the first two meets of the season, she placed 11th in Auburn this past Saturday. The Red & Black’s Rachel Bowers caught up with the speedy Picchetti yesterday.

Q: As far as your time goes, have you set a season goal you want to break?

A: Last year I ran a 20:40 or 50 something, and I want to get down to the lower half of that, the lower 20s.

Q: As a senior, running in your last season, is your college career everything you’ve hoped?

A: It’s been awesome. I got so much out of it. Academically, I’ve gotten to build good relationships with a lot of my professors, and athletically I got to do most of everything I wanted to do. I got to be an All-American, go to the national meet, and make it to the Olympic trials. It’s been so much fun. I had great teammates too.

Q: What is your training regiment like?

A: We do regular runs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We wake up really early on Tuesday to do a workout, and then we have a workout usually on Thursday and then usually a long run on Saturday.

Q: How far is the distance for a regular run?

A: I’m averaging an hour and ten minutes, I’m not really sure how many miles that is, I guess maybe 8-10 miles.

And then my long run would be an hour and 45 minutes, and that would be hopefully 12-15 miles.

Q: Would you consider yourself a leader on the team?

A: Yeah, it’s kind of cool because I feel like I have a lot of experience so when I see the other girls get nervous I remember that I used to be in that position, so I try to help them.

Q: What is you favorite memory of being on the cross country?

A: We had a regional meet, and it was the year we won it as a team. It was awesome because it was just Georgia, Georgia, Georgia just consecutively coming in. We just dominated, and won the meet, and beat Tennessee on their home field. It was just awesome.

Q: Do you like to cook a lot?

A: Yeah.

Q: What’s your favorite dish to cook?

A: Gnocchi. It’s this Italian pasta. It’s like potato dough, you mix it with flower, then you cut them up into little balls, and cook them like pasta.

Q: Favorite home-cooked meal?

A: Probably one of my dad’s dishes because he’s Italian. I guess just tortellini with prosciutto and peas.

Q: If you could have a super power, what would it be?

A: I guess to fly. That would be pretty sweet.

Q: Who is the biggest influence on you?

A: I’d have to say my biggest influence is my dad. I just respect him so much. We’ve kind of gone through a lot because we’ve moved around a lot.

Q: What do you want to do after graduation?

A: I want to continue running professionally, and I guess I want to get ready for either grad school or med school.

- Rachel Bowers