Fast Women: Silence in the running community

How Sara Lopez went from a 3:29 marathon to the Olympic Trials.

Issue 390

I asked one of my children for an illustration to go with this opening section, and she kindly came up with this on very short notice. (The other child said, “That’s like one percent of her true power, but she did a good job.”)

It’s hard to focus on how quickly people can run right now

With all of the news coming from Minnesota and beyond, it has been very difficult for me to focus on running recently. Social media is one of the main tools I use to stay on top of running news. And I’ve had to take a big step back from it this year, because sometimes it makes me want to scream.

On Instagram, I mostly follow people based on their speed. So here’s an oversimplification of how I experience the platform:

Los Angeles is on fire. The posts: “It’s race week!” Or “The air quality isn’t so great today, but thank goodness it didn’t affect my run.”

Another school shooting. The posts: “Here’s a post about an unrelated issue that starts off sounding like it might be profound, but it’s actually just an ad.”

ICE agents are terrorizing Minnesotans and ripping them off the streets. The posts: “Here’s what I was up to in 2016!”

I don’t think it’s the responsibility of everyone with an online presence to weigh in on everything or cover serious topics all of the time. And sure, sometimes Instagram can be a good escape. But when the runners with the most privilege never acknowledge anything important happening around them, especially as circumstances grow more dire, it makes me feel less enthusiastic about hearing how their race went, where they’re currently traveling, or seeing a random collection of photos they took over the past month.

I understand that some people’s situations are complicated, and it’s not my place to tell people what they should or shouldn’t post online. They can do what they want, but it also affects how I feel about engaging with their running content and how excited I am about how quickly they can put one foot in front of another. This isn’t just about pro runners; it’s running brands, it’s running media, and much of the running community as a whole. And I know I’m not alone in feeling like this, because I frequently receive messages about it.

The relative silence from the running community has made me all the more grateful for the people who have spoken up. (And I’m always grateful for the people—usually from marginalized groups—who never stopped speaking up.) The bar is so very low right now. Even just acknowledging what’s happening feels like a big deal at the moment. That’s the starting point, and then we’re going to need to do so much more.

In an Instagram story on Friday, University of Minnesota coach Sarah Hopkins wrote, “It’s meet day, but it’s also a day that half our team and staff is having to plan how to have their ‘documents’ with them at all times, so let’s not lose the plot…”

Marathoner Gabi Rooker wrote in a longer post, “Regardless of your stance on immigration, please realize this is different. The goal is chaos. What’s happening here in Minnesota is not what you see in the media; it’s much worse.”

The Minnesota Distance Elite newsletter acknowledged that a runner who was part of their group training program has been detained by ICE. MDE runner Cailee Peterson wrote that it’s hard to be an educator and know that the safety of the children in her community is not guaranteed. And I appreciate Kara Goucher repeatedly speaking her mind as well.

But the voices I’ve appreciated the most in the sport over the past year are those of Mangonada podcast hosts Carolina Rubio-MacWright and Vanessa Chavarriaga Posada. As immigrants, both are taking a risk by speaking out and helping others. But they’re continuing to do so because they understand what’s at stake. And it’s been painful to see so few people in the running community have their backs.

Rubio-MacWright and Chavarriaga Posada put out a new episode last week, and if you want to learn more or do more, it’s a great place to start.

“It’s time for people to wake up,” Rubio-MacWright said on the episode. “It’s time for people to get really entrenched in their communities and on the ground and start really connecting and checking where your vulnerabilities are and actually making others feel uncomfortable if they’re not talking about this. See how far you’re willing to put your body in civil disobedience and what type of training you’re willing to [do] in order to fight for the democracy that you all claim to have in this country. I made an oath to the constitution and this is why I fight so hard, because I really do believe in it.”

If you want to speak up and you don’t have the words yet, you can boost what other people are saying. And if you’re one of the people who is already consumed by what’s happening and you’re doing everything you can, whether it’s online or offline, please make sure you’re taking care of yourself when you can.

The start of the women’s 2004 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, which were held in St. Louis.

The 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials will be in St. Louis or Phoenix

We’ve known for a while that Phoenix was bidding to host the 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, and last week, more of the running world caught on to the fact that St. Louis was bidding, too. LetsRun’s Jonathan Gault received confirmation from USATF that they were the only two cities to submit a bid.

I’ve been pointing out since the beginning that RFP document states that the race must be held on either March 25 or 26, 2028, between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. ET, and more people seemed to figure that out last week. For Phoenix, that could mean starting around 9:00 a.m. local time, and for St. Louis, that would be 11:00 local time.

