Tiffany Heflin isn’t bashful about favoring cross-country over track.

“It’s a lot different than track, because you’re not running around in circles and you only have one race,” says Heflin, a youth girl who runs for the Silver State Striders of Reno, Nev. “It’s on dirt and it’s hilly, so it’s not just flat. And it helps me to get ready for track.”

She says she also likes the social outlet that cross-country running provides.

“It’s really fun because after the race, you can hang out with your friends,” Heflin says. “You make a lot of friends that like the same sport as you.”

But the Susanville, Calif., resident is quick to point out that track practice and competition helps improve her speed for cross-country.

The complementary sports have taken the 13-year-old to three Junior Olympic cross-cross country championships and one Junior Olympic track and field competition.

Heflin says she became interested in cross-country in second grade and asked her father, Danny, if she could participate. And she’s been running ever since.

A seventh grader at Richmond Elementary in Susanville, Heflin runs the 1 mile, as well as the 400- and 100-meter dashes for her school because there are no 800 or 3,000-meter races.

Her true love is the longer distances. At the Willie Tate Memorial River Run 5K in Portola last summer, she ran 21:04 and was the first woman and fourth overall runner to cross the finish line.

Heflin says she eventually would like to qualify for the world Olympics in the 1-mile, 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters.

During the USA Track and Field season, she runs the 800, 1,500 and 3,000 meters. In 2005 as a midget, she qualified for the Junior Olympics with 5:03.96 in the 1,500 and 10:58.80 in the 3,000 at the Region 14 meet in Livermore.

At the 2005 Junior Olympics in Indianapolis, Heflin placed fifth in the 1,500 with 4:58.13 and fifth in the 3,000 with 10:40.30.

During the fall 2005 cross-country season, she went to the Junior Olympic cross-country meet in Smithfield, R.I., as a midget. Heflin placed second overall with 12:08:61, less than a second behind winner Amanda Ward from Idaho, who ran 12:08:06.

The 2005 event marked the third consecutive year Heflin qualified for the Junior Olympic cross-country event. In the two previous years, she also placed second with 10:49 in 2004 as a midget and 12:46 in 2003 as a bantam.

Heflin admits keeping in top form isn’t easy. She logs 30 to 40 miles a week running. Living in Susanville and training with the Silver State Striders means long commutes to practice in Reno Monday,s Wednesdays and Thursdays. She does her homework during the 80-mile one-way drive.

“It’s hard to get all my homework done,” Heflin says. “It’s eight o’clock by the time we get home, and I have to eat and get ready for bed. It’s hard to keep up with everything.”

During the 2005 cross-country season alone, Heflin and her father, Danny, put more than 8,000 miles on the car traveling to practices and meets. And that doesn’t even count the airline miles to the national meet in Rhode Island.

This year’s late winter snows also have been a challenge, Danny says. Three times they drove to Reno to connect with Interstate 80 to go to a meet, only to turn around because of icy conditions on the interstate.

Even during fair weather, Danny says they probably travel farther than most other athletes to meets. The commute to the recent TNT meet in Antioch took six hours, one way.

If you know a Pacific Association USA Track and Field youth athlete you'd like to see profiled, contact Vicky Boyd at (209) 571-0419 or [email protected].