Fast Women: Sinclaire Johnson sets an American record in December

How a community helped Bridget Blum to an OTQ.

Issue 385

“Post too long for email”

Any dedicated readers of this newsletter know that in email form, my posts usually get cut off at the end. Until last week, it was easy enough to click to download the remainder of the message. But last week, Substack began trying to get people to download the app in order to read truncated posts.

I know the last thing many people need is another app on their phone. So I wanted to make it clear that another way to read the full post is to click on the Fast Women logo at the top of any newsletter. That will take you to the web version. Sorry this is a pain, and I wish I was better at writing shorter newsletters, but I wanted to make it clear that it’s not necessary to have the Substack app to read the full newsletter. And you can read the rest of last week’s newsletter here.

A call for nominations: Help recognize someone amazing in the running community

I’m including this higher up in the newsletter this week. Although I’ve received some beautiful nominations already, if I’m going to dedicate a newsletter to recognizing some of the good things and people in the sport, I’m going to need a lot more.

It’s been such a tough year in so many ways, but I want to recognize some of the people in the sport who are doing great things. This could be your running partner, your coach, someone you admire from afar, a volunteer, a race director, or so on. It can be people who have already been mentioned in this newsletter. I’d love to hear who you think deserves recognition for who they are or what they do, for reasons both big and small.

To nominate someone, please fill out this form.

I think you can all tell this isn’t Hawaii, but it is Sinclaire Johnson. (Photo by Gregorio Denny)

Sinclaire Johnson breaks an American record in the “off season”

December is generally considered to be part of the down season in track & field, but not for Sinclaire Johnson, who set an American road mile record of 4:21.66 in winning Saturday’s Kalakaua Merrie Mile, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Racing in windy conditions, Johnson was the only athlete to follow pacer Aurora Rynda of Canada, and they quickly gapped the field. When Rynda exited the race, Johnson was on her own, but she had built enough of a lead that she was able to hold off all challengers. One of the fun features of this event is that it’s an equalizer race. This year, the women’s field got a 31-second head start, and Johnson had a strong group of challengers chasing her.

Johnson’s time was an event record, the fastest time ever on U.S. soil, and only 0.68 seconds off of Diribe Welteji’s world record. It was particularly impressive considering that the course includes a hairpin turn. If you’re thinking, wait, Karissa Schweizer ran 4:14.8 at the Fifth Avenue Mile, first, you have a good memory (I had to look that up) and second, you’re right. But a number of established road miles aren’t record-eligible because they are point-to-point and/or net downhill.

Additionally, in 2023, World Athletics made the road mile an official world record distance. That meant that performances needed to meet a different set of criteria in order to be ratified, so the previous world bests were scrapped, and they started over. That’s one reason that the road mile records are significantly slower than the track records.

On the broadcast, it briefly looked like Johnson might have run something close to 4:13, which didn’t seem right, but it turned out that the on-screen clock had started late. She earned $10,000 for the win, and Nikki Hiltz, last year’s champ, earned $5,000 as the second person across the line. And everyone in the field got a vacation in Hawaii—a major part of the race’s appeal. Hiltz’s time, 4:24.50, was 3.89 seconds faster than they ran last year. (Results | Race replay)

The following day, Great Britain’s Calli Hauger-Thackery won the marathon in 2:30:44 and Annika Reiss won the 10K in 34:20. (Results)

Change for young 800m stars Athing Mu-Nikolayev and Roisin Willis

Jonathan Gault reported on Friday night that Athing Mu-Nikolayev, 23, has parted ways with her coach, Bobby Kersee, and moved to Dallas. “I’m sure they’ll seek out good coaching and once she’s healthy, then she’s going to be very difficult to beat,” Kersee told LetsRun. “She’s that talented. I think it was a blessing for me to coach her, I enjoyed coaching her. I loved her attitude, I loved her support. There’s nothing whatsoever I regret.”

Had Mu-Nikolayev spent five years in the NCAA, as many athletes do, she would just be starting her first year as a pro. I think going pro early often leads young runners to face more scrutiny and dissection of their every move. I get that that’s how the sports world works, but especially when anyone is struggling, it’s an area in which I wish we wouldn’t copy the rest of the sports world.

My only strong feeling here is disappointment in myself for not noticing her in the Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot results—which is what tipped some people off—given that looking at way too many turkey trot results is my specialty. But to be fair, she finished 11th, so she didn’t make the results summary. Under the name Ting Nikolayev, she ran 19:57 for 5K.

Mu-Nikolayev has not commented on any of this publicly. I’ve sometimes wondered how she feels about Kersee breaking news for her. Either way, it’s unlikely to happen anymore.

