It used to be a lot harder to lose Susanne Heyer in a crowd.

The German-born co-captain of the Penn State women's cross country team was hard to miss in her freshman and sophomore seasons, with hair in shades of yellow, pink and red, among others. For the Big Ten championships she once did half of her hair in blue and half in white.

"I think I dyed my hair every color from black to white at one time or another," said Heyer, a fifth-year senior on the track and the trails, and a graduate student in instructional systems in the classroom.

Heyer did the dying herself, but her excessive coloring actually damaged her scalp and forced her to shave her head to one-eighth of an inch long.

"I was in a phase of my life in which I was expressing myself outwardly," Heyer said. "I was a big Madonna fan. I would try to cut my jeans into shorts, and when I'd cut them too short, I'd pin the legs back on with safety pins."

Heyer blends in a lot easier now with brown hair slightly less than shoulder length and much more conservative dress.

"I've grown up a lot since I've been here at Penn State," she says.

In growing up, Heyer has done a lot of learning and a lot of adjusting. Actually, she is still learning how to run cross country. She has had success on the grass and trails of cross country courses, finishing 19th in the Big Ten Championships in 1997, 20th at last year's NCAA Regional and fourth at this year's National Invitational.

She is Penn State's best hope in this week's Big Ten Championships in Madison, Wis., as well as the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional at the Penn State Blue Course Nov. 11.

Heyer, however, is naturally more suited for the track. She has won All-American honors in the outdoor 1500 meters, finishing fourth in the 1999 NCAA championships. She also finished second in the Big Ten outdoor championships this past year. In Germany, she won two junior national championships in the 1500, once in the outdoor in 1992, and once in the indoor in 1995. She made it as far as the preliminaries for the German Olympic Trials this summer.

The biggest difference between cross country and track for Heyer has been the mental aspect. The longer races allow more time to realize the toll they take on the body.

"I have to learn to push beyond the pain," Heyer said. "A lot of times when I get stomach pains or other soreness when I'm running, I tend not to push myself to the limit. I'm getting better, but I still need to work on my mental preparation."

Heyer also has learned to be a leader.

She is now in her second year in the captain's role, and is respected as a leader by her teammates and coach.

"Susanne is a person who can lead by example," Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said. "She is always prepared for workouts both physically and mentally. She can also be a great leader motivationally. She is able to communicate to the other runners what is needed and what is demanded from them in their workouts, and also how to analyze their work after."

Despite being respected for the leadership skills she had in her first season as captain, she learned a lot about the functions of a leader in a leadership class she took this past year.

"I found out I was doing everything wrong," she said.

"Last year, I thought I just had to tell everyone what to do and be out in front. When I took this class, I realized that the point of being a leader is to encourage others to take on a leadership role. It doesn't have to do so much with setting the tone for everyone as much as it does developing confidence in your teammates."

Her teammates have noticed the difference.

"I've definitely noticed a difference in the way she leads the team," senior co-captain Beth Buchheit said.

"She's been giving a lot more vocal encouragement this year, and she's a lot more willing to not have to do it all. She's developed into a much more mature, confident runner, and she has really stepped up her dedication towards the team and has put the team's accomplishments before how she herself is running."

She also has adjusted to living and training in the United States in her five years at Penn State, and her one year as a transfer student in Columbia High School near Albany, N.Y.

Heyer hails from Leipzig, Germany, and spent much of her youth in a sports school in what was East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, where at age 10 she would spend most of her day training in a swimming pool, and was in a complex weight training program. Beginning in seventh grade, when she switched from swimming to track, she spent fewer hours training, but was working in a much more scientific squad of coaches than she would ever experience in the United States. In Germany, runners would workout on a treadmill with tubes sticking out of their mouths to monitor breathing. Blood would also be taken to determine lactic acid build up.

In 1994, she went to Albany as an exchange student and noticed a great difference in the way things are run in the United States.

"Apparently the coaches here don't have to have coaching certificates," she said, almost questioning. "Workouts were made up at the spur of the moment (in Albany). Things weren't explained in detail. My coach would just think for a second and say, 'Ah, go run for about 30 minutes.' I'd be like, 'Well, how fast, and how hard do we have to run this.' In Germany, all of our training was planned out scientifically. My German coach would yell at me for racing too much here and not having enough balance."

Heyer, a 1997 Academic All-American, managed to fit in easily in high school and college, and learned English within three months of schooling in Albany. Though she speaks with a slight accent, she is fluent, and possesses and impressive vocabulary. This was vital, because she would have to return to the United States after spending her final two high school years in Germany to continue her running career in college.

Her German sports school allowed students time off to go to running camps and races, but college in Germany is not the same. Though all German students are afforded free higher education, German universities do not make life any easier for student athletes. They do not have their own teams, and athletes that are involved in sports clubs are not given the opportunity to make up missed work.

Heyer received only one letter from an American school before her host family in New York got involved. They spoke with her high school coach, who called around to a few schools. Eventually, former Penn State coach Terri Jordan, who had seen her run at the Penn Relays, sent a letter offering Heyer a full scholarship to Penn State.

"I didn't really have a second thought about it after they offered me a full ride," Heyer said. "All I had was a brochure about the track team with a few campus pictures in it, but I'm really glad I decided to come here."

It has been a lot easier to learn how to adjust because Heyer has just recently begun learning a lot about life itself.

"Now I realize that you're inside speaks a lot louder than your outside. I've encountered a lot of people who don't realize that."

During her freshman and sophomore years, the time when Heyer was constantly coloring her locks, she went through bouts with depression. She said there were times when she felt worthless and that she simply had a negative view on life.

"I overcame some struggles," she said. "There was a time when I focused on the pain of life, and my disappointments in people and in myself. I came to realize that the way to get through it was to focus on the beautiful things in life, and the good people in my life."

"I can't say I'm totally happy all the time. I still have frustrating periods, but I've become a much happier person."

A primary reason for her newly found happiness was a book she got from her boyfriend called Siddhartha, written by Herman Heese. It was a story of a man who is at first very self-centered, but decides to become a Buddhist monk. He quits being a monk after he meets one who becomes enlightened, realizing that he has to find his own way.

He tries to get pleasure out of more superficial things like drinking and sex, but realizes he's not going anywhere that way. He meets a ferryman and speaks to him about his experience with the river he works on, and finally understands the spiritual experience of life.

Heyer hopes to achieve the same level of spirituality as Siddhartha. She has made the theories expressed in the book part of what she considers her own personal religion.

"I want to be beyond getting upset at the trivial and negligible things in life," she said. "I want to be peaceful and thoughtful, feel like there is hardly anything that can shake me. I know it will happen gradually, but I just hope to someday be at that point where I only worry about things that are really important."