Fast Women: The rise of the sub-elite runners
Facing challenges, three runners find a way forward.
Issue 380, sponsored by Bakline
Nine more women qualify for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Indianapolis
One of the most fun stories in women’s competitive distance running in the U.S. right now is the increase in depth at the sub-elite level. Last week, I mentioned the steep increase in the number of women breaking 3:00 at the New York City Marathon. And yes, I certainly get that it’s unfair to compare times run now to times run 10+ years ago. But even if the times mean different things now, there’s clearly more depth up front than there has been in the past.
And that was apparent at Saturday’s Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, where nine women broke 2:37:00 and qualified for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. Beyond that, 34 broke 2:45 and 102 broke 3:00.
Indy can be a great place to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials because of its fast course and easy logistics compared to the bigger races. It’s easier for sub-elites to qualify for personal bottle service along the course, and this year, the weather cooperated. As a result, Indy is behind only Chicago (12) and ahead of New York (5) with the number of new qualifiers it produced.
Amanda Mosborg, 26, led the Trials qualifiers, winning the race in a five-minute personal best of 2:32:01. She was a Division III All American for Carleton College before running at Northwestern for a year. For more on her story, she was on the D3 Glory Days podcast after she set a 10-minute personal best at this year’s Boston Marathon.
A pair of 2024 Trials qualifiers, Lucy Dobbs (2:32:42) and Anna Benedettini (2:33:12), took second and third, both PRing. Gabby Hentemann, who finished her collegiate eligibility at Oklahoma State last spring, finished fourth, running 2:34:27 in her first marathon.
It was great to see Alyssa McElheny, who missed qualifying for the 2024 Trials by 31 seconds, run 2:34:28 for fifth and knock her qualifier out early. She had a great post about how this has been a six-year pursuit. Macy (McAdams) McRowe, a former DIII standout for Muskingum University, had a huge day, finishing sixth in 2:36:10 and taking 13 minutes (!) off of her three-year-old PR. And Piper Atnip, another former DIII runner, took seventh in 2:36:18. Atnip is a full-time teacher who used a GoFundMe to help get herself to the starting line.
Cassidy Heaton (eighth, 2:36:57 chip time) and Jaime Lord (ninth, 2:36:58 chip time) made their supporters sweat it out. Both had gun times over 2:37:00, but thank goodness chip time is what counts in Trials qualifying. Heaton said that she has never had to dig so deep in the final mile of a race. Lord apparently had to stop to vomit in the 23rd mile, but then she rallied. She ran collegiately for RPI (and McElheny ran for Calvin) so the DIII representation—five out of nine runners—was strong here. So was the representation from Railroad Athletics (Mosborg, Benedettini, and Heaton) and Gazelle Elite (Hentemann and McElheny).
Carrie Ellwood, of the Asics Mammoth Track Club, won the half marathon in a 62-second personal best of 1:08:34. She acknowledged her big PR in an Instagram story but also said she was hoping for more. Kassie Parker took second in 1:10:22. And Sammy McClintock won the 5K in 16:17.
Tragically, two runners died during the event following unrelated medical emergencies. The organizers’ statement does not include many details. (Results)
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Facing challenges, three runners find a way forward
This is part four in an ongoing series about how runners’ relationships with the sport evolve over time. This newsletter mostly focuses on the moments people achieve big goals, but there’s so much more to a running career—and a life—than that. This week, I’m featuring three women who have had high moments in the sport, but in recent years, they’ve had to cut back on their running or stop entirely. I hope that these stories will help others in a similar place feel less alone, and help those who can run to appreciate what they have. (Here are parts one, two, and three.)
Robyn McGillis describes herself as a middle-of-the-pack runner during high school and college, but she was clearly running with a fast crowd. She never planned to run in college, but when the UC San Diego coach reached out to her about walking on to the team, she decided to try it. She had an amazing experience, made some of her closest friends, and by the end, she had run a school record of 2:13 for 800m and qualified for Division III nationals.