It’s easy to form opinions about which city would be a better host, but I imagine—assuming less drama this time (Runner’s World)—that the decision will come down to details beyond the weather or which city would be more fun. Like who can afford to host, which city is going to be easier for USATF to work with, or who is more likely to pull off a successful event.

St. Louis hosted the women’s trials in 2004. I was there but most of what I remember is from the race itself. That’s probably a good sign, because if anything went poorly, it would have stuck with me. I do remember hopping in the Spirit of St. Louis Half Marathon the following day, and there was also a marathon option. I’m not sure any comparisons between then and now would be useful, though. Events are so different these days, as you can probably see from the above photo. (Citius Mag has a little more on the Phoenix bid here.)

Sara Lopez finishes the 2024 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. (Photo by Amy Roberts)

How Sara Lopez went from a 3:29 marathon to the Olympic Trials

Sara Lopez is a two-time U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier who once wasn’t fast enough to run for her college team. But over the past three years, the 26-year-old has been on a remarkable trajectory. In December, she finished 16th at the California International Marathon in a personal best of 2:32:18, nearly one hour faster than she ran in her first marathon five years earlier.

Lopez was a good high school runner. She mainly focused on the 800m and was adamant about avoiding the longer distances. She started out at Central Kitsap High School in Washington, but her junior year, her family moved to Massachusetts. At Belmont High School, she ran her lone season of high school cross country, finishing 62nd at the state meet in a personal best of 19:37 for 5K. During the track season, she lowered her 800m PR to 2:15.76.

Lopez dreamed of running collegiately for BYU and hoped to use her senior track season to shave a few more seconds off her 800m time and meet the school’s walk-on standard. But her parents’ work moved her family to Mexico City for her final year of high school, and she ended up at a school without a track program.

She tried to build her fitness on her own, but without a coach or much guidance, Lopez went down an unhealthy path of overexercising and undereating. “I thought that if I wanted to be really fit, I needed to eat really healthy,’” she told Fast Women. “And that spiraled into an eating disorder.”

Hitting rock bottom

By the time Lopez arrived at BYU in the fall of 2017, she wasn’t healthy enough to try out for the team. But she made some friends who were training for a half marathon and decided to join them. She ran a 1:29 and decided that maybe the longer distances weren’t so bad. But her early years at BYU were a struggle, because her eating disorder affected all aspects of her life.

“I was a terrible roommate. I was really rigid and strict in everything I was doing and just depressed, honestly,” she said. “So that made any social interactions really difficult, and it made studying really difficult. I remember walking across campus in this sort of brain fog because I didn’t have enough nutrients in me to focus very well.”

Eventually, Lopez realized she was not going to get better on her own, and her mother helped her find a therapist who specialized in eating disorders. “I think [the therapist] saved me, and I’m really grateful for her,” she said. During her recovery, Lopez took a year or two off from running. It had begun to feel like a tool for burning calories rather than something she enjoyed, and she needed to repair her relationship with the sport.

As Lopez recovered, running gradually became a part of her life again. In 2020, she married Sam Lopez, and one of her new brothers-in-law was training for a marathon, so she decided to join him. She followed a beginner marathon training plan that she found online, but she still had a lot to learn about training, hydration, and mid-race fueling. The last eight miles were particularly painful—it didn’t help that the race took place 5,000 feet above sea level—but Lopez finished the 2020 East Canyon Marathon in Morgan, Utah, in 3:29:08.

“It was so hard and so not fun. I was like, ‘I’m never doing that again. That was the worst experience of my life,’” she said.

Becoming an elite marathoner

After the marathon, Lopez planned to take a long break from running. She began attending a fitness studio owned by one of her neighbors, and there she met Daniella Cullimore, who was hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon. She invited Lopez to train with her.

“That was when my running became more [about] the community that it gave me,” she said. “[Daniella] was such a key part in helping me restore my relationship with running beyond burning calories or running a certain pace. I really owe a lot of the goals that I later made to her.”

The two ran a half marathon together and Lopez lowered her time to a 1:23. Then a family friend reached out and suggested that she get a coach—something she didn’t realize non-professional athletes could do after college. She kept the thought in the back of her mind.

In the summer of 2021, Lopez was watching the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials when the commentators mentioned that 1500m competitor Sarah Lancaster was a full-time lawyer. Until then, she didn’t know that it was possible to race at that level while holding such a demanding job. She reached out to Lancaster on Instagram and asked her how she was able to compete at such a high level, who coached her, and who she trained with.

Lancaster’s response prompted Lopez to begin working with a coach in the fall of 2021, and her running quickly took off. The biggest change was having a structured plan in place and doing more intentional workouts. Before that, her training was a lot more sporadic, and she would throw speedwork into almost everything she did.

