Which trials qualifier came the furthest to make the Trials?

mrb8: You win the thread because you went to Berlin to chase the time. You want to run fast, run where the fast run fast.

NotTHEshoes wrote:

Tyler Underwood played tennis in hs and college. Ran his first marathon on a whim while in college in 4:10. Set out to BQ the following year and knock a hour off. Instead only managed a 3:23. Then over the course of the next 5 or so years caught the running bug and ran 2:53-2:36-2:23-2:18. Crazy story and highly doubt anyone else has come further.

wow.

Graduated high school in 2000 with PRs of 2:02, 4:42, 9:57. 16:05 3mi and 16:36 5k XC

Santa Barbara City College 2000-2002 with PRs of 3:57, 14:51, 30:52

UC Santa Barbara 2002-2003 with PRs of 3:54, 14:45.

Quit running 2004-2011.

https://twitter.com/deejaycurly/status/1207790050731159554?s=21

Started running late 2011. Since then I’ve run 14:40 5k, 1:06:49 half, 2:17:35 marathon. I’ll be 37 years old in Atlanta.

Twitter/instagram @deejaycurly

Thanks, Dear, I was looking for it.

Farthest - is Jason from China still around?

Furthest - Tierney Wolfgram (what was your highlight in 10th grade?)

Mark Youngren, without any doubt.

For two reasons:

1) She literally comes from the farthest away, from Soldotna, Alaska all the way to Atlanta.

2) Se progressed more than anyone else. In September 2018 he was a 4:04:26 hobby jogger. In December 2019 she ran a 2:43 as Megan Youngren. She just used her huge cojones and a bit of makeup.

LRC Note> We don't allow someone to refer to a transgender person by their former pronoun so we changed "he" to "she". You can complain about the rules and think that people born with the potential to father a baby shouldn't be running in women's sports but please be respectful.

John "JJ" Santana

Friend of mine out in Las Vegas. Ran 1 year in HS, 1 year in juco, then just ran trail races and low volume for years until eventually someone told him to go for the trials.

Ran 2:17:15 for his first ever road marathon at CIM, good for tenth.

Clearly a big jump from a 1 year juco and multi-year "hobby jogger" to a trials qualifier. Looking at his recent workouts, and knowing his strengths, he could be a dark horse for top 10 in atlanta.

mrb8 wrote:

Now I'm 38 and have a 1 year old daughter. I actually just ran a half marathon PR in the fall, and this training cycle has gone really well, so I am excited to race in Atlanta. I don't know if I've "come the farthest" of anyone at the Trials, but I definitely don't think anyone had me pegged as a potential Trials qualifier when I graduated from high school 20 years ago.

Jesus dude. What's your name? That's SUPER impressive. Having a 2 year old, I can't imagine doing it at your age with I assume a full time job and what not, particularly with your HS and college PBs. Amazing.

So I was going to give you the 'win' but then I read about the tennis player and saw the pic of DJ . I mean the dude fat shamed himself. I saw that and was like, "No way does a fat dude like that qualify." Everyone is very impressive. A great thread.

How about some women's stories? With their time being so much easier, I bet there are some even crazier stories.

My name is Matt Blume. And yes, I have a full-time job. I'm a partner at a wealth management and investment firm. So in addition to training a lot over these past many years, I also earned my MBA as well as my CFA charter. The last decade was pretty busy... And THEN we had a baby.

As many have said, I'm not sure what qualifies as "having come the furthest" but I think Maria Scavuzzo has a great story.

Maria was a high school runner with "talent" but it was rarely made manifest during that time. She owned PRs of 5:09 in the 1600, 11:18 in the 3200, and 19:37 in 5k cross country, but when it mattered, she typically folded. She was never an individual state qualifier in either track or cross country for Medina High School (in Medina, OH). She did run on a 4x800 state qualifying team.

It was always her dream to go to Miami University (Ohio) and after incessant pleading and badgering, the coach let her walk on. Her freshman year left a lot to be desired. In her first cross country race she finished dead last, running over 26 minutes for 6k. Fast forward to outdoor track where she ran 39:56 in the 10,000m at the MAC championships and was dead last once again.

Things started clicking a little bit her sophomore year and after tanking in the 10,000 at the conference meet, she came back, seeded last, in the 5,000 and sniped 8th place, scoring 1 point and running a PR of 17:12.

