Fast Women: Tragedy and joy in a week with few races
Another honor for Parker Valby, and a call to action for college coaches
Issue 329
Parker Valby wins The Bowerman
Former University of Florida star Parker Valby won The Bowerman, which is considered to be the highest honor in collegiate track & field, on Thursday night in Orlando. Since 2009, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) has recognized the top female and male collegiate athletes annually, and the past winners are a who’s who of track & field. Last year’s Bowerman recipient, Julien Alfred, went on to win Olympic 100m gold eight months later.
Valby won five NCAA titles during the 2023–24 academic year, and she’s just the second female distance runner to win the award, following Jenny Simpson, who won in 2009. But three female middle-distance runners—Laura Roesler (2014), Raevyn Rogers (2017), and Athing Mu (2021)—have also earned the award. In addition to Valby, the other two finalists this year were Oregon’s Jaida Ross, who holds the collegiate record in the shot put and was fourth in the Paris Olympic final, and former Harvard star Maia Ramsden, who won the NCAA indoor mile title and NCAA outdoor 1500m title this year
Of the many interviews Valby did in conjunction with the event, I thought this was the best one. Her coach, Will Palmer, made a brief appearance and told the story of Valby getting lost on a run in Paris before she ran the 10,000m. You can watch Valby give her acceptance speech, which she joked was written by ChatGPT, here, and there are many other videos from the event here.
Sam Seemes: “Our sports are under siege”
The Bowerman ceremony takes place in conjunction with the USTFCCCA Convention, which brings together track & field and cross country coaches from all over the country. Two days earlier, during the convention’s opening session, USTFCCCA CEO Sam Seemes delivered a powerful speech, which was a call to action for everyone in attendance.
“Let me be blunt: Our sports are under siege,” he said. “Not in some distant future, but right now. The threats are real and immediate: Shrinking opportunities for student-athletes. Vanishing budgets. Disappearing scholarships. Reduced coaching positions. Complete program elimination. Replacement by sports perceived as more valuable. If you think I’m being alarmist, wake up.”
You can read or watch Seemes’ full speech here. I appreciate his candor, because he is absolutely right. There’s a tidal wave headed for collegiate cross country and track & field, and it’s likely to change the sport forever, but it feels like a lot of people and programs are thinking about their individual survival rather than the sport’s collective survival.
“I challenge each of you,” he said. “Are you willing to commit to change for the betterment of our sports? Will you make decisions not just for your team or yourself, but for the collective future of track & field and cross country? If you’re waiting for your institution, conference, NCAA, USATF, USOPC, World Athletics, or Congress to fight this battle—stop waiting. They won’t save us. We must save ourselves.”
Seemes pointed out that many people view this as a Division I issue, but the ripple effects of what’s happening in Division I will affect programs at every level. It’s also easy to see it as more of a men’s issue, because Title IX will prevent institutions from abandoning women’s non-revenue sports. But cutting men’s programs and resources hurts women, too, because programs share facilities and often coaches, and with only one team, schools are less likely to make big investments.
Seemes called on coaches to create tangible value for their institutions, prioritize the spectator experience, and revolutionize how they present the sport. “We must package our competitions in an engaging, consumable format that excites audiences and attracts broadcasters.” He criticized “all-day meets with endless time trials,” saying, “We need competition with clear narratives, dramatic moments, and real stakes.”
These are issues the entire sport grapples with, and though there are people working hard to find solutions, few events are really knocking it out of the park. Massive change is coming, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how the sport adapts.
The tragic death of Lilia Vazquez
Hundreds of people gathered in a Houston park on Thursday night to remember local runner Lilia Vazquez, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver on December 13. Vazquez was running along Westpark Drive in Houston early in the morning when a vehicle struck her. Surveillance video captured parts of her run, but the driver who hit her has still not been found.
Vazquez, 61, was an accomplished age-group racer, and she was training to be part of the local elite field at next month’s Houston Marathon.
After reading about her, I wondered what the chances were that I got a photo of her at this year’s Boston Marathon. Finding the above photo of her made this even more heartbreaking. Vazquez was well known in the Houston running community.
