A look at the final week heading into two elite athletes debut marathon, where that debut marathon happens to be the U.S. Olympic Trials.Fiona O'Keeffe, Nato...
Her recent results make her a 15 min 5K runner. That equates to a ~225 thon.
She ran a monster race.
Yes, 15:05 PB, but also 30:52 10,000 last year, compared to 14:52 and 30:48 for Natosha Rogers. As the distance goes up, Fiona gets better, 67:42 half to 69:36. Fiona also won the USATF 10 mile in 2022. I live 20 miles north of Davis, and have followed Fiona's career since 2015, when she goes out-kicked for CA state 3200. She won it in 2016, then won the U20 USATF 5000. it's probably good that she waited this long to tackle a marathon. I was afraid she had gone too soon, but apparently she is the real deal. So happy for her.
agree-great to see-she was always really consistent in cross for Stanford getting all-American every year and progressing every year she was in the program; Crazy the amount of talent on the 2016-2017 teams--O'Keefe, Aragon, Fraser, Cranny...
the alluding to an eating disorder is ridiculous. These are ELITE marathon runners how the heck are they suppose to look? I can't keep weight on and I run 5ks (yes female). I eat a ton. Not everyone is naturally big and large.
the alluding to an eating disorder is ridiculous. These are ELITE marathon runners how the heck are they suppose to look? I can't keep weight on and I run 5ks (yes female). I eat a ton. Not everyone is naturally big and large.
Hate to say it, but I've been here for 20+ years and the eye test (when people have noticed enough to comment) has never been wrong. Plenty of skinny elite marathon runners in the field who don't look like they have an ED like Sisson, Mcclain, Hall, and Rotich. I hope she holds it together past the Olympics, and she might even be able to do it for years, but I genuinely worry about her health. Sorry, it's probably the worst part of the sport.
In her first marathon, a major national championship, she wins and sets the event record, beating the American record holder, Emily Sisson, by 30 seconds. It's surely one of the top-3 American women marathon debuts of all time. What's not to love about this?
It was an absurdly dominant performance. At mile 18, there were five runners in the lead pack, all within one second of one another, and another three runners about seven to eight seconds back. At the finish, she had thirty-two seconds over the pre-race favorite and national record holder, and three minutes and twenty seconds over third place. Only seven runners finished within five minutes of her. That kind of late-race dominance is very rare in unpaced championships at this level. She basically just coasted until the last eight miles, and then showed that she was on a completely different level from the rest of the field.
It’s moreso a Fiona thing I am talking about - not a coaching fault. Mindset and relationship with food issue. Look, I am not jealous. We all have to play attention to nutrition for performance. It’s a balance, we all know that. The bigger thing is having the appropriate relationship with nutrition and food. Which is the intel I was referring to. Not a bash on the Craggs or O’Keefe, just a concern. Truly and genuinely want her to crush it and continue to! But based on multiple sources here, things may not be be healthy or sustainable with regards to nutrition.
Can you explain this further. What sources? Are you just making stuff up?
the alluding to an eating disorder is ridiculous. These are ELITE marathon runners how the heck are they suppose to look? I can't keep weight on and I run 5ks (yes female). I eat a ton. Not everyone is naturally big and large.
the alluding to an eating disorder is ridiculous. These are ELITE marathon runners how the heck are they suppose to look? I can't keep weight on and I run 5ks (yes female). I eat a ton. Not everyone is naturally big and large.
Hate to say it, but I've been here for 20+ years and the eye test (when people have noticed enough to comment) has never been wrong. Plenty of skinny elite marathon runners in the field who don't look like they have an ED like Sisson, Mcclain, Hall, and Rotich. I hope she holds it together past the Olympics, and she might even be able to do it for years, but I genuinely worry about her health. Sorry, it's probably the worst part of the sport.
I was thinking about how to articulate this as well. I am a woman and I feel like I have this sense when other women have gone too far. It's often a sunken look in their arms, legs, and face. I've seen it in real life with my training partners. Just because someone doesn't have the eating disorder *look* doesn't mean they haven't taken things too far--some people's bodies can handle being leaner than others genetically and some people manage their nutrition better than others. But if it's severe enough to notice, it almost certainly is an issue.
i am not sure why in terms of evolution (it must be about evolution, right?), but I also have the eye test built in to my operating system, where I can see right away whether someone is over the line.
If i see a runner who has metabolized the single ounce of fat that would otherwise have smoothed out their face, that typically signals they have gone well below their reserves.
In prehistoric times, that might’ve been a signal not to mate with such a person or let such a person into the tribe — i cannot begin to guess — but it is a distinct visual signal.
I wonder if people don’t have an underweight detector anymore simply because we hardly ever see healthy, lean people anymore? I don’t think that a single soldier entering a concentration camp ever argued, “that’s probably just their body type.”
I am disgusted by most of you. 50% of Americans are obese. Okeefe is the healthiest woman in the country and some of you are insulting her. Go attack the 150 million people who will get cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, arthritis, strokes and other health conditions due to overeating.
AND she did this on a warm day, where one might imagine that any first-time marathoner would either play it a little safer or, pushing too hard, blow up. She did neither. She just blazed on.
More impressive is she negative split the race. Did anyone else do that?