Earlier the same day, Roisin Willis announced her decision to forgo her final year of NCAA eligibility and go pro. Willis, 21, is the reigning NCAA outdoor and USATF outdoor 800m champion, so it makes sense to strike while the iron is hot. I will be curious to hear more details, like what brand she’s signing with (she has an NIL deal with New Balance), where she’ll be based, and whether she’s going to finish out the year at Stanford.

Bridget Blum on her way to a 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying time at the 2025 California International Marathon. (Photo by Steven Anderson)

How a community helped Bridget Blum to an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying time

At the California International Marathon on December 7, Bridget Blum ran an eight-minute personal best of 2:36:41 to qualify for the 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. It was a breakthrough performance for an athlete who believed that her chance to qualify had passed.

What made the result even more striking was everything that led up to it. In the months before the race, Blum, 31, faced some of the hardest challenges of her life, and she relied on a network of friends, teammates, and family to get her to the starting line, ready to run well.

“Everyone has a village that helps them run a marathon,” Blum told Fast Women. “But my village held me up in ways that I will never forget.”

A reluctant runner

The community aspect of running has long been essential to Blum, but it took her a couple years to figure that out. She began running in middle school when her mother—who was an athlete but not a runner at the time—became the school’s coach, partially to encourage her to try the sport. Blum hated it at first.

That continued into her freshman year at San Francisco University High School, when she would sometimes skip practice and splash water on her face just before her parents picked her up, so they would think she had been running. But it didn’t take her long to realize that she really enjoyed spending time with her teammates. And their running inspired her and showed her that it was cool to work hard.

University High had one of the best Division 5 teams in the state, and they were coached by Jim Tracy, who was living with ALS and would become the subject of a documentary. His determination to continue to show up for his team inspired everyone on the team to give their best, and by Blum’s junior and senior years, she was the one leading her team to state titles in cross country.

Blum could have run in any division in college, but she chose Claremont McKenna, a Division III school. In her first season, she became a cross country All American, and she thought she would continue to have that level of success. But she was pushing herself too hard in an attempt to keep up with her older and faster teammates and simultaneously underfueling. The combination proved to be unsustainable, and she suffered a series of bone injuries. She ran well off and on, and earned All-America honors in cross country again her senior year but never reached her full potential during college.

But she has a lot of good memories from her college running experience as well. “It became this environment where I really fell in love with the community of running,” she said. “I found a connection with my teammates that changed the course of my life, because I realized how much I love this sport and these people.”

Becoming a marathoner

Blum left college in 2016 feeling burned out and certain she was done with the competitive side of the sport. She still ran most days for social reasons, and though her friends were running marathons, she couldn’t envision joining them. But in 2020, she went to the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta to cheer on several friends who had qualified for the race.

“Watching the race, what hit me most wasn’t the times or the celebrity of these people, it was just the joy and the love that they shared,” she said. “I remember seeing them at the finish line with their faces wrecked, but they were smiling and falling into each other’s arms. You got this feeling of ‘we survived this together.’ That race really cracked something open in me, and it was the first time I wanted to be part of this crazy world of marathoners.”

She began doing more focused training and signed up for the 2021 California International Marathon (CIM). Two days before the race, she got a call from her parents saying a scan revealed that her sister, who was in her 20s, had a brain tumor. Blum was certain it was a mistake, but the next day, her sister was diagnosed with grade three brain cancer.

Blum dedicated her race to her sister and had a strong debut, running 2:44:51. Two years earlier, that would have been enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials, but the new Trials qualifying time (OTQ), 2:37:00, had just been announced. “I felt like the door kind of closed right as I arrived,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh well, I missed my window.’ And I made peace with that.”

Blum ran two more marathons in 2023—a 2:45:34 at Grandma’s Marathon and a 2:45:45 at CIM. “I just kept working harder but the clock wouldn’t budge,” she said. She began to lose her motivation to run marathons, and chasing a time wasn’t fun anymore.

After nearly two years off from marathoning, Blum, who lives in San Francisco, felt ready to try again. She signed up for the 2025 Chicago Marathon, but she was doing most of her training solo, and she wasn’t having fun. About a month in, she decided to withdraw from the race and find some teammates.

She had some friends who were part of the Peninsula Distance Club (PDC), coached by Dena Evans, but she had previously ruled out the option, thinking she wasn’t fast enough to be part of the team. With some trepidation, she reached out to Evans, attended her first practice at the beginning of August, and began training for CIM.