Lopez hadn’t run a 5K since high school cross country, but in her next race, she lowered her PR by about two minutes. Then she lowered her half marathon time to 1:20. But her big breakthrough came at the 2022 Mesa Half Marathon, where Lopez ran 1:14:55 and finished less than five minutes behind Molly Seidel, who had just won a bronze medal in the Olympic Marathon. Lopez ran a six-minute PR and made sure to get a photo with Seidel afterward.

Several months later, Lopez won the Utah Valley 10K in an impressive 32:59. In April of the following year, Lopez lined up for her second marathon, a completely different runner than she had been in her debut two and a half years earlier. Despite making a mid-race bathroom stop, she dominated the 2023 Eugene Marathon, winning in 2:33:50 and comfortably qualifying for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. She PRed by 55 minutes and 18 seconds.

“It was one of those dream days that every athlete hopes to have, where you know you’re going to accomplish your goal,” she said. “But it was still pretty surreal to actually do it.”

After Eugene, Lopez was so excited about her race that she returned to training a bit too quickly and overdid things, which landed her in an injury cycle. In December 2023, she parted ways with her coach and began working with Kaitlin Goodman. With the Trials fast approaching, Lopez’s goal was to make it to the starting line healthy, and not worry too much about her fitness. All things considered, she had a strong race, finishing 72nd in 2:40:55. And, recognizing how far she’d come, she was thrilled to be there.

Private struggles amidst running success

Though Lopez’s improvement the last several years has been incredible, she has often felt tension between her running goals and her desire to have children. She and her husband first tried to seek help from a fertility specialist early in 2024, but because they were so young, they were told they needed to wait a year. In the meantime, the doctor told Lopez to stop running—a frustrating suggestion given how central the sport is to her life.

A year later, she finally saw a specialist, who told her it was fine to continue running. “We found more underlying things that I wish I had known about, so I didn’t have to feel so guilty all the time about running,” she said.

The uncertainty has taken an emotional toll. “I would have these plans like I’m going to be pregnant by this time, so this race I signed up for isn’t going to happen,” she said. “But then race day would come, and I wouldn’t be pregnant, and I would feel so disconnected and mentally out of the race.”

It has helped having a coach who understands. Goodman is a former professional runner and a mother. Leading into CIM, Lopez’s priority was securing her Olympic Trials qualifier (2:37:00 or faster), and in 2026, many of her decisions will center around her desire to grow her family.

“For a long time, I was operating in this limbo; I was kind of training as if I was going to get pregnant, so when I didn’t, it felt like I had failed. With CIM, I went all in on training, but I tried to be open to anything else that came up. If I got pregnant, or didn’t qualify, or couldn’t race, I realized it was going to be okay. It had nothing to do with my worth or my identity as a runner. I love to run, but being a runner isn’t all that I am.”

In working with Goodman, Lopez has replaced some of her easy miles with cross training, which has helped her stay healthy. She averaged 60-65 miles per week leading up to CIM, with a peak week of 68 miles. Instead of a four-mile recovery run, she might opt for the bike or elliptical.

Lopez lives in Port Orchard, Washington. While she occasionally travels an hour to Seattle to run with other women, she does most of her training alone. She works full time in market research, and working from home gives her greater flexibility in when she trains. (Her husband also works from home, and it’s not unusual to see their pet cockatiel, Giannis, on his shoulder throughout the day.)

At CIM, Lopez started conservatively, but picked up the pace throughout. She hit halfway in 1:17:09 and ran the second half two minutes faster. Her gun time of 2:32:23 was a personal best by 87 seconds. Given her conservative approach to the race and her training, Lopez is excited to find out what she can do down the road.

And with her Trials qualifying time out of the way, she’s still making goals and putting races on her calendar, while remaining open to the idea that those plans might change.

Other News

• Ireland’s Ciara Mageean, who has been battling cancer, announced that she has a book, My Greatest Race, coming out on June 18. It’s available for preorder here, but it’s not clear if/when it will be released in the U.S.

• It sounds like there will be an announcement tomorrow that Fiona O’Keeffe, Natosha Rogers, and others are running the Boston Marathon.

• Taylor Dutch wrote about six-time U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier Dot McMahan for Runner’s World. Her former teammate, Des Linden, could also run her sixth-straight Trials in 2028, if she chooses to do so. She gets an automatic entry into the event as a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic marathon squad.

• Great Britain’s Sarah Porter had to be pulled from the 108-mile Winter Spine Challenger South race 30 miles in when race organizers became aware of death threats directed at her. She was using the race as a fundraiser to support girls and young women in Afghanistan, and the news coverage she has received has led to an outpouring of support.

