Fast Women: Keira D'Amato breaks the American half marathon record
Dot McMahan wills her way to a fifth Olympic Trials.
Issue 244, sponsored by New Balance
It’s likely I’ll be sending at least one extra issue of Fast Women in the next week, because of the USATF Outdoor Championships. I’m going to wait and see how the news plays out, but don’t be surprised if you see an extra email in your inbox.
Long journey to Australia pays off for Keira D’Amato with a record-setting performance
It took Keira D’Amato four days to get to Australia (she had all kinds of travel troubles), but only 1:06:39 to run the Gold Coast Half Marathon and break the American record. D’Amato averaged 5:05 per mile and lowered the record previously held by Emily Sisson by 13 seconds. She also broke the North American record, the Australian all-comers record, and the course record.
Australian Olympian Ben St. Lawrence did a good job setting the pace, keeping things relatively steady throughout, before D’Amato kicked it in at the end. Watching the live broadcast was suspenseful, because the data from the race’s live tracker kept changing, so from afar, it wasn’t clear until late in the race that the record was going down.
According to the results, D’Amato ran her first four 5Ks in 15:51, 15:55, 15:49, and 15:45, before kicking hard the last 1.1K. You can also see her Strava data here.
“I think when I first came back into running, it was for me, and somewhere along the way it turned into a we, doing this for all of us that think we’re too busy, or we’re too old, or too whatnot,” D’Amato said in an emotional post-race interview. “And so just feeling people cheer for me, I just felt like they were part of my journey and that’s a really powerful thing to feel.”
D’Amato had to pull out of April’s London Marathon after spending most of January crosstraining due to knee inflammation. She has raced her way back to top fitness this spring and summer, and D’Amato told The Washington Post that in the last two months, she started seeing “hints of the Keira from last year’s workouts.”
Some other details from that article: She said she didn’t feel great during the race. When she arrived in Australia, she binged the TV show “Jury Duty” to stay awake and help get adjusted to the 14-hour time difference. And she ran 18+ miles the morning after her record-setting race, because her biggest goal right now is a strong showing in the World Championships marathon in August. And I liked the closing quote: “It’s really cool to find something in yourself that you weren’t really sure was there.”
Sisson was quick to congratulate D’Amato, tweeting, “It’s awesome to be a part of this era of U.S. women’s distance running where records are continuously improving. Especially impressive considering your travel—enjoy the moment, Keira.”
Recent American Half Marathon Record Progression:
1/14/2018 Molly Huddle 1:07:25 (Houston)
1/16/2022 Sara Hall 1:07:15 (Houston)
5/4/2022 Emily Sisson 1:07:11 (Indianapolis)
1/15/2023 Sisson 1:06:52 (Houston)
7/1/2023 Keira D’Amato 1:06:39 (Southport, Queensland)
In a little more than 17 months, three women have lowered the record four times. D’Amato’s performance on Saturday was spectacular, but I don’t think she has knocked this one out of reach for the other Americans yet, like Letesenbet Gidey might have done internationally, at least for now, when she lowered the world record to 1:02:52 in October 2021.
This is to take nothing away from D’Amato’s performance, but something tells me this isn’t over yet. Sisson mentioned after her record in January that she thinks she can run in the low 66-minute range. But in the U.S., finding opportunities to run super fast half marathons isn’t easy. Sometimes it requires flying halfway around the world. (Race replay | Results)
Thanks to New Balance for supporting Fast Women
I’ve been talking about super shoes, including the FuelCell SuperComp Trainer v2, a lot recently. (They’re finally here!) But the fact is that I still do the bulk of my training in the Fresh Foam X 880v13, a more traditional shoe. Recently I’ve been spending more time on the elliptical than I would like, and I especially appreciate that the spacious toe box in New Balance shoes prevents my toes from falling asleep, as sometimes happens on such machines. (For me, plenty of room in the toe box is also the key to avoiding blisters and black toenails.)
And watch for New Balance athletes Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabby Thomas, Kendall Ellis, Emma Coburn, Cory McGee, Heather MacLean, Emily Mackay, Dani Jones, Kristie Schoffield, Millie Paladino, and Katie Rainsberger competing at the USATF Outdoor Championships this week!