According to the Houston Chronicle, she immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico City 30 years ago. When her first husband died, she raised their two young daughters on her own while working various jobs. In recent years, she has worked as an aide in the physical therapy department at Baylor College of Medicine. She reportedly took up running when one of her daughters asked her to stop smoking, and she went all in. There’s a GoFundMe to support her family here, and you can read her obituary here.
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The Marathon Project is back
During the pandemic, when professional runners were lacking racing opportunities, Ben Rosario and Josh Cox put together The Marathon Project, a small elite-only marathon on a fast, flat course in Chandler, Arizona. At the inaugural race, held on December 20, 2020, Sara Hall ran 2:20:32, and Martin Hehir ran 2:08:59. Last week, race organizers announced that the event is back, with some changes.
The revamped event will return to Wild Horse Pass Resort the weekend of December 19–21, 2025. The professional marathon, held on the 21st, will resemble the inaugural edition, but with a larger field—100 women and 100 men. On the 20th, there will be a 5K race open to anyone followed by the Gold Wave Marathon, which will be similar to the professional race, but it will be limited to 500 men and 500 women. The race’s website acknowledges nonbinary participants as well, but it’s unclear how they will be counted in the entry process.
Any woman or nonbinary runner who has run under 3:10:00 in the marathon or under 1:30:00 in the half marathon since 2021 is guaranteed entry into the race, provided that they register early. If the fields do not fill, additional participants will be selected via a descending order list. Both marathons will take place on the same 4.26-mile circuit the event used in 2020, with three out-and-backs per loop.
At $500, plus a $19.45 registration fee, the entry fee for the Gold Wave Marathon is high. But the race also offers more amenities than most, and it’s hard to make a profit or break even with a 1,200-person event (plus the 5K runners). The race’s website also includes an option called The Marathon Project Experience. For $5,000 each, up to 15 people will get guaranteed entry into the Gold Wave race, personal coaching from Rosario, a training trip to Flagstaff, and a VIP race weekend experience, among other things.
I was pleased to see Rising Hearts will help support Indigenous and POC, nonbinary, and LGBTQ+ runners who are accepted into the race as well.
It’s going to be interesting to see what kinds of opportunities this event creates for top marathoners, and how popular the Gold Wave races become. With the World Championships and Olympic marathon standards only getting tougher, many runners are in search of opportunities to run fast races, and in the U.S., at the pro level, there aren’t many. I’ve also heard from a lot of 2:28–2:32 marathoners who are having trouble getting into competitive races. The Marathon Project should help there as well.
It’s interesting that they will more or less wind up going head to head with the California International Marathon, because I expect that the two races will appeal to a similar set of runners up front. One advantage the Marathon Project will have over CIM is that the course will be record-legal, so a fast time in Arizona will count for Olympic and World Championship qualifying, while a fast race at CIM would not.
Performance-wise, the inaugural Marathon Project race was a success, and I’ll be curious to see how popular the revamped event becomes now that it has plenty of competition.
Other News and Links
Finding a good time to have a baby can be particularly difficult for professional runners, who rely on their bodies so heavily to do their jobs. Elle St. Pierre interrupted her 2023 season to have her first child, in March of that year. One year later, she won the 3,000m at the World Indoor Championships, before going on to make her second Olympic team. And last week, she announced that her second child is on the way, due May 8. According to Runner’s World, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be missing all of the 2025 track season. She told her coach, Mark Coogan, that she’s feeling much better during her second pregnancy and she hasn’t ruled out doing some racing next summer, depending on how everything goes. The thought never crossed my mind, but after St. Pierre made her announcement, she added in an Instagram story, “As if I needed to say it: This is NOT a retirement announcement, it’s a baby announcement. Women can have kids AND a career, just watch.” On Sunday, she shared that 20 weeks, 3 days into her pregnancy, she ran 10 miles in 66 minutes, with her last mile in 6:00.
Molly Huddle also announced last week that her second child is on the way, also due in May. Huddle said in an Instagram story that at 40, yes, she’s older than she was during her second pregnancy, but the real challenge is taking care of a toddler while pregnant. Katrina Spratford-Sterling, a 1:11 half marathoner and two-time Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier, also announced last week that she’s pregnant with a May due date. And retired pro Chanelle Price shared the news that she had her first child last week. Price said in her Instagram stories that due to her history with blood clots, she went in for a scheduled induction on December 15, but the induction was not successful, so she had to have an emergency c-section three days later. But fortunately she and her baby are both okay.
