College students are constantly overwhelmed with balancing school work, jobs and a social life. If you were to bring being a student-athlete into the mix, many people would think that overwhelming becomes an understatment. But after The Vidette sat down with junior distance runner Sean Senf, a normal college experience for student-athletes does not seem so far-fetched.   

What is a typical day like for you, from the moment you wake up to when you go back to sleep?

Mondays, I’ll just go through a Monday because that is one of our harder days, I’m usually up at about 5:30 a.m. because I have to be at practice at 6:00.

We’ll do a morning run, which is four or five miles, we usually do five. We’ll come back at around 6:45 and we’ll have weights then. So we’ll be at weights until 7:30, and then I usually go home and eat.

I’ll sit around until class, which this semester I have class from 8:00 until 11:00 a.m., then I have an hour between that and then a one o’clock until 2 p.m. Then I come back to practice at about 3 p.m., so I usually pack a lunch just like a sandwich and banana, something like that.

Then we’ll have some sort of a work out or run, and usually I get between eight and 10 miles in the afternoon.

Then various days throughout the week I’ll throw in some biking because I like to do some cross training as well, so I get about two hours of biking in per week other than the running I do.

Is the biking something you just choose to do on your own time or is it required?

Yeah, that is on my own time. They don’t require that. I just have been injured a couple times and I redshirted two seasons, a cross country season and an indoor season, and when I redshirted I did a lot of swimming and biking.

When they let me run I would swim, bike and run sometimes all in the same day, and I found that I was in the best shape during those times, so now that I’m healthy, I just incorporate that in with running to get a little more in, instead of continuously pounding doing the running.

After practice, what does your night consist of?

After practice, I’ll go to the training room for like 30 minutes to do some stretching and icing, then I’ll go to Linkins dining center for dinner. Even though I live off campus, I still have a meal plan.

I will probably sit there for about an hour or an hour and a half, get home between like 7 p.m. or 7:30 p.m., and then I’ll just sit there for like a half hour and finally just rest.

Then I usually go to one of my labs because I’m a geology major. So I’ll either do some work there or at the library, and I want to say that I get home before 12, but sometimes I don’t.

Then do you have to wake up at 5:30 a.m. again?

Well, 5:30 a.m is like two or three days a week, so other than that, I’ll get up just for class.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I hang out with my roommates. They aren’t athletes. And I’ll hang out with the kids on the team too and we’ll go out every now and then and just have fun with each other.

Do you ever watch TV?

That is a good question. Okay. I watch a lot of internet shows. Last year, I watched a movie almost every night.

I have watched all of The Office, I’m all caught up on Breaking Bad, I’ve watched all of “Parks and Rec” and  all of “Community.” There are a lot of times that I’ll just throw a 20 minute episode in. I’ve watched “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” I like watching TV shows and movies in my free time, that is something I love to do.

What is your favorite meal to get in the dining hall?

I usually just go to Linkins for dinner, and I like turkey burgers. Sometimes I put a hamburger patty on the turkey burger, but I usually get a turkey burger on wheat. And then I usually get a lot of vegetables and salad. Then I’ll let that sit around for a while and I’ll drink water and some milk too. Then I will go back up and get a bowl of cereal. And everyone thinks this is weird, but I always tell the new athletes that come in – I will get cereal like Kashi or Honey Nut Cheerios, and I’ll get a big spoonful or a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter, and then I’ll put honey on top of that. Then I put milk in it and mix it all up. So it’s kind of like a big goolash of good. It tastes really good and I do that at home too with granola cereal. I want to say I only get one bowl, but a lot of times I will get two.