“I immediately felt so ingrained in this team,” Blum said. “Everyone was so supportive and encouraging, no matter what pace you were running. I started to realize I was faster than I thought, and I could actually run near these women or maybe even with them.”

Blum said Evans read her well, too, and knew how to foster her drive. “She gave me the carrot, but encouraged me to come up with the goals myself. She never told me, ‘I want this for you. I want you to OTQ.’”

Blum began attending the team’s practices twice a week, and informally meeting up with team members other days as well. And surrounded by so many strong runners, she immediately found that she was able to handle faster training. Her teammates also helped her achieve a breakthrough with her fueling.

Blum’s underfueling during college was intentional—she mistakenly believed that it would help her get faster. When she graduated and stopped running competitively, she was able to let a lot of that go. In retrospect, she believes that one of the reasons she wasn’t getting faster in the marathon was that she was unintentionally underfueling before and during her races, as well as during training. And despite her previous coach’s encouragement to fuel better, none of it fully clicked until she joined the PDC and saw what her teammates were doing.

“This cycle, I saw people took fueling as seriously as they took running, and that showed me that this isn’t an add-on to our training; this is part of the training,” she said. “And as long as you’re marathon training, you have to be training your body to take in the amount of carbs that you need.” During every workout and long run, Blum practiced taking in fuel, partially so it would help her keep up with her teammates.

Life-changing news, and an outpouring of support

Not long into her time with the PDC and about a year into her marriage, Blum’s world turned upside down. She was on her way home from practice in September when she got a call from her husband, Julian Sheinbaum, saying he could not stop vomiting. She rushed home, took him to the ER, and they were considering sending him home, saying he probably had the flu or vertigo, when a CT scan revealed that there was something more serious going on.

Still in her running clothes, Blum stayed at the hospital until midnight before going home, sleeping for three hours, and then getting up to run 20 miles with her teammate, Jenny Grimshaw. “She helped me feel less alone and was there for me. That run wasn’t about training, but it was cathartic,” Blum said.

She made it back to the hospital before Sheinbaum woke up and they learned that he had suffered a brain hemorrhage and a stroke. And over the next month, he had two more strokes and needed emergency brain surgery. The surgery went well, but his vision was affected, and he had to relearn how to walk, feed himself, and needed constant care. The pair canceled their honeymoon.

It would have been understandable if Blum had canceled her racing plans, too. But running became a lifeline. “It was the only thing that felt normal, the only place where my brain could rest, and the only time that I actually felt like myself,” she said.

Because Blum was still new to the team, she wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to talk about something so personal at practice, but she did, and her team rallied around her, as did many others in her life.

“I was able to draw so much strength from these people, and also elevate my running, because the people around me enabled me to do that,” she said. “Like I was able to go to practice, because friends came to sit with Julian, and I realized one of the reasons that we do this sport is to make community, and a team really powers you through it.”

At one point, Grimshaw went to the hospital without Blum knowing and filmed a funny video with Sheinbaum, that she didn’t send her until the night before CIM, to lighten the mood. “I was just surrounded by so many people quietly supporting me,” Blum said. “They didn’t make it showy or flashy, they were just really there for me, and it was amazing.”

Through all of the challenges, Blum found a way to balance her caregiver role, her full-time work for an AI company, and her training. But two weeks out from CIM, while Sheinbaum was still in the hospital, her parents called to say that her sister’s health had declined, and she’d been hospitalized. The news felt like the final straw. “I thought, ‘This is the world telling me my running is not important in all of this.’”

It was Sheinbaum who convinced her to keep going. “He saw how much joy I was getting out of this training block, how much I love being a part of the PDC team, and how much success I was having for the first time in a really long time,” she said. “And he said there was nothing more important to him than me carrying on with this race.”

And though she was already receiving constant support, it was amplified in the final weeks leading up to CIM. “One friend came to live with me so that I wouldn’t be alone,” she said. “And I had other friends write me every single day and send flowers, food, and fun gifts. I would go on runs with friends and just cry the whole time on one run and then laugh on another. My friends just knew how to support me, and they didn’t let me carry any of this alone.”

On Thanksgiving, Sheinbaum was released from the hospital. He still faces a long road back, but his doctors expect that he will continue to make progress. And Blum’s parents decided that her sister would return home to San Francisco to be with family and receive comfort care, which has meant the two have been able to spend a lot of time together.

