Discover more from Fast Women
Issue 297, sponsored by Brooks
Notable U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials entries
After much anticipation, the U.S. Olympic Trials will begin Friday in Eugene, Oregon, and will run through June 30. You can find details about how to watch the meet here. As I write this, the results link isn’t live yet, but I expect it will be something like https://results.usatf.org/2024Trials/.
Declarations closed on Thursday, but athletes can still scratch and other competitiors will be added as spots free up (until 6/19 for the first four days of competition, and until 6/25 for the last four days). Here are some interesting details about the entries so far:
After saying earlier that she would likely stick to running the 1500m, Elle St. Pierre changed her mind, and she’s entered in both the 5,000m and the 1500m.
After winning the 5,000m and 10,000m at USAs last year, Elise Cranny has opted for the 5,000m/1500m double this time.
Parker Valby is entered in the 5,000m and the 10,000m. If she runs both, it will be her third time doing the double in about a month.
Entering two events is no guarantee that an athlete will show up for both. Some athletes like to have a backup plan, particularly in cases where their primary event comes first, in case disaster strikes.
There’s been some doubt about whether Athing Mu, who hasn’t raced since last year’s Diamond League final, would make it to the starting line at the Trials. We won’t know for sure until the first round of the 800m begins on Friday, but she is indeed entered in the race.
Natosha Rogers hasn’t raced since her 28th-place finish at the Olympic Marathon Trials, but she is entered in the 5,000m and 10,000m.
Katelyn Tuohy hasn’t raced since the NCAA Cross Country Championships last November, and last month, her agent, Ray Flynn, told Runner’s World that she was unlikely to run the Trials. Whether or not she shows up is TBD, but she’s entered in the 5,000m.
A couple weeks after she finished 15th at the Olympic Marathon Trials, Kellyn Taylor found out she had a stress fracture in her femur. She took 10 weeks off, and without a lot of solid training behind her, she decided to try for a Trials qualifier in the 10,000m, on the last weekend to qualify. Despite not having run one mile at 5:13 pace in training, she managed 6.2 of them in her qualifying race and just made the cut.
She’ll be joined by her NAZ Elite teammate Stephanie Bruce, who at 40, is the only masters athlete in the distance (running) events. Bruce, who is still only nine months postpartum with her third child, will be running her fifth-consecutive Olympic Trials in the 10,000m. I can’t think of any women who have matched that feat.
The oldest athlete entered in the meet is three-time Olympian Michelle Rohl, 58, who will compete in the 20K race walk.
Two high school girls qualified in the middle-distance/distance events: California junior Sadie Engelhardt will run the 1500m, and Texas sophomore Elizabeth Leachman will run the 5,000m.
It’s great to see Eugene’s own Jenn Randall entered in both the 5,000m and the 1500m. In 2021, she had a big breakthrough and just missed qualifying for the Trials. Instead, she volunteered at the meet, escorting athletes to drug testing after their events.
If you want to follow who scratches and who gets a last-minute entry into the meet, watch this page.
Thanks to Brooks for sponsoring Fast Women this month
If you’re going to be in Eugene, Oregon, for the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials, make sure to stop by the Brooks Hyperion House at 894 E. 13th Avenue from June 21–24 and/or June 27–30. The pop-up experience will include group runs, guest speakers, food trucks, and much more. You can check out the full calendar of events and RSVP here.
And regardless of where you are, make sure to check out the Hyperion Series, which is built for you to push limits, whether you’re competing on the world’s biggest stage or chasing PRs. Tested and trusted by Brooks champions, the series harnesses the power and insights of athletes at the top of their game to help you run your best on race day. The latest in the series is the Hyperion Max 2, which is fast and protective for training at top speed and chasing your goals.
Here’s the more depressing section
I had a handful of people tell me last week that they dread looking at my Instagram stories this time of year, because there’s so much sad news, too. As David Ribich put it, “Right now posts are either ‘I’m going to crush’ or ‘I’m crushed.’” And even though some of these posts are tough to read, I always appreciate when athletes are transparent about their struggles.
