In this edition of Sundt's Scribes, Hal Sundt got a chance to go inside the mind of elite cross country runner Molly Martorella as she prepares for this weekend's NCAA Regional Championship Meet at Oberlin.

Today Molly Martorella is wearing her blonde hair pulled back, held together by an array of hair clips and bands, which help keep it in place during all of the moving around she does in the interview. She shifts her sitting position quiet frequently, sometimes slouching deep in her seat and gently kicking the table in front of her with her frayed white tennis shoes that are covered in writing and scribbles. Other times she sits on her hands and straightens her back, or crosses her legs and brings her arms in close to her body as if she is trying to make her frame as small as it can possibly be. And she plays with her hands while she talks, sometimes looking at them, sometimes not, sometimes wringing them and sometimes pressing down her fingers one by one.

Like a twitch or a tick or a tap of one's foot, it would be very easy to assume Martorella is paying these little movements no mind. But I think Martorella knows how she tends to fiddle like this when she is sitting, because she is incredibly perceptive of her own behavior, as well as the behavior of others, a product of being a constant thinker.

For Martorella, a member of both the Oberlin College women's cross country team and track and field team, competitive running is another arena for her to think.

“Once you get to a certain level of running it doesn't even feel like you're running,” Martorella says. “It's more just a time where I think about stuff.”

“I try and just stay really calm going into my races and kind of, really, internal and focus on myself.”

So far Martorella's mental approach has worked; She was named NCAC Runner of the Week in early September and is playing a major role for yet another very strong Oberlin women's cross country squad this season. Her thinking may be one of her best qualities as a runner, because she can simultaneously break down her own mental tendencies, as well as those of her teammates. For example, in most competitive sports athletes get nervous, but does she? And do her teammates?

“Before a race I'm usually super nervous,” she says. “I would be surprised if you found a runner who wasn't nervous before a race.”

Well, what exactly does she, or any other runner, get nervous about?

“That's actually a good question because people get nervous about different parts of a race,” she explains. “I know some of my teammates really love the start of a race because it's just like an adrenaline rush to be sprinting out into the field, but that is usually the part that I'm the most nervous for because getting into position really can determine the rest of your race, or going out too hard or too slow, it really can determine how the race plays out. Whereas once you're in the middle, you're settled in, you're moving, your head's in it, you're just kind of going with what's happening around you and responding.”

Martorella's tendency to pick up on the behaviors of others and reassess her own behavior extends far beyond the finish line. For example, this past summer as a waitress at an Italian restaurant, her perceptiveness was once again made manifest.

“It was eye opening how rude everyone was or how I might have been rude in the past and not realized it” Martorella recalls.

Martorella, just a sophomore, plans to double major in Biochemistry and Neuroscience. After college she intends to go to graduate school to study Neuropharmacology, which focuses on how chemicals and drugs affect the brain. So really, her candidness about the way her brain works, and by extension, how she observes the behaviors others, is rooted in a much deeper fascination with the space between our ears.

“I want to go directly into anxiety disorders and depression,” she says. “Because I know a lot of people who have anxiety disorders or suffer from depression and so I guess it's a personal interest of my own. I not only find it interesting, but I have a personal investment in it.”

I once had a professor tell me a college education is valuable because, above all else, it teaches students how to think. Martorella already seems to have that bit down, and with a majority of her college experience ahead of her she can invest her energies in her coursework, her athletic goals, her friends, her family, the Oberlin Review (she writes for the sports section!), and whatever else might pop into her ever-churning mind.