ITHACA, N.Y. -- Before she ever learned to count laps, Mairead Clas learned how to disappear into a book.

Clas spends a lot of time with words — reading them, studying them, editing, shaping. As an English major at Cornell, sentences matter: how they sound, how they land, how they move.

Reading came early, and so did writing — stories scribbled for school, fantasy novels devoured and debated, pages passed back and forth with her mom. Language became a place she could live for a while, a world built on rhythm, pacing, tension and release.

Running, it turned out, offered something strikingly similar.

Clas grew up in a Connecticut suburb where running was part of the family language. Both of her parents ran in college — her dad, Brian, at Cornell; her mom, Maggie, at Penn. The two even met through the Transatlantic Series, a long-running historic competition between Ivy League athletes and the Achilles Club of Oxford and Cambridge that predates the modern Olympics.

Weekend races were normal. Turkey trots were a holiday tradition. Conversations about pacing and patience sometimes happened mid-stride. Running was always there, long before it became competitive.

That relationship with the sport was shaped largely by her dad. He was always there, pinning bibs, tying spikes, picking up race packets.

"It felt like something we did together," Clas said. "We connected through it."

She tried other sports like tennis and swimming, but nothing stuck. Running did, even when it didn't go well at first. Her first race, a 100-meter dash, ended with her finishing last. She moved up in distance. The 800. The mile. That's when it clicked.

Running felt freeing.

She found a similar discipline in writing — one built on repetition, restraint and trust. On the page, she learned to sit with ideas, to revise, to let meaning emerge over time. The parallels came naturally.

That intersection between creative risk and physical commitment is where Clas thrives. Running rewards decisiveness; writing demands patience. One asks her to let go of thought, the other to sit with it. Together, they keep her balanced.

Clas has always been a voracious reader — fantasy and science fiction when she was younger, then classic literature as she grew older. Writing followed. Stories became a way to disappear, to understand rhythm and language from the inside.

"I love storytelling," she said. "When you're really immersed reading or writing, it's the same kind of groove as running. It's like stepping into another world."

That groove, whether on the page or on the course, is hard to describe. Almost meditative. Clas talks about her best runs the same way she talks about her best writing sessions: moments when thinking disappears.

"My best races are when I'm not thinking at all," she said. "I'm just competing. As soon as you start thinking, you get weighed down."

The path to that feeling wasn't linear. Like many young runners, Clas improved quickly early, then plateaued. Injuries followed. Expectations accumulated. By the end of high school, running felt heavier than it once had.

"When I first got to Cornell, I had fallen  out of love with running in many ways," she said. "But Coach Henderson saw potential in me, and that changed everything."

Cornell offered something unexpected: a fresh start without expectations. Clas arrived unsure of her future in the sport, uncertain how long she would even stay on the team. What she found instead was a reset — a new coach, a new environment and permission to begin again.

Freshman year, she surprised herself. In her first collegiate cross country season, she dropped nearly a minute off her previous best in the 5K and kept improving.

"I remember hearing the time and thinking, 'Wait — what?'" she said. "I didn't even know I had that in me."

Confidence followed. Ownership, too.

Off the track, Clas found that same forward motion through language. She became Executive Editor of The Wastebasket, Cornell Track and Field's historic newsletter, and found a writing community through her English classes as well as other campus-wide magazines. She stood at open mics and read her own poetry aloud — hands shaking, exposed, proud.

"It's scary," she said "but it's the same bravery as stepping on the line for a race."

Her creativity doesn't complicate running — it steadies it. Where writing invites overanalysis, racing demands trust. Letting go.

That balance came into focus last winter at the Ivy League Indoor Championships. Clas scored for the first time at Heps in the 3,000 meters. When she crossed the line, her coach told her there was a surprise waiting at the podium.

Her dad was handing out the medals.

"It was really emotional," she said. "Not because it looked perfect — but because I knew how much work went into getting there."

More than 30 years after setting Cornell distance records of his own, the person who once tied her spikes and pinned her bibs was still there, now handing her a medal.

It looked poetic. It wasn't accidental.

"I worked so hard for that moment," Clas said. "That's what made it special."

"I think there's always been this notion that expectations can weigh you down. But now I see expectation as a testament to my potential, and I am very grateful for it. It's an opportunity to add my own story to a larger legacy." 

She credits her parents not for pressure, but for example — her mom's grit, her dad's passion. Both showed her that endurance, mental or physical, is built over time. Running is no longer something Clas inherited. Writing isn't either.

Both are practices now — chosen daily, shaped through effort, sustained by the same quiet belief: that the best work happens when you trust the rhythm and let yourself move.

What began as a family tradition has become her own story — written one step, one sentence at a time.