After college, running remained an excellent source of community, and McGillis continued to progress in the sport. She ran 17:35 for 5K, 3:03 at the New York City Marathon, and helped her team win their division at Hood to Coast multiple times. But over time, due to kids, work, injury, and shifting priorities, running began to take more of a backseat in her life.
In 2019, McGillis began to notice that the right side of her body felt stiff and achy. Gradually, she realized she was carrying her arm differently and subconsciously avoiding writing and typing. She consulted a neurologist who confirmed that like her mother, she had Parkinson’s.
“Emotionally, the first year was probably the hardest for me,” she told Fast Women. “I was upset a lot and kind of in mourning. I felt like I looked different and moved differently—people didn’t notice it, but I felt it. I saw a therapist who works primarily with Parkinson’s patients and that was hugely beneficial for me. It got me to a place of acceptance.”
Though McGillis, now 51, has had to step back from her own running, she remains deeply involved in the sport. In 2020, she and Marie Markham founded Wildwood Running, which hosts camps, clinics, and online programs to educate coaches and athletes about issues that affect female runners. And after spending 13 years as a cross country and track & field coach at Central Catholic High School in Portland, Oregon, McGillis now serves as a volunteer assistant coach at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Movement is an important part of managing Parkinson’s symptoms, so McGillis now trains with a different purpose. She bikes, rows, and particularly enjoys lifting, with encouragement and support from her longtime trainer. And she still gets out for the occasional walk/jog. “When I’m running, I can tell I have Parkinson’s, the imbalance really shows itself, so it’s not as enjoyable for me,” she said. “But when I’m on the bike, or when I’m rowing or lifting, I can push myself and get that same kind of high, as long as I set some different goals for myself.”
McGillis has experienced periods of depression that make her reluctant to move at all, and going through perimenopause at the same time hasn’t helped. “In those lower moments, I look at my kids and my husband and [think about the fact that] I want to have the best quality of life for as long as I can,” she said.
Her family’s move to California is likely temporary, but she’s treating it as both an adventure and an opportunity. She wants to make sure that she has certain experiences while she’s still able to enjoy them.
So this year, that means trying out college coaching for the first time, regularly taking her dog to the beach, and enjoying opportunities she might not have had in Oregon. “I’m trying to put energy into the relationships that are important in my life, take care of myself from a health and wellness standpoint, and have some experiences that I don’t want to wait on,” she said.
When Ann Restak was 34, she found out she hadn’t gotten a job she wanted. It turned out to be life-changing, but not in the way she expected. Upon hearing the news, she had energy to burn, so she put on an old pair of shoes and went for a run. To her surprise, she made it all the way around Prospect Park—more than three miles—and she felt much better after. She had been active throughout her life, but that day, she became a runner.
Restak began training with a friend, and by 2015, she was ready for her first marathon. She was thrilled to finish the New York City Marathon in 4:11:59, but as she looked around at the finish she noticed that everyone else seemed more spent than she was. That was when she realized that she might have more in her. She joined a training group through New York Road Runners and soon after, her running took off.
In running, Restak found community, and the sport became an avenue for self-discovery. “I always had this skewed view of competition and thought it was negative,” she said. “But through running, I saw the positive side of it, and how it can help you become the person who’s already there.”
She thinks of 2018, when she excelled at a variety of distances, as her “glory year.” In a torrential downpour and high winds, she ran 3:09:39 at the Boston Marathon. And that fall, she clocked a 5:19 at the Fifth Avenue Mile. But at the end of that year, she woke up one morning with severe ankle pain that wouldn’t go away. She cross trained, got a cortisone shot, and soon after returning to running, she set a personal best in the 5K.
Restak was able to train consistently during the pandemic, but by the summer of 2021, she began to experience intermittent fatigue, which made her training and racing very inconsistent.
She got through her training for the 2023 London Marathon, but she knew something was off. “I was at the start line wishing I was in bed,” she said. Still, she managed to run an impressive 3:13:09 at age 45, but by the finish, her entire right side had locked up. Later that year, her knee swelled up, and she has barely been able to run since.
