Fast Women: A new setup for Karissa Schweizer

A creative solution after the USATF Half Marathon Championships debacle.

Issue 401

Karissa Schweizer races the 5,000m at February’s Valentine Invitational.

Karissa Schweizer discusses her latest chapter

Two-time Olympian Karissa Schweizer recently announced that after more than seven years with the Bowerman Track Club (which became the Swoosh TC Eugene hub in 2025) she has moved on. She’s now based in Portland, Oregon, and she’s being coached remotely by University of North Carolina coach Chris Miltenberg.

In January, Schweizer, 29, finished 17th at the World Cross Country Championships, and on March 22, she ran 24:56 to take second at the Shamrock Shuffle 8K in Chicago. It was her first professional road race longer than one mile. She spoke to Fast Women on March 26. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It was fun to see you racing on the roads. What did you think of the experience, and what was it like racing with men for the first time?
It was fun. It was definitely different, and that’s kind of why we chose the Shamrock Shuffle, because it’s a very low key race, and a chance to test the waters a bit. Some of the guys went out really hard, kind of died, and came back again. There was no rhythm to it, and it was good for me to experience that.

I wanted to go with them, but the plan was to stay controlled in the beginning and then build with 2K or 3K to go. I’m not one that likes to race that way, I love to just full send all the time. But my boyfriend (Kellen Manley) ran with me and helped put a pace cap on me for the first 5K, and then I was left to just rip it. That was a fun way to race, because I felt good. But it made me realize road racing is so different. You can go out [hard] and it doesn’t affect you the same way it does on the track. You kind of see people die a little more gracefully on the road.

Did it make you want to do more road racing?
Definitely. You have crowds the whole way, chaotic energy throughout the race, which I really like, and I like just pressing from the gun.

I’m sometimes a little surprised when top U.S. athletes pass up opportunities to win prize money on the roads, but I assume there’s a good reason. What kept you on the track until now?
I feel like the track just kind of consumes you without you even realizing it. Especially with the (Olympic and World Championship qualifying) standards being so difficult these days, it’s kind of like you have one opportunity to get the 10K standard, and you have a couple opportunities to get the 5K standard. So when you’re gearing up for that, and then you’re peaking at USAs and then peaking again at Worlds or the Olympics, it doesn’t really feel like there’s room for anything else.

I’ve also been injured a lot these past three years, so that doesn’t help. I think I probably would have stepped into a half marathon or some kind of road race before now, if I wasn’t injured all the time in the winter. It always felt like there was a rush to get fitness for track season. With this being an off year, I wanted to test the waters and do something I never really do.

And how long have you been healthy now?
It’s been a year and a couple months now, which is the longest runway that I’ve had in over five years, I think. So I’m very excited about it and I feel really good.

What have you learned about how to stay healthy?
I’ve definitely made some changes. On January 1, 2025, I found out I had a femoral stress fracture in almost the same location as the year before. That was a wake-up call that made me realize I needed to dial things back, up the fueling and cross training, and figure out what was going on.

I think I kind of got back into things a little too quickly after the Olympics, so I took time last year to just build fitness and strength and now I’m up to the highest mileage [that I’ve done] consistently, and I feel really good about it.

That must have been so defeating to have it happen again.
It was. The first time it happened, in May 2024 (leading up to the Olympic Trials), I definitely raced on something that I shouldn’t have raced on. The second time, I knew something was wrong and we caught it very early, which helped a ton.

Do you think you were dealing with a REDs type of situation, or something else?
I think I was training too much and not consuming enough for the volume I was putting in. I never felt like I was in a big hole or really deficient, it just caught up to me quickly. But I think the biggest thing I did wrong was that in 2024, I got very fit off of cross training, I made the Olympic team, started intense training, ran the Fifth Avenue Mile, and then took a very short break.

It was my first time ending the season on my own terms in a while. In the past, my seasons ended because my calf blew up or I needed Achilles surgery. So I thought I could just take a break and then get back into things. But I didn’t cycle down and get unfit, or take enough of a break.