Dot McMahan wills her way to a fifth Olympic Marathon Trials
Dot McMahan had her retirement from elite distance running all planned out. She would run the 2016 New York City Marathon on her 40th birthday and go out with a bang. But the race was such a positive experience—she finished 12th in 2:38:46 and won the masters category—that it reignited her passion for marathoning.
Now, at 46, McMahan is still at it. On June 17, she ran 2:35:22 at Grandma’s Marathon and qualified for her fifth consecutive U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. She’s the oldest qualifier for the event so far.
“This was definitely the hardest-fought and most emotional one,” McMahan told Fast Women last week. The qualifying standard, 2:37:00, is five minutes faster than it’s been at any other point in history. McMahan knew that it wouldn’t come easy, and she might fail.
On paper, it looks like things went really smoothly for McMahan at Grandma’s. She ran the first half in 1:17:51 and the second half in 1:17:31. But the last seven miles were a battle.
McMahan spent a lot of time in training working on the mental side of her race, knowing it would be tough. But instead of seeing how far she could push herself during workouts, she practiced restraint, pushing herself to a point, and then making sure to conserve physical and psychological energy for the race. “Honestly it makes the races exciting, because you’re like, ‘Yes! I get to push as hard as I want today,’” she said. “I spent a lot of years training too fast and causing unnecessary fatigue.
When she got to mile 19, McMahan reminded herself this was what she had been waiting for, and that it was time to be tough. Though Grandma’s was her 20th marathon, McMahan says she’s still a little shocked every time by how hard marathons are. “Marathons are scary beasts, and I have no problem saying that,” she said. ”I fear the marathon a lot.”
That’s partially due to her ability to push herself so hard. Des Linden, McMahan’s former Hansons-Brooks Original Distance Project teammate, who is known for her own toughness, once told Runner’s World, “[McMahan] will grit through anything, pushing to the end every time. She's one of the toughest people I know.”
Despite the pain, McMahan maintained her pace over the final seven miles and crossed the finish line well under the standard. Her 2:35:22 was her fastest marathon since 2015 and less than four minutes off the 2:31:48 PR she ran at Grandma’s in 2011.
Two weeks after the race, as McMahan is thinking about her next goal, the Trials aren’t the first thing that comes to mind. Instead she’s thinking about what it’s going to take to keep up with her 14-year-old daughter, who is just starting to get more serious about the sport and has run 62 seconds for 400m and 2:25 in the 800m. “She’s on my heels and she’s coming for me,” McMahan said—but she’s not going to make it easy. “That’s going to be the greatest day of her life, when she can beat mom, at any distance. So I’ve got to try to squash that as long as I can.”
Outside of running at a high level and being a mom, McMahan is a volunteer assistant cross country and track & field coach at Oakland University, she coaches individual clients through McKirdy Trained, and she walks dogs and pet sits. Being around young runners at OU and having a child on the middle school team has been inspiring. “I absolutely love watching people reach goals and push themselves further than they thought they could,” McMahan said. “You really see that in middle school. These kids have no idea what they can do. It’s absolutely magical. And that definitely fed into a good race for me at Grandma’s. It’s so inspiring to me.”
McMahan spent her early years in the sport focusing on much shorter distances. She was a Wisconsin state champion in the 400m and 800m, and at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she was primarily an 800m runner. She graduated with an 800m PR of 2:14. She wasn’t happy with it, so she gave herself two years to improve.
She made quick progress, and ultimately lowered her time to 2:09.18. McMahan focused on the 800m for about five years after college, but gradually more distance training crept in. And she found that there were more opportunities in the longer distances. When McMahan’s husband got a job offer in Michigan, she reached out to Hansons-Brooks. When she joined the team in 2005, the longest she’d raced was a half marathon, but the expectation was that she would become a marathoner.
McMahan ran her first marathon—a 2:43:27 at the 2006 Chicago Marathon—just before her 30th birthday. She quickly took to the event and finished eighth at the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials and ninth at the 2012 Trials. She won the 2013 USATF 25K Championships and represented the U.S. in the marathon at the World Championships that year, finishing 18th.
McMahan says her coaches, Keith and Kevin Hanson, haven’t taken it easy on her as she has aged. Her mileage leading up to Grandma’s topped out around 110, and she had six weeks over 100 miles. “I don’t back off training, but I definitely take it day by day,” she said. “And I listen to my body more than I used to.”
