PORTLAND, Ore.–In less than a year, Kaarin Knudson has gone from worrying about track times to download times.

An outstanding former University of Oregon student athlete and two-time NCAA All-American in track and field, the native of Anchorage, Alaska, has transformed her athletic competitiveness into an asset in her new job as a founder and the editor-in-chief of WhereNext.com, an online travel guide based in Portland, Ore.

The Web site, which launched in March, caters to young, budget-conscious travelers seeking up-to-the-minute, on-the-spot information that can be accessed abroad. It offers services traditional guidebooks cannot, including "MyGuide," which lets travelers build and modify their own custom travel guides from any Internet point in the world.

The site is the brainchild of Gregg Bleakney, another UO alumnus who asked Knudson to join the venture last summer, just after she graduated from the University of Oregon. As it turned out, Knudson left the UO and Eugene with so many opportunities and possibilities that, at the time, WhereNext.com turned out to be the perfect metaphor for her future.

"I didn’t know what I wanted to do after school," she admitted recently in a telephone interview from her office, which featured a background buzzing with phone conversations and club music. So when the offer to help establish a fledgling Internet start-up came along, it was simply too good to pass up.

"There were a lot of possibilities and I felt like there were a lot of exciting options," Knudson says. "But the chance to do something completely new and build something from the ground up was the most appealing and challenging of any option."

A year ago, Knudson was the captain of the UO track team, competing against some of the best runners in the country. Ranked third in the Pac-10 as a middle-distance runner, she was consistently winning 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter and one-mile races for the Oregon Ducks, and finished in the top 10 in NCAA meets in both track and cross-country.

In July, after graduation, Knudson "rabbitted" Regina Jacobs to the 1,000-meter U.S. record on the CanAm Distance Circuit in Maine, and was planning to train full-time for the 2000 Summer Olympic Trials. But after returning to Eugene, she took a few weeks off and thought things over. Weeks later, she agreed to join WhereNext.com.

Today, Knudson runs about five days a week and hopes to compete in some races–"just for fun"–this summer. But her immediate priorities have changed.

As WhereNext’s editor, feeding the site’s massive database and satisfying its insatiable appetite for freshly infused cash are her biggest challenges. The company currently has six cities online in Europe, has hired a dedicated correspondent in each, and plans to add 16 more destinations by the end of the summer. Next year, they plan to go global. The full scope of the project becomes clear when you talk with Knudson, who is mindful that providing constantly updated content for travelers anywhere in the world is an enormous task that is going to require a lot of additional investment.

"It costs a lot of money to build a good site," she says. "Once you have the money to do it, you have to hire the people you need and move fast. So your burn rate can get pretty quick. You have to spend money to make money."

The company currently has nine full-time staff, plus a handful of interns, and is scouting for an art director and a European business manager.

"We’re really growing fast right now, even though we’ve got limited resources," she says. "But there is nothing like limited resources to force creativity."

"It can be pretty crazy around here," Knudson admits. Though she has worked as many as 80 hours per week, she is clearly enjoying every minute of her job and downplays any talk about becoming the next stock-optioned millionaire as the result of an IPO–initial public offering–of WhereNext.com stock.

"Thinking about having an IPO is incredible premature," she says. "It would be backwards to be thinking about making truckloads of money before building something that’s actually worth money.

"We’re focused on creating a viable business," she adds, "and I’m focused on providing information that travelers can actually use. It’s not about the stock market and how we can cash in quick. I think that attitude is one of our greatest strengths."

But with Internet stocks riding a roller coaster on Wall Street and online companies spawning so rapidly in Portland that the metropolitan area was recently dubbed Oregon’s "Silicon Forest," it would be natural to assume Knudson is feeling stressed. Yet surprisingly, at only 23, she comes off seasoned, with an unassuming coolness that only rarely is tested. Like all great athletes, Knudson thrives under pressure, and has the kind of focus that can be intimidating for competitors–and non-competitors–alike.

"Did you ever see Kaarin run?" asks Tom Wheeler, the former editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine and one of Knudson’s UO journalism professors. "I remember waving to her from the stands just before she started this race over at Hayward Field, and she just gave me this stare…it was like, ‘Whoa! I don’t want to mess with that!’ She just has a tremendous focus."

He recalls when Knudson won the state cross-country championship her junior year and was favored to win her senior year, but instead finished in seventh place because of an illness.

After graduating from high school in 1994, Knudson was recruited to the UO team and ran varsity cross-country and track for four years, nearly going undefeated at the university’s legendary Hayward Field during her last two seasons. However, in 1998, she had a bulging disc in her lower back that for nine months made it excruciating for her to sit, stand up or bend.

It was during a layoff from training and competition that Knudson became the editor-in-chief of Flux Magazine, the award-winning student publication at the UO School of Journalism and Communication. Her experience with Flux, she says, "has been incredibly valuable to what I’m doing now."

Knudson says that if not for her back injury, she never would have become editor-in-chief of Flux and likely would be on a much different road today. But, she adds, "I’m sure things would have worked out. I’ve always believed that things work out in the end and for the best."

Coming from the big outdoors, Oregon would seem the perfect fit for Knudson, but she still misses Alaska, she says.

"I’m an Alaskan at heart. It really is an incredible place and I always tell those people who say ‘You’re from Anchorage? Wow, I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska!’ that they should just pack up and go. Alaska really is amazing, but you have to see it for yourself."

Knudson’s father David still lives in Anchorage, and though she hints of going back someday, she knows it may be a while.

"Alaska has its own little corner of the world. Being far away from everything makes it great. But right now, I want to see what else is out there," she says. "It’s just hard to find places that are more beautiful than my hometown."

Back in Eugene, Tom Wheeler continues to speak in awe of what Knudson has done since leaving the UO.

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