Miles Smith up close

~ After conquering the world last year as a fast-rising track star, Southeast Missouri State University standout Miles Smith has started yet another track season. This year may likely hold the kind of unthinkable accomplishments last year brought -- fifth in the NCAA outdoor nationals and a gold medal with the U.S. team in the 1,600-meter relay at the world championships in Helsinki, Finland. Smith took a few minutes to talk to OFF about track, girls, crappy food and bowling this month, revealing the man beyond the star.

OFF: In your free time, what kind of stuff do you do to have fun?

Miles: I like to go skating. I like my movie "Roll Bounce." It's a skating movie. Let's see ... I like bowling. Me and my friends, we like skating and bowling. That's what we do.

OFF: In-line?

Miles: No. Four wheels, old school.

OFF: So on a typical Friday night you might say, "Let's go to the bowling alley or go skating?"

Miles: During the season I don't' have a Friday night.

OFF: How busy does your training, school and track meets keep you?

Miles: It keeps me extremely busy. My Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I go to class from 9 until almost 2 o'clock, then I have practice at 3 until around 6. So I'm busy, and during the season I lose a large amount of my social life.

OFF: How many hours do you have to put into training every week?

Miles: About three hours a day. Out of competition we get more hours during the week, because we can practice on Fridays and Sundays. But during the season we get about 12 to 15 hard hours.

All that includes weight training, speed training, endurance work, all of it.

OFF: When you go over to foreign countries for track meets do you have any free time to see the sights?

Miles: We get plenty of time for sightseeing. We train about an hour, hour-and-a-half, two hours a day, and you don't' have class so you can do a lot of sightseeing. There's a lot of good things to look at -- different.

OFF: Is that one of the coolest things about what you do, that you get to go to these places?

Miles: I get to see things a lot of people may never see. That makes me feel good about myself. I just hate trying new foods over there.

In the athletes village during the world championships, you just had pans of food that just had a picture of a cow over it or a picture of a fish over it, that's what it is. It looked like porridge or something.

But if you get out to restaurants, you can eat whatever you want, you can eat good.

OFF: What's the coolest thing you've gotten to see in your travels?

Miles: I mean this with the utmost respect -- women. I mean, I like women, to see different looking women. I guess it's just interaction. The social interaction. You can look at a landmark in a magazine, if you've seen one you've seen them all. But interaction, people, and seeing them behave in their normal environment, which is not normal to me.

OFF: What do you think about doping scandals in sports, and how does that reflect on your sport?

Miles: First of all doping is wrong. I feel that, if you want it that bad you can work for it. The most I've ever taken is protein supplements, but I've never tried anything illegal or anything like that. I feel that drug testing should be a major part of any sport, not just track and field.

Honesty, you want to win with honesty. So I don't have respect for guys who take the quick way around and cheat.

OFF: Do you think it gives the whole sport a black eye?

Miles: Yeah, it really does. It makes our sport look bad, it makes a lot of people look bad. You get people who joke with you when they see you taking a supplement, and you know they're joking ... but you know it's not funny because track runners tend to get that label a lot.

OFF: What do you study?

Miles: Mass communications with an emphasis in radio. I want to be a DJ still, I guess I still do, but I don't know how to find the time for it right now.

I used to want to have my own radio show, be an on air personality. It just depends on how far I go in sports, I could be a sports broadcaster on, uh, CBS.

OFF: Is it a pretty big possibility you might turn pro?

Miles: It just depends on how well I do this season. Going pro is definitely going to happen, it's just when the right time is.

OFF: Have you just always liked to run?

Miles: Nobody likes to run. I always liked the fact that I was good at it and fast, but nobody likes to run, I don't like to run.