• The indoor season ramps up this weekend with Saturday’s New Balance Indoor Grand Prix. The start lists are available here, and the meet will be shown live on NBC and Peacock starting at 2:30 p.m. ET.

• Des Linden is planning to race the Black Canyon 50K on February 15. (Molly Seidel is targeting the 100K.)

Results Highlights

• ’Tis the season to set records in less commonly run events. Arkansas’ Sanu Jallow-Lockhart set a collegiate 600m record (and Gambian record) of 1:24.19 at the Arkansas Invitational, taking 0.97 seconds off the mark that Britton Wilson established in 2023. Arkansas’ Sydney (Thorvaldson) Vaught edged out Taylor Werner to win the mile, 4:33.35 to 4:33.73. (Results)

• At the Nittany Lion Challenge, Penn State’s Haley Kitching set a collegiate 1,000m record (and Australian record) of 2:38.45, taking 0.13 seconds off the Danae Rivers’ mark from 2019. (Results)

• At the Washington Indoor Preview, Stanford’s Juliette Whittaker actually ran faster in the 1,000m, holding off Washington’s Chloe Foerster 2:37.54 to 2:37.79. But because of UW’s “oversized” track, it doesn’t count as a record. (How many times will I have to say that this season?) Maggi Congdon, now representing the Swoosh TC, won the mile in 4:27.77, and about two hours later, she also won the 800m (2:00.93). Both Congdon and mile runner-up Taryn Parks (4:29.28) broke 4:30 for the first time. (Edit: This was Congdon’s second time breaking 4:30, and she tied her PR, which was the source of my confusion.) And speaking of records that won’t count, Anna Connor, 40, ran 9:38.13 in the 3,000m, which is faster than the U.S. masters record. (Results)

• At KU’s Thane Baker Invitational, Gabija Galvydyte set a Lithuanian record in the 1,000m, running 2:35.17. (Results)

• On her home track, at the Lumberjack Team Challenge, NAU’s Hayley Burns won the mile in 4:35.77, but the NCAA converts that to an NCAA-leading 4:25.76 because she was 6,877 feet above sea level. (Results)

• At the University of Colorado’s Potts Invitational, Val Constien won the mile in 4:35.03, at 5,337 feet above sea level. (Results)

• On Saturday, Michelle Rohl, 60, set an American 60-64 age-group record of 5:29.05 at the Hartshorne Mile, and one day later, she broke the world 60-64 age-group record in the 3,000m racewalk, covering the distance in 15:09.64. (Mile results | 3,000m RW results)

• At Sunday’s USATF New York Open/Masters meet, four-time Olympian Joetta Clark Diggs, 63, lowered her own American 60-64 age-group record in the 200m, running 28.17 seconds. (Results)

• At the Distance in the Desert meet in Arizona, Jess McClain won the West Mile Showdown in a PR of 4:34.36, and also picked up a win in the 3200m, where she ran 9:54.38. (Results)

• Bahrain’s Winfred Yavi dominated the Cross Internacional Juan Muguerza in Elgoibar, Spain, covering the 7.62K course in 25:23. (Results)

Podcast Highlights

It was difficult for me to get into most podcasts last week (aside from the latest episode of Mangonada, of course). But I appreciated hearing a little more about Hannah England’s experience as the sole commentator at the World Cross Country Championships (she deserves a medal) at the beginning of the Podium Athletics podcast.

On I’ll Have Another, Laura Thweatt’s telling of the story of her first day coaching the On Athletics Club was very amusing. On C Tolle Run, Australia’s Jessica Hull talked about winning relay gold at the World Cross Country Championships. And I appreciated getting an Annie Rodenfels update on D3 Glory Days, even if it was recorded a couple of months ago.

And on the USATF Journey to Gold Zone Podcast (available on Spotify), Ednah Kurgat and Karissa Schweizer did a post-Worlds 15-minute interview with much better audio than the mixed zone. It sounds like Kurgat is gearing up for the World Military Cross Country Championships in Greece at the beginning of March. The U.S. should probably be barred from competing, but what irony that we will be represented by an immigrant.

Additional Episodes: Hope Walz was a good get for the Ali on the Run Show | Erika Kemp discussed her PR at the Houston Half on Relay | Keira D’Amato on On the Runs | Dakotah Popehn on Running—State of the Sport | Shelby Houlihan on Women of Distance | Carter Norbo on Road to the Trials | Rena Elmer on Run Farther & Faster

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I hope you are all hanging in there.

Alison