After battling the sun, senior Juliane Totzke is making her mark indoors.

Over the weekend, Totzke ran a personal best in the 5,000 meters, which earned her fifth place of 16. She qualified for indoor conference with the performance.

Totzke joins freshmen sprinters Tahtyana Peer and A’Iesha Irvin-Muhammad as the only Huskies who have an automatic bid to compete in the MAC Championships Feb. 28 and March 1 in Kent, Ohio.

Her time of 17:31.56 beat her previous personal record by nearly 19 seconds. Totzke set her former personal record in the 2012 Grand Valley State Big Meet.

“It was a really good competitive effort from Juliane there at Indiana,” said distance coach Greg Hipp. “I’m really impressed with the way that Juliane finished the race; she has not competed that tough in a while. So I’m hoping that’s a big breakout for her to get back to her old self and continue on to a successful season.”

The senior is also a cross country runner. She missed two of the team’s first three competitions due to heat exhaustion. Despite the early setback, she was able to come back during cross country, and is making strides to be where she was prior to the setback.

“I’m happy to see her recovering so well from the time she missed during cross country,” head coach Connie Teaberry said. “Coach Hipp and the distance staff have done a great job with the girls having injury issues. He has been patient with them, and taken time with them getting them back on the track or the cross country course.

“This was one of those athletes where you can see that the patience prevailed, not rushing them back, and making sure that Juliane was ready to go and putting her in that 5,000 right at the right time so she can get a great mark and qualify automatically for the MAC Championships.”

Now that Totzke has qualified for the 5,000, she may be placed in a 3,000-meter so she can try to qualify in the MAC Indoor Championships. She has three more meets to try to qualify again.

“It feels really good that I qualified,” Totzke said. “It is very different from last year where I was chasing qualifying for MAC all season, and now this season, qualifying for MAC just four meets in has really given me a lot of confidence, and I’m really happy about it.”