You mentioned backing off mileage previously. Have there been changes to your training that make it easier to handle the higher mileage now?
I feel like my intensity in workouts was quite high the past three years. Now it’s not quite as intense, and I’m getting more volume. And I’ve noticed that on my easy days, I’m able to run a little bit quicker and feel better. I think when you aren’t tired, your running form cleans up and you are at less risk for injury.

I imagine this ties into the coaching change you announced last week. When did you start working with Chris Miltenberg and how did you decide that would be the best fit?
I actually didn’t start working with him until after my indoor 5K on February 14. I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do next. I was certain I wanted to be back in Portland, so I made that move in October. I was being coached remotely by Jerry (Schumacher), and Alex Ostberg, the team’s assistant coach, helped me a ton. He knew I was feeling a little lost with things and kind of took me under his wing. He helped me gear up for cross country and then figure out what my next steps would be.

Alex had been coached by Milt, and Emily Infeld, who is also in Portland now, is being coached by him. I had a really good conversation with him in the fall, but I didn’t want to rush anything, so I just kind of sat with that and really tried to think it through and talk to people. I just felt like his philosophy was such a good fit and he really believes in me.

When you moved to Portland, did you know you were leaving (the team formerly known as) Bowerman? Or was the move more about knowing you needed to be in Portland and figuring the rest out later?
That was definitely a difficult decision for me, because I’ve had so much success under Bowerman. I still have a very good relationship with everyone there. I think Jerry’s a very good coach. I was just really struggling—last year was the first time I [was healthy but] didn’t make a team. And I wasn’t even close. (She finished sixth in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at the 2025 USATF Outdoor Championships and did not qualify for the World Championships.)

That was a good wake-up call for me, because I also wasn’t happy. I’ve had seasons where I didn’t finish very well, but at least I was happy with other things in life. So hitting that double whammy, I felt like something needed to change. My boyfriend was living in Portland because he works at Nike, and I have a lot of friends there. I moved not really knowing how it was going to work out, because I felt very reliant on the group setting. But I took myself out of the comfort zone and everything fell into place after that.

I’ve barely done any workouts by myself, which has been amazing. I’ve been able to line up with Emily a bunch, my boyfriend has worked out with me a bunch, and a lot of people in my friend group ran in college, so some of them will pop in and out of workouts with me. I’ve also linked up with Sinclaire (Johnson). And Milt has been great and easy to communicate with.

Were you in a long distance relationship the entire time you were in Eugene?
Yes, he was in Portland the whole time, and we would just flip flop every weekend, so a lot of time on I-5, and that was getting pretty exhausting.

Is it easier to have a social life in Portland?
It’s funny because I was like I’m going to have such a big social life in Portland compared to Eugene. And I do. I’m doing things like going to a Blazers game or getting dinner with friends who aren’t on the team. But it feels like my life has slowed down a lot since being in Portland, and I think that’s because I’m not doing a two-hour trip every other weekend. I think that was adding a lot of unnecessary stress, and I didn’t realize how much until I was done with it.

One last Bowerman/Swoosh TC question. When all of your former teammates gradually moved on, what made you decide it was still the right place for you? And was it ever hard being the one who stayed?
Yeah, it definitely was. But I kind of felt clouded in a way because of my injuries. I had two Achilles surgeries between 2021 and 2023 and our PT was with me through the first surgery and I really wanted to do that (2024) Olympic build with her after my second surgery. I didn’t really feel like I had another option, and then in 2024, I had a lot of success.

But 2025 was an eye-opening year. Being a pro runner is such a cool job and I just felt like I wasn’t appreciating it the way I should.

And have you felt a change since moving?
Yeah, I feel way better about things. I was also getting pretty anxious leading into some workouts and I [felt like] every workout had to go perfectly, I had to be in this group to have success, and I had to be [coached by] Jerry to have success. I took a step back and realized that the true person having the success is myself and I’m the driver of this. I think just being able to have a little more control in my career has lit this new fire under me. I’m by no means taking any step back by moving to Portland and not working with the team. My goals are all the same, if not higher. I’m just doing it a little bit differently.