McMahan has also gotten better about warming up properly before running and doing things like mobility work and foam rolling post-run. There’s a lot of discussion of strength training being particularly important for women as they age, but McMahan says that’s one thing she doesn’t do much of these days. She started lifting in high school and did it consistently through her 30s, but she focuses more on functional strength now. “I’m probably just on the fumes of all my years of lifting, but I don’t make time for it anymore,” she said.
She says she has always fueled her body well and feels fortunate to have been surrounded by coaches and teammates who encouraged that. She believes that has contributed to her longevity. And running high mileage and juggling a lot of other roles, McMahan makes sure to always have snacks on her now. She also prioritizes sleep, trying to get at least eight hours per night. “If I have any sleep deprivation, I immediately control the effort that next morning and I slow down,” she said. “I don’t wait for the fatigue to be overwhelming. I just instantly respond to it.”
McMahan also takes advantage of tools that weren’t available when she started running, like GPS watches, massage guns, and super shoes. She also uses sleep metrics and heart rate data to confirm that she’s on the right track. Because recovery is so important as runners age, and super shoes help with recovery, McMahan thinks masters runners might benefit most from super shoes. “I remember the difference between running Boston in [Brooks’ T7 Racer] and then running Boston in [Brooks’ Hyperion Elite], and it’s night and day,” she said. “It’s like a whole week difference in recovery.”
When McMahan lines up for the Trials, she’ll likely be the oldest runner in the field at age 47, but with age and experience comes a lot of wisdom. “My advantage is that I have a really good strategy and I have [mental toughness] that I probably didn’t have in my 20s and 30s,” she said. “I was kind of hot-headed and always pushing the pace and always wanting more. Nothing was good enough. With age, you kind of mellow and realize you have to save it for the race.”
Other News and Links
I’m loving the videos Danny Gevirtz has been making, chronicling Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s season. She shared one from her latest race, in New York City, yesterday.
Allie Ostrander released a powerful video about eating disorders in distance running. And if you want to further educate yourself about some of the issues she discusses, Lauren Fleshman’s book is a great place to start. There’s no question eating disorders are a major problem in distance running, and that’s part of the reason I’ve been so outspoken about what went on at the University of Colorado. The problem is bad enough without coaches and RDs interfering and making it worse.
Frankie de la Cretaz wrote a great feature on Nikki Hiltz for Runner’s World.
Parker Valby of the University of Florida, who recently won her first NCAA title in the 5,000m, announced that she has signed an NIL deal with Nike.
This is a nice article about Kellyn Taylor, who is returning to racing after going from having one child to having four in less than two years.
Chrissy Horan wrote about Jessie Cardin’s return to racing after collapsing at April’s Boston Marathon. (Women’s Running)
Alison Mariella Désir reignited the conversation about the lack of diversity in ultrarunning, particularly in the U.S., with this post last week. There are some incredible athletes in the sport, but I agree that we won’t find out what’s truly possible until the fields look more like the country’s and the world’s population.
And speaking of inclusion in running, Lindsey Gallagher wrote about their experience as a nonbinary runner.
Additional Results
Kenya’s Mary Moraa used strong tactics to outrun Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson in the 800m at Friday’s Lausanne Diamond League meet, 1:57.43 to 1:58.37. It was a fun race to watch. I think some people were expecting Hodgkinson to dominate the race after she ran 1:55.77 in her season opener, but Moraa, who is undefeated this season, sent a message with her performance. Kenya’s Beatrice Chepkoech, the world record holder, won the steeplechase in 9:05.98. (Results)
Ethiopia’s Diribe Welteji ran 3:57.38 (race highlights) to win the 1500m at the Ostrava Golden Spike meet on Tuesday. (Results)
Running in steady rain, Ethiopia’s Freweyni Hailu won the 1500m at Sunday’s Stockholm Diamond League meet in 4:02.79. Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet ran an impressive 59-second last lap to win the 5,000m in 14:36.52. (Results)
Racing against men, Great Britain’s Laura Muir ran a 1:57.30 800m at a British Milers Club event. (Results)
The University of Utah’s Simone Plourde, who is Canadian, won the 1500m at La Classique d'athlétisme de Montréal by nearly six seconds, running 4:06.86 (results). It was a nice rebound after a particularly tough semifinal at the NCAA championships, where she just missed advancing to the final.