If you read one running-related article this week, I recommend Sarah Lorge Butler’s Runner’s World piece about the role agents play in professional runners’ careers. It’s standard for track & field agents to earn 15 percent of their clients’ sport-related income, and experienced runners like Des Linden, Jess McClain, and Clayton Young are among those who have opted to forgo agents and handle their own negotiations. And Parker Valby and Olivia Markezich are new pro runners who have used family members when signing their initial shoe contracts. Going agent-less certainly isn’t for everyone, but it’s interesting to read more about this side of the sport. And I’m curious how much Allyson Felix’s new agency, Always Alpha, will change track & field and distance running.
Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson announced last week that she will open her indoor season with an 800m world record attempt, at a new event named in her honor. The Keely Klassic will take place February 15 in Birmingham, England. Jolanda Ceplak set the current record, 1:55.82, on the day Hodgkinson was born—March 3, 2002.
The Brooks Beasts announced that they’ve hired Julie Stackhouse as an assistant coach. She joins head coach Danny Mackey and assistant coach Julian Florez. Stackhouse coached in the NCAA before starting a private coaching business more than a decade ago.
Susan Aneno, a 1:59.95 800m runner who represents Uganda, has joined Atalanta NYC.
Great Britain’s Phoebe Gill talked to Athletics Weekly about making the Olympic team at age 17.
I enjoyed this brief Q&A with Eleanor Fulton, who said she has scaled back her software marketing work to pursue a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling.
Organizers of South Africa’s Mpumalanga Marathon advertised that their winners would receive nearly $55,000 each. Now, according to this article, the race has gone back on its promise.
If you watched FloTrack’s New Balance Boston workout video that I linked to last week, you already knew that Parker Valby would be running her first pro race at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix. Last week, meet organizers confirmed she’d be running the 3,000m. Julien Alfred will be competing at the meet for the first time as well. The press release didn’t say which event she’ll be running, but she tends to stick to the 60m and 200m indoors.
Corrections: Last week, I wrote that the men had a 32-second head start at the Spectacle Road Mile in New Zealand, but hopefully you read what I meant rather than what I said. The women were the ones with the head start. And the photo of Chloe Jarvis was from the 2003 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, not the 2023 event.
Podcast Highlights
I’ve included at least two Jenny Simpson podcasts here recently, but this recent episode of The FloTrack Podcast featured a nice look back at her career. “Of all the people in the world that made me a great athlete, the person who deserves the most credit is Sally Kipyego,” she said. “I look back and I just think if I had won everything and been the queen of [the NCAA]…I think my journey would have turned out differently. But because of Sally, I had to push for so many years to be good.”
Lauren Hagans discussed her running story in more detail than I’ve heard elsewhere on the Women of Distance podcast.
Roberta Groner talked about her 2:29:32 at the Valencia Marathon on I’ll Have Another. Groner, 46, is planning to take 2025 off from marathoning because she’s hoping to run the 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, and she wants to be ready for a strong race once the qualifying window opens.
It was good to get a Colleen Quigley update on the Rob Talks Running podcast. Speaking of agents, Quigley mentioned that she hasn’t had one for years because, “I think they’re all really old school and out of touch with the current state of the sport.” As mentioned in the episode, Quigley recently ran 16:14.91 for 5,000m in a mixed-gender track race.
Additional Episodes: Wilmington College’s Faith Duncan talked about winning the NCAA DIII cross country title on D3 Glory Days | Lee Glandorf talked about the intersection of running and fashion on the Ali on the Run Show | Rose Davies discussed winning the Australian 10,000m title on For the Kudos (Spiked Up #36) | Kathy Butler, who represented both Canada and Great Britain at different Olympic Games, talked coaching on the Run Build Grow podcast.
Thanks for taking the time to read this during what is a busy time of year for many. I hope you all have an excellent week.
Alison
Thank you for a wonderful, informative year of newsletters. I know this is a lot of work, so I want you to know again how much you are appreciated, Alison.