Running is typically a choice for Susanna Sullivan. It’s been her sport since she was at George Mason High School and her hobby even longer.
But as the October sunset started to overtake her in Maine’s Acadia National Park, the darkness forced her close to her race pace, or else she was going to be in trouble. She had finished up a hard run on the hilly dirt roads she is so fond of and stopped to report back to her coach, George Buckheit.
Maybe if he had gotten out of his own head earlier, all those races on the track would have been more fun for D.C.’s Nick Golebiowski.
Or maybe the oval, or the grass for that matter, was never the place for him. Either way, at 24, he knows what it can take others years to figure out — he’s a marathoner. If the love of the training hadn’t been clear enough, he got objective feedback when he ran his first marathon in 2:18:39 two weeks ago at Indianapolis’ Monumental Marathon, qualifying him for the Olympic Marathon Trials.
For four years in New York, Jillian Pollack seemed to be throwing her time, energy and sweat into a hole the size of a skyscraper foundation.
It wasn’t wasted – she met her best friends as a runner for Columbia University – but running wasn’t the same as when she was a star a Winchester’s Millbrook High School.
Jessica McGuire didn’t qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials on raw talent. It took hard work.
That’s according to her coach, Jerry Alexander, who coaches the Northern Virginia Running Club.
Caitlyn Tateishi is the type of runner who is never satisfied.
She ran her first marathon in June 2015, finishing in 3:38:49, a few minutes above her Boston qualifying time. It didn’t take long for her to sign up for another one — and three months later, she qualified for Boston by more than 15 minutes.
For Shauneen Werlinger, a trip to the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials figured to be the culmination of a long development that started at Thomas Jefferson High School, continued through a spectacular collegiate career and evolved to include her career and family.
But instead of competing in Atlanta, she’ll be following the race alongside her husband and children. Instead of growing the Trials field by one, she’s growing her family by one, with a son due in January.
Mark Leininger did a lot while in D.C., including breaking the American University 10,000-meter record. But running off the track, at the Credit Union Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run, spurred him to greater heights and longer distances.
“I didn’t really think about [competing post-collegiately on the roads] too much,” Leininger said. “I wanted to still run faster on the track.”
When Aileen Barry was a lacrosse player for Watkins Mills High School in Gaithersburg, she knew she was quick on her feet.
If she got the ball, “no one could catch me,” Barry remembered.
Spot her two letters and Fairfax’s Bethany Sachtleben can rearrange her name to spell “schedule.”
If Chase Weaverling didn’t think he was going to qualify for the US Olympic Marathon Trials before starting the Houston Half Marathon, it definitely didn’t help his confidence when he hit the ground a half mile into the race. He clipped the heels of a marathoner he was drafting off of, then stumbled once that the marathoner went down.
Weaverling, who graduated from Poolesville in 2014, was a few months into his post-collegiate running career following a solid four years at the University of Virginia.