Britton Wilson, who set the collegiate 400m record (since lowered) last spring, announced she won’t be racing at the Trials due to a lingering injury.
Rachel Smith disclosed that the injury she has been dealing with recently is a hamstring strain, and she has faced other challenges as well. She said that she’s not where she wanted to be going into the Trials, but she’s still holding on to some hope.
Emily Infeld said she’s working on getting herself to the 5,000m starting line in the best spot possible, but she has struggled this season. Most recently, she dropped out of the 5,000m at the Portland Track Festival. In another recent post, she said injuries and imbalances have made running less enjoyable for her recently.
Katie Rainsberger said in an Instagram post that doctors found a “moderately large mass” on her thymus a few weeks ago. She doesn’t know what type of tumor it is yet, but she thinks it has contributed to her athletic struggles in recent years. She has not raced since last summer.
Skylyn Webb ran fast enough to qualify for the Trials but scratched because she has been dealing with an injury.
Rebecca Mehra, who couldn’t quite hit the times she would have needed to race at the Trials, said she has been dealing with a series of injuries, including a tear in her Achilles.
Colleen Quigley raced the steeplechase at the Portland Track Festival in a last-ditch attempt to qualify for the Trials. She was disappointed to run 10:01.12 and miss out on qualifying, but it was also her first track race in more than a year.
She wasn’t planning to run the track Trials anyway, but Lindsay Flanagan shared that she took a sharp turn on icy, uneven ground in March and injured her ankle badly and broke her fibula. But in better news, she’s back to running now.
Five things about Amanda Vestri
ZAP Endurance’s Amanda Vestri has had a breakthrough in her first year of professional running. In May, the 24-year-old took third at the Night of the 10,000m PBs in London, running 31:10.52 and improving her personal best by 43.69 seconds.
Even more impressive than her time was the athletes she was able to challenge during the race. On a night when most runners weren’t running personal bests, Vestri stayed close to Great Britain’s Megan Keith, who ran 30:36.84 earlier this year, and Fiona O’Keeffe, who won the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in February.
Three weeks later, on June 8, Vestri finished fourth at the New York Mini 10K and was the top American finisher, running 31:17. Though the performance wasn’t a surprise after her run in London, it caught the attention of more U.S. fans. Next up, Vestri will run the 10,000m at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials, on June 29.
Her pro running dreams started early
Many professional runners will tell you that when they were kids, they didn’t know their profession existed. But Vestri started running when she was 11, and she knew in middle school that she wanted to be a pro runner. “I’m kind of an all-in type of person,” she told Fast Women. “I’m either going to go all-in on something or I’m not going to do it at all.”
And growing up in Webster, New York, where she faced runners like Katelyn Tuohy and Kelsey Chmiel, Vestri had to work hard to be competitive. She never won a state title, but racing tough competition prepared her for success on the national level in high school and beyond. She graduated with a 3,000m PR of 9:35.73.
Vestri kept her training volume around 30–40 miles per week in high school, but she kept her foot on the gas. “I ran everything at like 6:20 pace; I was sprinting every run,” she said. Her coach would tell her to slow down, but she didn’t listen. “Now I try to be a little bit more conscientious about not killing it every run,” she said.
She had three different college coaches, at two different schools
Vestri started off her collegiate career at Iowa State, coached by Andrea Grove-McDonough, but during her sophomore year, Amy Rudolph took over. Vestri says she still has great relationships with both coaches. At the end of her first year, she qualified to represent the U.S. at the World U20 Championships, where she finished 14th in the 3,000m. But at the end of her sophomore year, she decided to transfer to Syracuse, which would bring her closer to home.
“I felt like maybe [Iowa State] wasn’t the perfect fit for me and I just wanted to go somewhere where my long-term career was prioritized over anything in the short-term,” she said, pointing out that the Iowa State program has a different director now.