The next year in cross country she grabbed the last qualifying spot out of the Great Lakes Region and was an individual NCAA qualifier, something that would have seemed impossible to most just a year before. She continued to lower her PRs but was majorly sidelined by a stress fracture late in her outdoor season.

Now, in her senior year of track, and three years after finishing dead-last and running nearly 40 minutes in the 10k at the conference meet, things came full-circle. She won the 10k with a big PB of 33:35 (17:10-16:25), which was also a conference meet record.

Upon graduating she knew she still wanted to keep at it and felt that even though she had come a long way and achieved a lot, there was more to be had. Even though her plate was full, as she was enrolling into a combined dietetics and dietetic internship program, she had an itch for trying her hand at the marathon. She debuted in Columbus this past October, running 2:37:52.

Another interesting tidbit is that in her four years at Miami, she had four different coaches!

I just love the fact that she always had a dream and inner-belief that she could be a great runner, even when her results seemed to clearly indicate otherwise.

Don't these pretty much always break down into who didn't train in HS and college type lists? Not to pick on anyone but I doubt anyone who ran . 40mpw for 3 years and who didn't break 18 (or 5:10 or 11:00 or whatever times you think are about that level in distance HS kids actually run) is making team. Some kid that runs 40 miles over the summer (the whole summer not a week), then runs 20mpw during the season for 12 weeks and runs 18:30 is a whole different level. The odd part about these people isn't the improvement. It is strictly that they decided to try at one point.

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

Don't these pretty much always break down into who didn't train in HS and college type lists? Not to pick on anyone but I doubt anyone who ran . 40mpw for 3 years and who didn't break 18 (or 5:10 or 11:00 or whatever times you think are about that level in distance HS kids actually run) is making team. Some kid that runs 40 miles over the summer (the whole summer not a week), then runs 20mpw during the season for 12 weeks and runs 18:30 is a whole different level. The odd part about these people isn't the improvement. It is strictly that they decided to try at one point.

Not true of Maria Scavuzzo, whose story I relayed above. She ate, slept, and drank running in high school. She wanted it so badly and trained quite hard to get there. In fact, in some ways she felt like if the training was there the performance would surely follow. Her problem wasn't training at a "high level" or not wanting it, rather it was fear of failure. She would step to the line and be so consumed with the end result and being afraid of the possibility of failing that she would blow up more often than not. Being able to overcome that has been what has most factored in to where she is now. Sure, she has gone from running 40 MPW in high school to 75-85 MPW week now, and there is no doubt that helps, but that alone does not nearly tell even a majority of the story.

Tyler Andrews going to Ecuador to train!

I love the resumes of the pure aerobic beast. 4:40 mile PRs maybe not breaking 15:00 for 5k but can hold pace forever to run sub 2:20.

+1 for JJ.

Seems like there are a few stories on here that were a little more unlikely, but JJ's story is awesome.

Stopped running for a while between his very brief scholastic stint. Started tearing up the Vegas running scene (not that there's much there) off a few easy runs and a race every weekend. As the above poster mentioned, started working with Brad Hudson and went from running 15 min 5k's to a top 10 finish in his debut at CIM in 4 months.

Even though he's a bit older, his lifetime workload is incredibly small, and he's someone to watch not only at this trials, but as a more serious contender in 2024 as well.

CoachO wrote:

Not true of Maria Scavuzzo, whose story I relayed above. She ate, slept, and drank running in high school. She wanted it so badly and trained quite hard to get there.

And ran a 5:09. That like a 4:20 mile for a HS boy. She demonstrated a ton of running talent and just had to find a way to harness it. That is level of talent that you would . expect to be making the trials later in life if they stick with it.

Hey wejo, how about showing the females some love? There are hundreds of female qualifiers. Surely you could find three with equally compelling stories...

I call BS on Desert Trash.

40-50 drinks/week? That's either blackout drunk 3x week or plenty drunk 5-7 nights a week. Even 80 miles on that would be crazy.

Mr. Dalton apparently majored in creative writing at Grinnell.

...is this a sexual post?

wejo wrote:

Which trials qualifier came the furthest to make the Trials?

Sometimes start list or results list each athlete's city of residence. Maybe once results are posted we can check for this and use Google maps to find out for sure who came the farthest. I'd assume it's someone from the Pacific Northwest, but maybe there is a qualifier from Alaska or Hawaii.