And just to be clear, even though you’re no longer with the Swoosh TC Eugene hub, you’ll remain a Nike athlete, correct?
Yes. They were great throughout the whole process. I feel like they really just wanted me to find a situation I was happy with.

You touched on this a little, but what has been different about the training?
It’s subtle tweaks here and there. It kind of reminds me of how I was coached in college, which I really loved. It’s a little more focus on really dialing in the strength work, having more pace variations [based] on how you feel throughout the workout, and having hard [efforts] , but having them very scheduled. I feel like I was kind of overachieving in the past, by no fault of anyone else. I like to go very hard in workouts, and I kind of needed to be held back a bit.

Is Milt able to do that from afar? Or are you doing a good job of doing it for yourself?
It’s been good because I have a little bit more of a range, and the paces are a little bit more conservative in general. That way, if I go a tiny bit harder, it’s not [a big deal]. I have also been adding in a little bit more double threshold work, and that forces you to dial it back a little bit, because if you have two workouts in one day, you do not want to go too hard on the first one. I’m still learning, obviously, but that’s been a good cap for me.

It’s wild to me that because 2019 was your first full year of professional running, other than 2020, this is the first off year (with no global outdoor championship) that you’ve had in your professional career.
Yeah, and I would not count 2020 as an off year for me. We called it the Bowerman Olympics and that was such a hard year on my body. I ran my 5K PB that year, and we were doing all these Covid races.

So do things feel lighter in an off year?
I wouldn’t say it feels lighter, but it feels like there’s room to try new things, like dipping into a road race, and I’ve really been enjoying that. It’s also a really good time for me to be taking on some new training and just being able to give myself some grace. A lot of times you switch training and it’s immediately into World year or Olympic year, and if you don’t make [the team], you’re immediately blaming yourself. But there’s time for an adjustment period this year.

Without asking you to spoil any surprises, can you say anything about where we might expect to see you this year, or what kinds of things are exciting you racing-wise, as you get to experiment more?
I’ll do another road race here soon, which is going to be my longest distance so far—longer than a 10K. I’m very excited about that.

And do you hate being asked about the marathon? Is that something you want to do while you’re still a pro?
I’m definitely getting pushed into it by a lot of people. When I first got asked about that as a pro, I was like, of course, I’m definitely doing the marathon. But once I saw firsthand what the marathoners did in training, I was like I don’t think I want to do that. But what I love about the marathon is that you can be successful with so many different approaches, and it’s cool to see the [various] paths. So yeah, it’s something that has been exciting me, but I want to do a half or something a bit longer to get a taste before I decide to go for it. But I’ll definitely run a marathon professionally at some point.

I also wanted to ask about a completely different chapter of your running career. In doing some research prior to our conversation, I read that you never won a state cross country title and you only won one track title. Is that true?
Yes, I won one state title as a freshman in high school and honestly, I only won it because Shelby (Houlihan) was supposed to be in that race and decided to run a 400m instead.

You were 155th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships your freshman year, you didn’t qualify as a sophomore, and then you won the whole thing your junior year. How did you get from point A to point B?
Unlike a lot of high schoolers these days, I had zero knowledge of anyone else’s training and I didn’t even add up what my weekly mileage was. So I was pretty undertrained in high school, and I just had a lot of fun with it. We had a pretty good team, though, and won some state titles. Individually, there was always a big star and I was always getting seconds and thirds.

The coach that recruited me to the University of Missouri left, so I was kind of taking a gamble on the new coach, but he ended up being so perfect for me. He [considered] what I did during high school and built me up so slowly. My freshman year, even just making it to nationals was a big accomplishment. And then my sophomore year was difficult—just typical college fluctuations and I got sick at the wrong time—but during the track season, I was building momentum.

My junior year (at the NCAA Cross Country Championships), my coach had so much belief in me and I had a very good team surrounding me. I toed that line having no business winning the race, but my coach was like the weather’s terrible, really anything can happen. Just stick your nose in it. I came away with the win and pretty much shocked everyone. And from there, I just reached a whole new level.