Members of the Peninsula Distance Club, and friends, after the California International Marathon. Blum is fifth from the left. (Photo by Steven Anderson)

Becoming a Trials Qualifier

The night before CIM, Blum’s sister sent her a video that she watched repeatedly leading up to the race. “She told me that the race was not about the time,” Blum said. “She told me to run to enjoy what my body can do, to feel the wind in my hair, and hear the crowds. She told me to run towards love, peace, and light, and to run towards her. And I really felt like I did that with every step.”

Blum’s friend and former coach, Teresa McWalters, encouraged her to dedicate every five miles of the race to someone. So she ran the first five for the friends who helped her through the hardest part of her life, the next five for her PDC teammates, who believed in her when she didn’t. The next five were for her parents, and miles 15-20 were dedicated to Sheinbaum, who refused to let her quit. And the last 6.2 was for her sister. “I wanted the hardest miles to belong to the strongest person I know,” Blum said.

Throughout her build, Blum had maintained that she wasn’t training to run a Trials qualifying time (sub-2:37:00). Her main goal was to break her four-year-old PR, and she also wanted to break 2:40. She had additional support on race day from Dmitry Kislyuk, who served as her personal pacer until she made the split toward the championship finish at the end of the race.

Evans recommended that they start out at 6:00-6:05 pace, which left them a little behind the massive pack chasing the Trials standard. Blum trusted Kislyuk and didn’t look at her watch the entire time. They hit halfway in 1:18:33, and she was feeling good.

She had her fueling plan written on her arm, and she made sure to stick to it. Blum was in the seeded section of the race, which meant she had a good spot on the starting line, but she didn’t qualify for bottle service. She tried drinking the water offered along the course, but that didn’t go well. Those around her who did have personal bottles were willing to share what was left in theirs. It was a bit of bottle roulette, and the fueling plan would be impossible to replicate, but it worked out.

Around 18 miles into the race, she ran by McWalters, her former coach, who knelt down alongside the course and almost whispered, “You’re going to OTQ today.” Blum was shocked. The thought hadn’t really crossed her mind until then, but it gave her a lot of motivation in the remaining miles. The last three miles, in particular, were tough. Blum had a cramp, and she felt nauseated, but she held it all together until she crossed the finish line in 2:36:41, qualifying for the Trials with 19 seconds to spare.

At the finish, she was embraced by six of her Peninsula Distance Club teammates, who had already broken 2:37, and were thrilled to see her. But that was short-lived as much of the fuel she had taken in during the race started coming back up.

Soon after, Sheinbaum rolled up in his wheelchair, yelling in delight. “I just remember thinking, ‘This is the most love I’ve ever felt,’” Blum said. “I was just so grateful. And I felt like I was still being carried by the village of people who let me do this race and refuse to let me quit.”

For the first time, Brooks XC produces the same top three as NXN

Okay, technically Brooks XC Championships took place for the first time this year. But for all intents and purposes, the event was a continuation of the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships (with some tweaks), an event that has been around since 1979.

In late August, Foot Locker announced its decision to end the event it had held for 45 years. Many big stars came up through the sport running at the Foot Locker regionals and nationals, and they didn’t want to see the event go. And two past champions—Julia Stamps Mallon and Jorge Torres—got involved in the effort to save it. Within a week, Brooks stepped in.

From afar, the event seemed to go smoothly, especially when you consider how little time the organizers had to prepare, and the race still attracted many of the top high school runners. If there was any doubt who the country’s top three runners were after NXN last week, Natasza Dudek, Blair Bartlett, and Jaelyn Williams solidified the results by going 1-2-3 at Brooks XC as well. Dudek and her sister, Zofia Dudek, became the only siblings to both win the race. And Melody Fairchild’s Balboa Park course record of 16:39, from 1990, survived another year.

It was a fun race to watch, I’m grateful to Brooks for stepping in to save the meet, and I hope it will continue for many years to come. (Results | Race replay | 18-minute video that covers the effort to save the event)

Correction: In my rush last week, I mistakenly wrote that Natasza Dudek’s NXN win would give her a chance to represent the U.S. at next month’s World Cross Country Championships. But it turns out that, like her sister, she represents Poland. So runner-up Blair Bartlett is the one who will take the spot on the U20 team.

Other News

• Grand Slam Track announced last week that they have filed for bankruptcy, except they framed it as “[taking] action to reposition the league for sustainable growth.” Between the press release and their Instagram post (plus the way they announced the cancellation of the final meet), I’ve had enough with GST’s relentless positivity, because thus far, they haven’t been able to back it up. I hope they can somehow pull out of this and create a successful, sustainable league. It would be an incredible comeback story, but they’ve tarnished their reputation enough that it’s hard for me to see a path forward. It’s tough enough to build popular T&F events in the U.S., and now GST comes with a lot of extra baggage. According to the filing, GST has between $0 and $50,000 in assets and between $10 million and $50 million in liabilities. According to Front Office Sports, GST has laid off a few people, but not its entire staff. I believe founder Michael Johnson and others’ hearts were in the right place with this endeavor, but from a financial standpoint, the execution has been disastrous.