Restak has been treated for Lyme disease, but her doctors now suspect she’s dealing with some form of inflammatory arthritis, which she believes may have been brewing for as long as a decade. She does not have a definitive diagnosis—one of her doctors told her that with rheumatology, you have to be okay with ambiguity. The ambiguity makes it hard to explain to other people what she’s going through. “Plus no one wants to hear about my shit three years later, and I don’t want to talk about my shit three years later,” she said.
She describes feeling a profound sense of loss, not just of her ability to run, but of time, identity, structure, and her goals. But after dealing with debilitating dizziness and fatigue in 2023 and 2024, Restak is now able to do some strength training, cycling, and use an elliptical. “I’m happy to be moving,” she said. “Because I remember what it felt like to walk my dog and have to sit on benches along the way.”
Throughout her struggles, Restak, now 48, has appreciated the people who have been there for her. “Check in on someone you haven’t heard from in a while, see how they are,” she said. “I get checked in on by certain people regularly and they have no idea what that means to me.”
As an art historian, Restak thinks of Michelangelo carving stone to bring out the image within it. “I feel I’m doing that, and it’s making me even more resilient,” she said. “The challenges make us who we are, and I think it’s made me a much more compassionate person.”
Becky Wexler, 48, used to think that running was something that she would have in all the stages of her life. She ran in high school, college, and beyond, competing in two Boston Marathons and countless other races. She was an avid fan of the sport and did some reporting for the original Fast Women website in the early 2000s. She made many close friends through running, and it was a central part of her life and identity.
She knew that her running would look different over time, but she assumed most of the changes would happen on her own terms. “I used to say, ‘I’m going to be running when I’m 80 years old. I’ll be shuffling along,’” she said. “Now I know that’s not going to happen and it still makes me sad. If your body lets you do it, you’re lucky.”
Running slipped out of Wexler’s life gradually. First she had arthroscopic surgery on her knee, which was never quite the same. Then she dealt with a loose piece of cartilage in her knee. And in 2023, she had back surgery. Over time, cross training played an increasingly large role in her training. Now she channels her need to push herself into Solidcore and Peloton classes, and it’s been about three years since she last ran.
But old habits die hard. When she’s out driving, she’ll still occasionally find herself thinking, “Wow, it would be really nice to run on this road.”
Wexler still harbors some hope that one day, she’ll wake up and realize that her body feels significantly better, and she’ll be able to try running. But she doesn’t want to overdo anything and risk losing the activity she can do.
Looking back, she wishes she hadn’t pushed through quite as many aches and pains when she was younger, because she suspects she could have prevented some wear and tear that her body experienced. But she also knows that some of her injuries may have been inevitable.
“I am still jealous when I see people out running,” she said. “And I think about how you never know when it’s your last marathon or your last race until afterwards.”
Other News
Aliphine Tuliamuk’s son, Dezmond Gannon, was born on November 2, the day of the New York City Marathon, as planned. Her induction was scheduled for that evening, but she went into labor on her own while watching the race.
After 18 months of working with Jarred Cornfield, Elise Cranny said in an Instagram post that she is moving on. “My body and mind are craving a team environment again,” she wrote. “I am ready to be working alongside training parters and friends.” She said she’ll be announcing her next move soon.
The Next Chapter, a touching behind-the-scenes look at Des Linden’s last professional marathon, premiered on YouTube last week. She did a live Q&A after, during which she expressed some interest in running the Marathon des Sables, a 155ish-mile six-day stage race.
I appreciated this post from Molly Sughroue about the challenges of competing on the track while unsponsored. One of the headers is, “The reality of being unsponsored: This sh*t is expensive.”
Jenny Hitchings, 62, was named USATF Athlete of the Week after running 39:21 for 10K at the Clarksburg Country Run and taking three seconds off of the American 60-64 record.
Shailene Woodley is set to star in Ultra, a psychological thriller set at the Badwater 135. I can’t say I’ve seen many good running movies, but hopefully this one will be different. It’s a good sign that the writer and director, Victoria Negri, is an ultrarunner.