Vestri also chose Syracuse because she clicked with head coach Brien Bell. During the winter of 2021, she won the ACC indoor 5,000m title. And by the following fall, Vestri was in the shape of her life. She dominated the NCAA Northeast Regional in cross country, winning by 23 seconds over Kayley DeLay and Emily Mackay, who both run professionally now. But three days later, she suffered an injury and was unable to compete at the NCAA Championships the following weekend.
“I thought I had a chance to get top three at NCAAs, and cross country is my favorite season,” she said. “I had to watch the race and it was the worst feeling ever.”
Vestri had no cross country eligibility remaining, but she returned with a vengeance during the 2023 track season and earned first-team All-American honors by finishing sixth in the 5,000m at NCAA indoors and seventh in the 10,000m at NCAA outdoors. One month after finishing her collegiate career, she finished eighth in the 10,000m at the USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
When she graduated, shoe companies weren’t knocking down her door
As a two-time All-American who had run 32:08.26 for 10,000m, 15:42 for 5,000m, and 9:04.36 for 3,000m, Vestri did not get a lot of attention from shoe companies coming out of college. “It’s kind of tough out there, when you’re not an NCAA champion,” she said. “And as much as I advocated for myself, unless you have the times or the titles, no one really wants to believe that you’re going to do something.”
Vestri talked to the teams that were interested, and last fall, she signed with ZAP Endurance, based in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where she’s coached by Pete Rea. The team is actively looking for a shoe sponsor, but in the meantime, Vestri can train and race in any shoes she wants, and ZAP pays her salary.
There are two other women on the ZAP team at the moment—Tristin Van Ord and Annmarie Tuxbury—but Vestri has been doing most of her workouts with Josh Izewski, who is on the men’s team. He’ll do her workout with her and then do his own the following day, or vice versa.
She has (carefully) made a big jump in mileage this year
Vestri has gradually made a significant jump in mileage over the past year. In college, her mileage tended to be in the 50s or 60s, and it peaked around 80 miles per week. Now she consistently runs 90-mile weeks, and her mileage has peaked around 110. She manages the higher mileage by prioritizing her health and recovery. That means making sure she’s eating and sleeping enough, and that she has the energy left over to enjoy her life outside of training.
The marathon is in Vestri’s future, but she says she probably won’t touch the distance for a while. “I think we’ll probably look to make the (Olympic) team in 2028, but before then, I’m definitely still very focused on the distances I’m currently running,” she said.
Vestri cheered on her teammates at the 2024 Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando, Florida, and was inspired by the race, to a point. “It looked like it hurt really bad,” she said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, maybe I won’t run this for a little while.’”
She believes she can make the Olympic team
Vestri won the 2023 USATF National Club Cross Country Championships in December. She planned to race the USATF Cross Country Championships in January and earn a spot on the U.S. team for the World Athletics Cross Country Championships. But a poorly-timed muscle spasm in her piriformis took her out of the qualifying race. At the time, it felt like a massive blow, but now that her season is going as well as it is, she sees the silver lining.
Taking ten days off resolved the injury, and she made a last-minute decision to run the 10,000m at the TEN in March. She says the race was more like practice, and she wasn’t going super hard, but she won her heat in 31:54.22, a 14-second PR. In April, she lowered her 5,000m PR to 15:13.38. And though her 31:10 10,000m in London in May was a massive personal best, she was actually a little disappointed in the time, because she thought she was ready to break 31:00.
Vestri wasn’t really thinking about her world ranking until after the London race, when Puma Elite coach Alistair Cragg told her she had just earned a lot of points for her performance. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that sounds good,’” said Vestri.
Though she doesn’t have the Olympic standard in the 10,000m (30:40), if she finishes in the top three and runs fast enough at the Trials, she could make the U.S. Olympic team. Her best guess is that she would need to break 31 minutes to bump her world ranking high enough.