• The B.A.A. announced last week that all four defending champions, plus both American record holders will race the Boston Marathon in April. So on the women’s side, that means Kenya’s Sharon Lokedi and wheelchair division champion Susannah Scaroni are back, and Emily Sisson will run the race for the first time.

• This was a nice piece from Durham Magazine about Puma Elite.

• I appreciated this “letter to my nation” from Uruguay’s Julia Paternain, published by World Athletics.

• Jinghuan Liu Tervalon wrote about Rebecca Mehra’s “soft retirement” from professional running.

• I appreciate that this article about the World Cross Country Championships clarifies that the course at Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee has been transformed in preparation for the event. I’ve heard a few athletes talk about how fast the course is and compare it to a race track. And maybe it’ll still be fast, but the article indicates it will also include sand, water, mud, and “a signature rollercoaster element that will challenge even the sport’s elite.”

Melissa Courtney-Bryant wins the 3,000m at the 2025 New Balance Indoor Grand Prix.

Additional Results

• Italy’s Nadia Battocletti repeated as European Cross Country Champion in Lagoa, Portugal, finishing 15 seconds ahead of Great Britain’s Megan Keith, who fell at the start of the race but worked her way back up to the front. Spain’s Maria Forero won the U23 race and Great Britain’s Innes FitzGerald won the U20 race. (Results | Race replays—login required)

• Lauren Ryan won the Australian 10,000m title, running 32:06.66. (Results)

• Great Britain’s Melissa Courtney-Bryant won the Telford 10K in 31:31. (Results)

• Dakotah Popehn won the Dallas Half Marathon in 1:12:23. (Results)

• On Wednesday, four days after racing at Boston University, BYU’s Riley Chamberlain 1200m, 3:14), Sami Oblad (400m, 52 seconds), Tessa Buswell (800m, 2:07), and Jane Hedengren (1600m, 4:27) combined to run a 10:41.85 distance medley relay on BYU’s indoor track, at 4,500 feet. Using the NCAA’s altitude and track-size conversions, that equates to about a 10:33, which would be a world record. But you can’t use altitude conversions to set world records. And now, I assume, the distance runners get some rest. (Results)

Podcast Highlights

• Shortly before the London Marathon, I featured Jenny Grimshaw (also of the Peninsula Distance Club) here. Since then, she has run two marathon PRs, and I enjoyed getting an update from her on the Ali on the Run Show.

• It appreciated the chance to learn a little more about Gracie Morris on C Tolle Run.

• On Fast People, Marathon Project co-founder Ben Rosario gave an update on how race prep is going. I was surprised to hear the gold wave race is going to be as small as it is, but it’s apparent that they are doing everything they can to provide a quality experience for the runners they did get. He also discussed his decision to leave NAZ Elite, teaching middle school, dealing with anxiety, Grand Slam Track, whether he’d want to host the Olympic Marathon Trials, and more.

• I became a big fan of Canada’s Camryn Rogers, the reigning Olympic hammer champion, from hearing her on Podium Athletics. It’s truly unfortunate that all events are not treated equally in the sport, and I appreciated her opening up about her experience with homelessness as a teenager.

• Caitlin Phillips discussed qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials on NYRR’s Set the Pace. (She comes on around the 15:40 mark.)

• I featured Justine Fédronic back in August, and you can hear more of her story on The Lane 9 Podcast.

• I enjoyed Gabby Hentemann and Alyssa McElheny’s dynamic on Road to the Trials. They are part of the same team and qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials together, but they arrived there in pretty different ways.

Additional Episodes: Grayson Murphy on Keeping Track | Reigning NCAA Indoor 800m champion Makayla Paige of UNC on Beyond the Stride | Anna Gibson on The Drop (She comes on 55 minutes in, and this was recorded before it became clear just how good she was at skimo.)

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Even though I included fewer images this week, there’s almost no way this message didn’t get cut off, so if you started reading via email and you made it here, thanks for your dedication! We’re heading into some quieter weeks here racing-wise, but I’m excited to watch The Marathon Project on FloTrack on Sunday.

Thanks to everyone who helps keep this newsletter going with your support via Venmo or Patreon. I write a lot of words here, but I am unable to express the extent of my gratitude.

I hope you all have the best week possible.

Alison