I started following the updates about Lia Smith, a 21-year-old Middlebury student who was missing from campus, before the Vermont State Police found her body. It wasn’t until a handful of days later that I learned she was trans, and also a former diver for the school’s swim team. Those two facts drastically changed how people reacted to the news of her death by suicide. Though this is a story about a diver, it just as easily could have been a story about a runner. And having competed and coached against Middlebury’s teams for years, this one hits close to home for me. I really appreciated Katelyn Burns’ thoughtful Teen Vogue piece about Smith, which ends, “Transgender people are more than just a political issue, and we’re in danger. We need all the help we can get from friends, neighbors, politicians, and school administrators. It’s impossible to know exactly why Lia Smith died, but we do know the overall societal atmosphere in which it happened, and it’s a hostile one in which trans people are increasingly discriminated against, excluded, and treated without respect or dignity. Let her passing be an inflection point for how you think about trans rights and trans people more generally. Help us.”
According to this Front Office Sports piece from Margaret Fleming, the state of Oregon brought child rape charges against AthleticTiming CEO Dan Bowdoin in 2024, but he continued to work at track events for much of the past year. I honestly can’t stomach summarizing any more of the article, the details are horrific, click with caution. He’s now in custody after he allegedly violated his release agreement by having contact with minors. He was temporarily suspended by SafeSport on Friday.
Some NYC Marathon follow up
It was great to see race winner Hellen Obiri of Kenya make an appearance on Live With Kelly and Mark on Monday.
I appreciate that New York Road Runners has started doing post-race podcast interviews with their champions. It’s a much better setting than the noisy pressroom, and this page also has a transcript of the episode. I liked what Obiri had to say about working with fellow Kenyans Sharon Lokedi and Sheila Chepkirui to get away from Sifan Hassan, and their strategy paid off. She also said she was hoping to vacation in Hawaii soon.
Scratch everything I said last week about when various people dropped out of the New York City Marathon. For whatever reason, the tracker indicated that most of them stayed in longer than they really did.
It sounds like Elena Hayday’s buildup to NYC went well, and for about 24 miles, she was having a great race. Then her stomach rebelled and things went sideways. “I ended up vomiting continuously for several minutes in front of way more people than I have ever wanted to vomit in front of,” she wrote. “But the roar from the crowd when I got up and kept running is something I’ll never forget.” She finished 12th in 2:31:22. She was also on The Marathon Podcast and I enjoyed hearing about the progress she’s been making with Minnesota Distance Elite.
Molly Seidel wrote in an Instagram story that she dropped out at mile 18 with knee pain but still loved every minute of racing NYC. “I’ll do a longer and more unbearable dropout post after I’m done hanging out with my family and back in Texas,” she wrote. But if you can’t wait, she discussed her race in a little more detail on The Runna Podcast. It was a good episode in general, but that part starts around the 36:30 mark.
I enjoyed hearing more about Amanda Vestri’s race on the C Tolle Run podcast. She said that she and coach Pete Rea intentionally took a conservative approach in preparing for her debut. “You know the saying we left no stone unturned?” she said. “We left every stone unturned for this marathon build.” She finished ninth in 2:25:40. It was interesting to hear her say that she was inspired by Annie Frisbie’s pro marathon debut because they were housemates when they overlapped at Iowa State. I also appreciated this line: “The second I crossed the finish line, even though I was in a world of hurt, I knew this was the distance I was meant for.” She said she’s still figuring out her next move, with ZAP Endurance ending.
Kenya’s Vivian Cheruiyot said in an Instagram story that an Achilles injury forced her to stop after halfway.
In an Instagram post, Sara Vaughn implied that she’s dealing with an injury and said she knew pretty early in the race that her body might not hold up. “Wanting to see my family got me to mile 17, stubbornness got me to mile 20,” she wrote. “That was more than enough. Now rest.”