“All I know is I’m prepared to go out and race as fast as humanly possible,” she said. “Hopefully Eugene won’t be too hot, but if it is, I’ll be ready for that, too.” Vestri says she’ll be focusing both on racing and the time. “If I get top three and I run 32 minutes, that’s not going to do anything for me,” she said. “I think every other woman in the field, other than Weini (Kelati, who has the standard) needs to be thinking about running fast.”
Despite her recent momentum, Vestri will still go into the race as an underdog, with the eighth-fastest seed time. “While I do have a shot at making it, I don’t want to be disrespectful to the women who are in the field,” she said. “It is a hugely deep field and it’s going to take my best day to make the team.”
Faith Kipyegon is doing just fine
When Faith Kipyegon withdrew from the Xiamen Diamond League meet in April and the Prefontaine Classic in May, saying she had dealt with a small setback, there was some concern that she might not be at her best this season. But with her performances at the Kenyan Trials in Nairobi over the weekend, she made it clear that she’s still the athlete to beat.
In her first race in more than eight months, at about 6,000 feet of altitude, she ran 14:46.28 to win the 5,000m. She reportedly covered the last 1600m in about 4:21 and the last 800m in about 2:07. (You can watch most of the race here.) Beatrice Chebet, who recently set the 10,000m world record, finished second in 14:52.55.
The next day, Kipyegon led the 1500m from start to finish and won in 3:53.99, the fastest time ever run at significant altitude. And it was exciting to watch Susan Ejore of UA Mission Run Dark Sky Distance, who is based in Flagstaff, earn the third spot on the team with a 4:00.22. (1500m video)
The 800m was a thrilling race to watch. It looked like reigning world champion Mary Moraa was going to edge out her sister, Sarah Moraa, for the win, when Lilian Odira went flying by both of them to win in 1:58.28. Mary took second (1:59.35), and Sarah finished third (1:59.39). Odira has been improving rapidly in the 800m, including a 1.54-second PR here, and it will be interesting to see what she can do on the world stage. (Results)
Sadie Engelhardt, Allie Zealand lead the way at high school championships
Between the Brooks PR Invitational in Seattle, New Balance Nationals Outdoors in Philadelphia, and Nike Outdoor Nationals in Eugene, which combined with the USATF U20 Championships, high school kids had plenty of opportunities to run fast last week. (Adidas also has a high school championship, but it’s not attracting the top runners.)
A few races really stood out. First, Allie Zealand won the two-mile at Brooks PR in an outdoor high school record of 9:41.76. (Mary Cain ran faster indoors, with a 9:38.68.) It was a quick race overall, with the top five runners all breaking 10 minutes. In the 800m, Ali Ince was hoping to win her fourth-straight title, but she was outkicked by Sadie Engelhardt, 2:03.99 to 2:05.52. (Brooks PR results)
Three days later, all of the distance champions from Brooks PR raced the mile at NBNO. No one wanted to set the pace early, so the race went out slowly, but Engelhardt ran her last 800m in 2:08.60 and her last 400m in 61.76, and she won in a meet record of 4:37.04. Zealand took second in 4:39.16. In the 4x800m relay, New Jersey’s Jimmiea King (2:09.22), Peyton Hollis (2:09.01), Sophia Thompson (2:10.46), and Paige Sheppard (2:05.53), of Union Catholic High School, set a national record of 8:34.20. (New Balance results)
She’s no longer in high school, but it’s worth noting that Sophia Gorriaran won the 800m at the U20 Championships in 2:01.90 and earned a spot at the World Athletics U20 Championships in August. (U20/NON results)
Other News
On announced that Maia Ramsden and Olivia Markezich will join the On Athletics Club, and Carley Thomas is joining OAC Oceania.
Rachel McArthur, whom I featured last month, has signed with Asics. She’ll race the 1500m at the Trials.