I love that and I hope that people who undertrain in high school will continue to have lots of good opportunities to develop during college.
I hope so. It’s been hard to see the landscape shifting so much, because there’s just a lot of unknowns with how much intensity in high school will affect your college and pro career.

The bar in terms of what’s competitive at the top of the sport has also been moving rapidly the entire time you’ve been a pro. I assume a lot of that is because of super shoes, but there are other factors as well. What has that been like?
The shoes are great—they help you recover a bit more and push your body a little bit more. Because we were introduced to super shoes pretty early, we [had a lot to learn] about how to use them. The training they allow you to do can take a toll on your body eventually, and [can lead to] different injuries. I’m starting to realize that so many people are getting the same injuries that I got.

It obviously existed before then, but I don’t think I had heard of Haglund’s surgery until Gwen Jorgensen got it. And these days, I can’t stop hearing about it.
So many people have had it, and it’s the worst injury. I would never wish it on anyone—it’s just like constant pain.

You were the guinea pigs. Are you now more strategic about when you wear super shoes?
When you wear them, but also your strength program. Now there’s a lot of emphasis on calf strengthening, but that’s something none of us were doing. The shoes help give you perfect form. If you don’t have that already, it can take a big toll on your muscles and everything else. But strength training seems to help a lot.

Another popular tool these days is bicarb. You’ve mentioned having a rough time with it. Are you still not a bicarb user?
Unfortunately I’m not. I wish I could be, but I’ve just had a couple very bad experiences with my stomach. It’s more like bicarb doesn’t want me. On the way to the [USATF 1 Mile Road Championships] in Des Moines last year, I was puking out the side of the car. That was when I was like okay, this is too risky for me.

Reading some of the older stories about you, it’s clear how much of a role your grandfather has played in your running career. Is he still involved?
Yeah, he’s been so great. Both of my grandparents are. Travel is a little bit more difficult for them now, so they watch on television most of the time, but I’m always calling him the night before races. In high school and college, it was more about getting reassurance from him. Now we chat more about what’s going on and how he’s going to watch, and he wishes me good luck. It’s such a special bond that we’ve created throughout the years and I truly feel like he was my first coach.

USATF gets special permission to race seven women at the world road running championships

USATF announced last week that following an unfortunate series of events at the U.S.’s selection race, World Athletics will allow seven U.S. athletes to race the half marathon at the World Athletics Road Running Championships in September. The team spots will be offered to the first three athletes who were led off course at the USATF Half Marathon Championships—Jess McClain, Emma Grace Hurley, and Ednah Kurgat—as well as the top three runners across the finish line: Molly Born, Carrie Ellwood (also led off course), and Annie Rodenfels. The seventh spot will go to an athlete with the highest world ranking as of May 5.

The solution is about as good as anyone could have hoped for once the lead vehicles made the wrong turn. I’m honestly a little surprised World Athletics went for it, because it wasn’t their mess to clean up, and it does give the U.S. an unfair advantage. But I’m thankful they did. (In their press release, World Athletics noted that USATF is one of their leading member federations, so while I like to believe that other countries would have received the same treatment, I don’t know.)

There are several caveats here. In order to minimize the advantages that the U.S. will have, only four athletes will be eligible to contribute to the team scoring, and the scorers must be designated in advance. The non-scoring runners will wear different uniforms and won’t be allowed to form a pack with the scoring athletes. (I’m curious how they plan to enforce that.) The non-scorers will be able to earn world ranking points, and if they finish in a spot that would have earned them prize money, USATF will pay them the corresponding amount.

To me, the most interesting line in USATF’s press release is the one that says, “The scorers will be determined with input from the athletes once the final team is known and all athletes have accepted their place on the team.” If USATF has ever relied on athlete input to select a team, I’m not aware of it. Perhaps I’m reading way too much into it, but that made me wonder if USATF is counting on Born, Ellwood, and Rodenfels insisting that the McClain, Hurley, and Kurgat have dibs on the scoring spots.