I find it to be kind of mind-blowing that only 436 of the 59,662 starters dropped out of this year’s race. It certainly helps that the weather was good and NYRR goes out of its way to keep the finish line open for as long as everyone needs, and they celebrate the final finishers in a way that many races do not.
Additional Results
If I was more knowledgeable about the ultra world, this would be higher up in this newsletter, but Saturday was a record-setting day at Tunnel Hill, in Vienna, Illinois. First, Allison Mercer, 42, won the marathon in 2:50:05. And then for the rest of the day, she sent me updates about how all the other women were doing, which I really appreciate. Anne Flower (who has an interesting story) set a pending 50-mile world record of 5:18:57, taking 12:59 off the mark that Courtney Olsen set last year. That’s an incredible 6:22.7 per mile. The race served as the USATF 50 Mile Championship. Olsen was also in the race, and she split 5:33:59 for 50 miles, which placed her second, before going on to run 6:59:55 for 100K and break Ann Trason’s American record that stood for decades. And then Ireland’s Caitriona Jennings, 45, broke Camille Herron’s 100-mile world record in her first attempt at the distance, running 12:37:04 (7:34.2 per mile). Des Linden had originally hoped to run the 50 mile but she said on her podcast that she decided to sit this one out due to some trouble she’s been having with her knee. (50-mile recap | 100-mile recap | Results)
Bahrain’s Winfred Yavi won Sunday’s Cross Internacional de Italica in Seville, running 28:58 for 9.2K. (Recap | Results)
Kenya’s Cynthia Chepkirui, who is only 17, won Saturday’s Cardiff (Wales) Cross Challenge, covering the 6.4K cross country course in 20:11. Kenya’s Sheila Jebet took second, and reigning NCAA indoor 3,000m champion Ceili McCabe of Canada, who is now a pro, took third in 20:34. (Recap | Results)
Ethiopians went 1-2 as Fentaye Belayneh outkicked Melknat Wudu to win the Boston Half, 1:08:51 to 1:08:53. Megan Hasz Sailor of the B.A.A. High Performance Team led the Americans, finishing sixth in 1:09:39. (Recap | Results)
Makenna Myler won the Hardeeville (SC) Half Marathon in 1:11:36. (Results)
Canada’s Cleo Boyd won the Pittsburgh 10 Miler in 55:31. (Results)
Tayler Tuttle won the Moab Trail Half Marathon, which served as the USATF Trail Half Marathon Championships, in 1:32:24. (Results)
Additional Podcasts
I enjoyed Ali Feller’s live episode with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone from the New York City Marathon. Feller probably got more out of McLaughlin-Levrone than any journalists have in the past year; it was nice to hear her come out of her shell a bit.
While neither episode applies to my life in any way, I appreciated listening to Maddie Alm do an episode about NYC Marathon fueling immediately followed by listening to EmKay Sullivan discuss delivering her first child on The Sub Hub Podcast. (That one involved somewhat of a fueling strategy, too.) I appreciate how much helpful information is available these days, even if it can sometimes be hard to find.
Rachel Schilkowsky talked juggling family, running, and work on The Rambling Runner podcast.
Courtney Coppinger’s journey from pro track to pro trail running is interesting, and I appreciated how openly she spoke about that, and getting out of an abusive relationship, on Women of Distance.
Additional Episodes: On The Boulder Boys Show, Lauren Gregory said that she would like to run OCC next year | Deena Kastor on the Health by Haven Podcast | First-time Trials qualifier Alana Levy was on Road to the Trials | Elise Cranny on The Running Effect Podcast (recorded prior to her announcement) | Cait Keen Harris discussed a bit of her myomectomy experience on DFW Running Talk | Annmarie Tuxbury on Conversation Pace with FRE
Thanks again to Bakline for supporting Fast Women over the past three months. And remember to use the code FASTWOMEN to get 20 percent off.
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I hope you all have a good week.
Alison
Not me already wondering if the OTQ time is going to drop for 2032
Another great one- thank you! I really appreciate the podcast recommendations too. They get me through my elliptical cross-training time. 🙏