Great Britain’s Jess Warner-Judd had a seizure with 600m remaining in the 10,000m at the European Championships, and she has been provisionally diagnosed with focal epilepsy. She said in an Instagram post that the first time it happened was at the TEN, in March.
Maddie Alm of Team Boss announced her retirement from professional running with this touching reel. I also appreciated Sam Murphy’s retirement post, which included the line, “It’s no surprise I had to be boiled into retirement like a frog.”
Outside published a feature on Faith Kipyegon.
Runner’s World UK did a Q&A with Georgia Bell, who quit competitive running but now hopes to become an Olympian.
The CBC wrote about Canada’s Malindi Elmore, who also took a long break from high-level running. The 44-year-old has been selected to run the Olympic marathon.
Paige Wood discussed her postpartum return to racing with the Arizona Daily Sun.
Camille Herron shared that she has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I was particularly interested to hear this, because I was already working on an article on autistic women who run. (It’s going to take a while, especially with the Trials and Olympics coming up. But if you have any personal experience here that you want to contribute, let me know.)
Additional Results
The Ethiopian 10,000m Trials took place on Friday in Nerja, Spain. Foyten Tesfay won in 29:47.71, Tsigie Gebreselama took second (29:49.33), and Ejgayehu Taye finished third (29:50.52). (Race replay | Results)
After winning the 5,000m earlier in the meet, Italy’s Nadia Battocletti won the 10,000m at the European Championships, in front of a home crowd, in a national record of 30:51.32. Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson won the 800m in 1:58.65. (Results)
New Zealand’s Maia Ramsden won the 1500m at the Harry Jerome Classic in 4:05.93. She was hoping to hit the Olympic standard of 4:02.50, but the race didn’t go out quickly. The meet included quite a few NCAA athletes, with Great Britain’s Elise Thorner winning the steeplechase in 9:40.73 and Australia’s Hayley Kitching winning the 800m in 2:01.95. Canada’s Gabriela DeBues-Stafford won the 5,000m, improving her time to 15:17.48. (Results)
Great Britain’s Calli Hauger-Thackery, who will run the Olympic marathon this summer, won the Podium Classic 5K in 15:04.
Kayla Lampe won the Mount Washington Road Race (7.6 miles, 4,650 feet of climbing) in 1:15:09. And Finland’s Laura Manninen, 51, finished second in 1:17:02. (Results)
Podcast Highlights
I appreciated the chance to hear the latest from runner and activist Rosalie Fish on The Appetite. It was difficult to hear about her struggles, but she’s incredible.
Madie Boreman was great on Women’s Running Stories. I appreciate her honesty, including the detail that her college coaches discouraged her from pursuing professional running, but she had the self-belief to do it anyway.
You can hear some of Amanda Vestri’s story in her own words on the Ali on the Run Show. It was also good to get an update from Krissy Gear, on another AOTR episode, heading into the Trials.
I enjoyed hearing from Molly Seidel on the Sweat Elite Podcast, and I always appreciate her hot takes and how she delivers them. (“For one, the fucking world rankings system? Nobody can understand it.”) She said she plans to run an American Marathon Major in the fall, which means Chicago or New York.
If you haven’t heard 1973 Boston Marathon champion Jacqueline Hansen tell her story, she was great on Running—State of the Sport.
Additional Episodes: Des Linden on The Freetrail Podcast | Kara Goucher on Finding Mastery | Jess Hull said on For the Kudos that she thinks it’s going to take 3:52 or faster to medal in the 1500m at the Olympics (she comes on 32:00 in) | Bayshore Marathon champion Emma Kertesz on I’ll Have Another | Canadian Olympian Courtney Babcock discussed her new venture, the Sport Specialist, on C Tolle Run
Thanks again to Brooks for sponsoring Fast Women this month. I’m also grateful to those of you who help keep Fast Women going with your support on Venmo and Patreon. Have a great week!
Alison
Subscribe to Fast Women
The latest in women's competitive distance running.