What happened to Keira D'Amato?

On her IG, she said it was rough from the get go. Hard to stay motivated at the marathon distance when you know your race is over.

Combine that with optimistic pacing and you get slower than expected results. How many of his last races did kipchoge blow up?

Training in Utah isn’t for everyone.

yikes

old

Even ED said she has to adjust her goals based on being older.

Ed is Ed Eyestone, I'm assuming.

She's coming back from a serious injury last fall and keeps busy with a lot more than just her running- maybe a little more than is suited for focusing on her running. I hope she will get things together and we'll see good performances from her again. She's over 40 now, so she'll have to adjust her goals accordingly. I'm sure it's hard to make that transition psychologically and keep motivated, but that's the reality of getting older. Probably why almost all elite runners decide to hang it up competitively once they see the decline setting in. People like Sara Hall are rare exceptions. I don't think we should expect Keira to be running low 2:20s again, and if she is still shooting for those times, that's a lot to ask for, but who knows?

One oddity from the weekend is that she did 5-milers with Mantz and Young at like 7:30 pace. Yes, that should be easy for her. But if that's the right pace for Mantz and Young three days before a marathon, it's not the right pace for her, however easy it felt.

Obviously, those few runs didn't sabotage her race. But they might indicate she doesn't know how to truly take it easy when warranted. That would be compounded by being at an age when a lot of people can still do specific sessions like they could at their best, but there's less of a direct line between "I did A, B, C in training, therefore I can do X on race day." Things get more unpredictable. (Just ask Sara Hall.)

these boards are always hilarious. first off, she moved to utah to change her training a little, yeah maybe she shoulda stayed in richmond. 2. She's 41, two off races in a row is no big deal. She's not "finished"/ 3. her story is still incredible, give her a break.

I heard the Houston Marathon performance in February 2022 set off some alarm bells at USADA. It was simply too good to be true. This may come as shocking to a lot of people, but all USADA needs to do is look at age and performance curves to know if a person was doping. It was abundantly clear with D'Amato after that Houston performance, and USADA didn't want egg on their face if she got popped, so they increased the testing substantially as a warning to her. Her only good performance since 2022 came outside of the United States at the Gold Coast Half Marathon in 2023. Other than that, she can't blatantly dope and then race in the US, and she hasn't been the same.

Eyestone is a great coach but he pushes things, I don't see much individualism in his training. He gets a group of hungry and talented runners, they says this is the work, do it or drop behind. Same with Jerry's system, it definitely works, but it is not always best for all runners. Sometimes less can be more

Keira needs to concentrate on setting as many “ over 40” records as possible !! And move back to RVA !

Something still seems so off about this race day. If you look at her Strava she was running 8 mile tempos at 5:25 at altitude and you're telling me that she falls to 5:50s by mile 8 of the marathon. That doesn't really make sense to me... i feel that something else was up or maybe the course destroyed her? idk

My hot take:

Eyestone isn’t the right approach for the type of runner she is, for her age, and for a shift to altitude.

She responded quite well to training under Scott. Go look at her strava and see the myriad of mixed, fast running she did over the years. Tons of faster 200, 300, 400, 800’s. Even some faster 1600-3k’s in track based workouts. All the time.

Eyestone is great, but has a ton of emphasis on the longer tempo’s and MP pace work.

So, if Keira responds better to more of a “speed oriented” marathon build, shifts coaches/training philosophy at an age where you are naturally starting to lose power, and shifts training locations such that you can’t operate at those faster paces, then it’s just a compounding effect.

Enough with "she had no pedigree." She qualified individually for NCAA cross 3 years in a row and was top 20 each time (finishing ahead of numerous future Olympians)