Marisa Howard won the Yakima Mile, her final tuneup before the USATF Championships, in 4:31 (results). This was a nice article about Howard, who said she’s been feeling fitter than ever 13 months after the birth of her son.
I mentioned Jennifer Harvey’s American age-group record at the USATF 1 Mile Road Championships last week, but it turns out Jeannie Rice and Joyce Hodges-Hite ran American records there as well. Rice ran 6:44 and took nearly two minutes off the existing 75–79 age-group record. And Hodges-Hite ran 15:27 to establish a record for the 85–89 age group.
Redemption for Elizabeth Laseter at the Beer Mile World Classic
If you’re unfamiliar with the beer mile, it’s what it sounds like. Competitors drink a beer, then run a lap, and repeat three more times. It’s a for-fun event, but some people take it quite seriously, and there’s even a championship—the Beer Mile World Classic. Last fall’s event featured an unfortunate ending, as the top two women were disqualified, and the third woman across the line, Melanie Pozdol, was declared the champion.
In a nice full-circle moment, Elizabeth Laseter earned the win in 6:03.75 this time out. Laseter was first to finish last year’s race, before being DQed for stepping out of the chug zone. Her time even surpassed Allison Grace Morgan’s world record of 6:16.50, but she wasn’t the first to better it on Saturday.
Event organizers invited controversy by allowing Shelby Houlihan, who is still serving a doping ban, to compete in the event. They said they couldn’t keep her out because they don’t have a formal policy for athletes competing under suspension. (It wouldn’t be hard to create one.) The organizers originally put Houlihan in the women’s championship race, which offered the most prize money, but her would-be competitors understandably objected, so the organizers moved her to the legends and elites section, one heat earlier.
In the U.S., doping bans only apply to USATF-sanctioned events, but event organizers can make their own policies to prevent suspended athletes from competing. Houlihan’s participation wasn’t against the rules, but it goes against the spirit of her ban. Running against men, Houlihan smashed the world record, which meant that Laseter’s world record in the next heat did not count as such.
And on a completely separate note, but also in unconventional-running-event news, Neely Gracey set a Guinness world record (Runner’s World link) in the stroller mile on Friday, running a 5:24.17 on a track while pushing her two-year-old son, Rome. And she did it at altitude, no less.
Podcast Highlights
On the Suite Run podcast, Jess (Tonn) McClain, who recently ran 2:29 at Grandma’s Marathon, talked about needing a more well-rounded life to run her best. She discussed getting a sacral stress fracture before she was supposed to run CIM last year and said that because it’s what she can balance with working full time, she ran only 60–65 miles per week (which is still a lot, but low by pro marathoners’ standards) leading up to Grandma’s.
I loved hearing Emory University’s Annika Urban discuss her incremental progress on DIII Glory Days. Urban finished 266th in her first NCAA Cross Country Championships appearance, and less than four years later, she’s a two-time national champion.
Lauren Hagans discussed her Grandma’s win and some of the challenges she dealt with leading up to the race on C Tolle Run. And she said she was trying to get into the Valencia Half Marathon.
Stefanie Flippin telling the story of her first 100 miler on The Trail Ahead was great, and it was interesting to hear that she ran relatively casually for years before starting to take training more seriously, which led to big leaps.
On The Run Around Iowa, Iowa State grad Cailie Logue said that she’s going to finish her masters degree in Ames over the next year, while her college coach, Amy Rudolph, coaches her and Logue figures out her next step pro-running-wise.
Additional Episodes: Grayson Murphy on Convos Over Cold Brew | Kara Winger on I’ll Have Another
Upcoming
The USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships, where the U.S. teams for this summer’s World Championships will be selected, begin on Thursday in Eugene, Oregon. This page has information about where to watch the meet (everything that’s on CNBC is also on Peacock, and the rest is on USATF.tv). You can see all the entries here, and the results will be here.
Thanks to New Balance for sponsoring this newsletter, and to all of you who also help keep it going through your support on Patreon and Venmo. I hope you have a great week!
Alison