Up to this point, for understandable reasons (like avoiding lawsuits), USATF has gone to great lengths to stick to its published selection criteria as much as possible. If they were to designate McClain/Hurley/Kurgat as the scorers, they could be accused of not following their own selection criteria. But if the athletes make the decision, well, that’s out of USATF’s hands.

I was glad to see all of the athletes involved respond favorably to the announcement; they have been champs throughout all of this. And I hope that it can all be resolved amicably from here. It really is a best case scenario given the unfortunate circumstances. And there will certainly be more eyes on this U.S. team in September than there otherwise would have been.

Emma Bates and UCan have differing accounts of how their partnership ended

Emma Bates posted an Instagram reel last week that began, “So, since my fueling company dropped me after telling them I was pregnant, I have been trying a bunch of new gels.” With that one sentence, without even naming the company, she undid a lot of the goodwill that UCan has built up in recent years through their support of female professional runners. Very quickly, Front Office Sports, The Athletic (subscription required), and others were on the story. People all over social media were outraged, and they let UCan know it.

In a message to Fast Women, UCan said that Bates’ agreement expired at the end of 2025, and in September 2025, they determined that they needed to rework all of their 2026 contracts. (Keira D’Amato said in a post last week that she is no longer with UCan either.) UCan maintains that in November, before they knew of Bates’ pregnancy, they offered her a revised agreement for 2026, which included a lower rate and “reduced deliverables.” They provided a more detailed timeline of events, which is available here.

In December, it sounds like there was some discussion around whether UCan could offer Bates a deal she would be happier with. It was also around this time that UCan learned of her pregnancy. But they say there were “no firm and final offers that both sides agreed to at this stage.” I suspect this is the stage at the root of their disagreement. Ultimately, in January 2026, they say they offered her an annual partnership that matched what they proposed in November 2025, and she turned it down.

Bates hasn’t said anything further about the matter thus far, but she’ll be on the Ali on the Run Show tomorrow. As Sarah Lorge Butler pointed out to me last week, this is one of those rare situations where the athlete potentially has more power than the brand. I don’t know how much this has set UCan back, but I imagine they would have been better off had they just extended Bates’ 2025 agreement for another year.

Before Bates’ post on Tuesday, I was working on a related story. It won’t be ready for a little while, but much more to come.

Claire Green races The TEN. (Photo by Gregorio Denny)

Other News

• Sifan Hassan has withdrawn from the London Marathon due to an Achilles injury.

• Claire Green announced that she has signed a pro deal with Tracksmith.

• Elle St. Pierre missed World Indoors due to a “personal family matter,” and last week, she shared that she recently received devastating news about her father’s health.

• The London Marathon is looking into holding a two-day event in 2027, which would allow 100,000 runners to take part in the race. The women’s and men’s elite races would be on separate days, which could be fun.

• Last week, there were a lot of headlines about the IOC banning trans women from the Olympics. While that’s technically true, since the IOC began allowing trans competitors at the Olympics in 2004, only one trans woman has taken part (in 2021). The real headline is that the IOC will begin requiring everyone who wants to compete in the women’s category at the Olympics to undergo sex testing, following track & field’s lead. Many experts have said that using the SRY gene test to determine sex is problematic, including the person who discovered the gene, but they’re going ahead with it anyway. All athletes in the women’s category will be affected by this, but especially those who learn through this testing that they aren’t considered to be women in the eyes of the IOC. We’ve been here before, but the pool of people who are affected by this just got much larger, so it will be interesting to see if and how athletes from other sports push back on the policy. Some relevant resources I’ve appreciated this past week: Reo Eveleth, host of the Tested podcast, has a newsletter that’s helpful in times like these. Eveleth and Julie Kliegman were on Burn It All Down, and a number of experts were on The End of Sport. Chris Mosier’s Instagram updates are also informative.

