Kyle Puckett (left) races alongside a teammate. (Courtesy of Kyle Puckett)

Washington University senior Kyle Puckett has run over 500 miles since the start of 2024. So far this season, the Houston native has already set three personal records (PR), including a 5,000 meter PR of 14:50.37 that he set at the Midwest ELITE Invitational on Feb. 10. Student Life sat down with Puckett to discuss his intense training regimen, passion for mechanical engineering, and plans for the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Student Life: How did you get into the sport of track and field? 

Kyle Puckett: It all started in elementary school. I didn’t grow up running, I hated running, I wasn’t playing any sports, and I kind of just played video games and sat in my room. My parents had me try every sport, and I wasn’t good at them. On top of that, I wasn’t super active, so they just had me running on a treadmill and doing exercises with them, and I figured out that I liked running. I ran the Mississippi state meet for high school as an eighth grader, and I ran a 5k and placed 12th in my division, which was pretty cool. When I moved to Texas [from Louisiana], I looked at cross country and track and ran my first track races as a freshman in high school.

SL: When did you decide you wanted to run in college? 

KP: I’m a huge running nerd — I love running. It’s one of my favorite things outside of school. But I wasn’t really fast enough to run in college going into my senior year of high school. I didn’t have the best PRs. I talked to a few schools, but there was nothing where anyone was like “this kid’s a recruit,” most schools were just like, ‘Yeah, you’ll have to try out or do the run club or something.” And that was fine with me as long as I kept running.

SL: How did you end up competing at WashU?

KP: After a few good cross country races and having a good senior year, I verbally committed to go to Rice [University]. But later in the year, I decided I didn’t want to go to Rice and that WashU was the school I had academically been looking at the entire time. The last meet of my high school career was right before COVID hit, and I ran two seconds off of the standards to get on the WashU team. After that, I kept training because the world was shut down and I was doing Zoom school. I actually went out one day before class and had two of my friends from high school pace me, and I set an unofficial school record. Then I contacted [WashU head coach Jeffrey] Stiles and was like “Hey, I just did this.” And he called me and was like, “I respect that. You kept trying when track races stopped,’ and so I was given a spot in May 2020 and came in the fall. 

SL: You’ve run over 500 miles since the start of this year. That is a pretty heavy load. Can you walk me through what a week of your training looks like?

KP: It’ll depend on if I’m racing or not, although I tend to train through races and don’t cut as much as a lot of people. Right now, I’m averaging anywhere from 14 to 17 [miles] a day and I like doing all my training in six days. I tend to run twice a day, four days a week. Two of those days are workouts, two of those days are easy days. And then I’ll have one medium-long run and a long run for most of our standard weeks. I really love it; every day I get to wake up and be with people who I love and get to run with, and that’s really special to me. The mileage overall can range from mid-to-high 90s to 100. It depends on the week or if I’m racing or how I’m feeling, but yeah, I mean, like you said I’m over 500 [miles] for 2024 already, and that’s been kind of cool. 

SL: You have run three personal bests this season in the mile, 3,000 meter, and 5,000 meter. What do these results show you about your training so far during a heavy load?

KP: I think it’s showing that for me, it personally works. One of the things I love about our program is that Coach Stiles really identifies what people’s strengths are and what their weaknesses are. He likes playing to people’s strengths. We know our weaknesses. For me, I think it’s showing that lots of aerobic work and easy miles is setting me up to run well, not only now but in the future. 

SL: You clearly spend a lot of time training. How does your body recover and how do you make sure you are spending time outside of running, doing not just school, but other interests?

KP: When you’re running high mileage, you’re fatigued most of the time, but there’s a difference between good fatigue and bad fatigue that you learn to filter. I just eat so much food and drink so much water and I’m really on top of my nutrition. And I try to not walk as much just because I’m running so much. As for time management, I’m really fortunate that my high school was pretty rigorous, and it taught me a lot. My parents always joke I probably had the worst time management out of all my friends and that was definitely true. But when I got to college and I got to pick my schedule, it wasn’t just class after class. I found ways to fill holes, so I’m pretty efficient with working on campus. But with that it allows me to kind of have the other outlets of my life, like being a co-owner of the Bear-y Sweet Shoppe. I’m also on the leadership team for Bear Cubs Running, which was founded by a WashU cross country and track and field alum. We coach children with intellectual and physical disabilities. So that’s three hours of my day on Sunday, and it’s one of the best parts of my week. I plan out everything I have to do [and] it just somehow clicks. Stiles calls it your big and little rocks — you prioritize the big rocks, like academics, the business, training, recovery, sleep, family. And then I put the little rocks in, which are social media or the things that I could do without for a day and be okay. I kind of just prioritize the big things and then let it trickle down from there. 

SL: You have a fifth year of eligibility rule; will you be running again next year or will this be your last season?

KP: I don’t know yet. I am currently in the process of deciding where I want to go for my PhD. I applied to three schools, and I was accepted to three schools. I decided not to enter the transfer portal. One school is Division I; I don’t know if I could run there. But I have too much respect for the [WashU] team that has backed me through so much. College athletics has been a whole whirlwind of up and down, left and right, and it’s definitely not been linear for me. I have thought about leaving the team before and thought about leaving competitive running behind, but this team is what brought me back, and so I think anywhere else I go would just be a disservice. WashU is one of the three schools, and so if I were to come here I would run a fifth year and then actually coach the remainder of my time [at WashU] with Stiles, which would be a dream come true. I think coaching is one of the best ways to directly impact someone and leave a mark. 

SL: You mentioned that you are a co-owner of the Bear-y Sweet Shoppe. How did you get into that business?

KP: So I came into college wanting to do a double degree to do two majors. I’m mechanical engineering and then entrepreneurship. And I figured that [an] entrepreneurship double major [would] be too much time. I’m MechE [Mechanical Engineering]/CompSci [Computer Science] but I wanted something that would give me an entrepreneurial outlet that you don’t explore in the classroom. There were these fliers up all over campus my freshman year, and I took one because I thought it’d be really cool to own a candy store. I went through the interview process and was fortunate enough to be offered one of the shares and became a co-owner through buying in. That [has been] one of the coolest experiences because owning a candy store is just the coolest thing.

SL: How did you decide on mechanical engineering? Where did this passion come from?

KP: I’ve always liked how things work. I have always played with Legos, I always tried to do Lego robotics, and I always thought computers were cool. I would say the big place though was I thought prosthetics were the coolest thing in the world for the longest time. I did an internship on a medical device going into my senior year of high school and the [people I worked with] were like, “Yeah, if you want to do prosthetics or medical devices, you should go MechE and go to grad school.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll do that.” The CompSci part was more of an academic curiosity of how things work. How do computers interpret it, and how can I use that towards coding neural prosthetics which are wired with brain inputs? And so the whole goal of that was I want to get a PhD in biomedical and mechanical engineering after I graduate. 

SL: Is there anything else you would like to add?

KP: I would just say to my teammates: you guys mean the world to me and I have so much respect for everyone just getting out there and doing it. But also, if you’re not competitively running, and if you’re simply just going to work out, whether that’s running or lifting, just for yourself or as a social outlet, across college life or wherever you are in life — I have a lot of respect for you. So just keep at it and keep having fun. 

SL: The last question is a weird one we ask all of our Athletes of the Week. Would you rather have fish for hands or have to adopt a child every time you hear “Bohemian Rhapsody”?

KP: I would adopt a child every time I hear “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I think fish hands would get a little old and would smell weird. I also feel like I don’t hear “Bohemian Rhapsody” that much anymore. That might just be because I’m out of the loop or something.