Gabbi Jennings on her way to a 1500m win at The TEN. (Photo by Gregorio Denny)

Results Highlights

• Ethiopia’s Likina Amebaw won the Berlin Half Marathon in 1:05:07. (Results)

• Kenya’s Caroline Gitonga won the Prague Half Marathon in 1:06:16, and Ednah Kurgat, the lone American in the field, took fifth in a personal best of 1:08:25. (Results)

• Australia’s Claudia Hollingsworth edged out Great Britain’s Georgia Hunter Bell to win the 1500m at the Maurie Plant Meet, 4:01.30 to 4:01.52. Hunter Bell was only six days removed from winning 1500m gold at world indoors. Australia’s Rose Davies won the 3,000m in 8:45.13. (Results)

• Shelby Houlihan won the 10,000m at The TEN in 30:50.10, which ranks her 10th on the U.S. all-time list. Houlihan set out at American record pace but didn’t stay on it for long. She had already slowed by 5K, which she hit in about 15:15, and she hung on from there. Jess McClain broke away from the chase pack and took second in 31:15.49. With no championship 10,000m races to qualify for this year, this event didn’t attract quite as much depth this time around. Gabbi Jennings won the 1500m in 4:07.69. (Results)

• Kenya’s Everlyn Kemboi won the Cooper River Bridge Run 10K in 31:15, Katie Izzo took second (31:27), and Annie Frisbie was third in (31:37). (Results)

• Elly Henes won a very wet 5,000m at Raleigh Relays in 15:14.28. Heat eight of the 5,000m was interrupted by lightning 3,400m in, and the affected athletes got a second chance to race a full 5,000m the following morning. Florida’s Hilda Olemomoi (32:03.59) and Judy Chepkoech (32:04.01) went 1-2 in the 10,000m. McKenna Keegan won the 1500m in 4:08.29, and Ohio State’s Aniya Mosley, the top collegian, took second in 4:08.54. (Results)

• Sunday was a big day for 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers at the MicrOTQ marathon at New York’s Rockland Lake State Park. Canada’s Dayna Pidhoresky won the race in 2:31:09. Behind her, 11 women earned Trials qualifiers: Jessica Donohue (2:34:40), Annabel Stafford (2:35:07), Brooke Starn (2:35:22), Hanna O’Connor (2:35:32), Brooke Wildermuth (2:35:48), Brittany Alvarez (2:35:58), Kelsie Vicknair (2:36:02), Maura Lemon (2:36:02), Megan Connolly (2:36:03), Ainsley Pressl (2:36:12), and Hannah Rowe (2:36:25). This brings the total number of athletes who have hit the women’s standard to 123 so far. And with the Trials still two years away and the half marathon qualifying window not open yet, I imagine we’re going to end up with a larger field than originally expected. Joanna Stephens ran 2:37:03 and just missed qualifying. (Results | Video of some of the qualifiers finishing)

• Abbe Goldstein won the 7K race at the Saucony Love Run Philly outright, running 23:37. (Results)

Podcast Highlights

• I’m biased, but I really enjoyed hearing from former NYRR president and CEO (and my former boss) Mary Wittenberg on NYRR’s Set the Pace. She comes on around the 9:00 mark. (And speaking of NYRR, this is an interesting Runner’s World article about local runners struggling to get into their races.)

• Emily Venters was on The Endurance Lab Podcast, and it was interesting to hear her say Ed Eyestone’s training might need some tweaking to be the right fit for her.

• Emma Grace Hurley, who is running the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile on April 12, was on the Blossom Banter podcast.

• I recently featured Lindsey Butler here. For a little more from her in audio form, she was on I’ll Have Another.

• Gabi Rooker was on both The Running Explained Podcast and The Lane 9 Podcast. And while I was searching for the former, I also found and listened to Erika Kemp on Running Explained (which is from February).

Additional Episodes: Anna Gibson on Hurdle | Katie Izzo on RunWithAlliLive | Jane Maus, who recently won the Black Canyon 50K, on Trail Society

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I know, this was another long one. You’ve already accomplished a lot this week if you’ve made it this far. Nice work :)

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported Fast Women via Venmo or Patreon. This newsletter would not be possible without you. I hope all of you have the best week possible.

Alison