The weekend of the 2019 Houston Marathon, Maura Linde reviewed the course map for a final time — not to make sure she had every turn, hill, and water station memorized, but rather to scope out the medical aid stations so she could drop out with people nearby.
“I really did think I wasn’t going to finish it,” she said.
Just five days before the race, she had caught a stomach virus that had torn through the cross country athletes she coached at Johns Hopkins University. She was aiming to run under 2:45 to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials, but she and her coach, Jerry Alexander of the Georgetown Running Club, almost pulled the plug.
“I couldn’t eat real food till a couple days before,” Linde recalled, saying she instead focused on staying hydrated. “I didn’t run again till the Friday before for a shake out.”
Chip time doesn’t mean a thing while chasing an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier. It was going to be up to Rachel Viger to hurry across the starting line at the California International Marathon, then run the 26.2 miles even faster than the 2:45:00 qualifying time.
She wound up taking 12 seconds to get across the starting line because she didn’t make the elite start, coming into the Dec. 8 race with just a 3:03:59 personal best, set a year before at the Marine Corps Marathon. From that alone, running under 2:45, plus those extra seconds, would seem daunting. But she did it, with 46 seconds to spare.
“She was a 3:03 marathoner but she wasn’t really a 3:03 marathoner,” said Capital Area Runners Coach George Buckheit. “It looks shocking to a lot of people, but most people don’t realize how good she was in high school and college.”
In 2011, Mark Robinson, a longtime coach at Catholic University, was at a crossroads.
He was essentially juggling two full-time careers: His job as head cross country coach and assistant track coach at Catholic, and his job as a curriculum manager for a D.C. nonprofit.
Robinson, a CU graduate who set records on the track that still stand today, opted to retire from coaching to focus on the job that paid his bills.
“It was a gut-wrenching decision,” he said.
Running along the C&O Canal Towpath last fall, Dan Meteer bumped into Arlingtonians Mike Crozier and Clint McKelvey. Typically a solo runner, Meteer joined them, and listened to the two discuss a friend’s marathon training.
By Meteer’s retelling, they expressed skepticism their friend was running enough to help him break 2:19 and qualify him for the Olympic Marathon Trials. Approaching his own debut marathon at California International a few months later, Meteer, 24, was eager to hear their opinions, then horrified.
“I’m just like oh god, they’re basically talking about me,” he said. “I decided, ‘screw it, I’m going to run 100 miles a week.'”
It was a risky move for a guy who spent most of five years at Brown going from injury to injury, still new to having consecutive months’ worth of training. But the gamble paid off, and he ran 2:17:43 in his first marathon.
As a new resident of the Woodbridge and Occoquan River region, I was eager to explore what the local running trails had to offer this past summer. On one early morning run in June, I passed a freshly paved blacktop trail veering off from the sidewalk along Rippon Blvd., which hadn’t been there the week before.
I followed the trail for a few minutes to discover a spacious parking lot and a playground. As I continued, I came around a bend in the trail to discover a wide, pristine boardwalk winding like a serpent over Neabsco Creek and the surrounding wetlands.
Name: Tyler Eckhoff
Self-described age group: 30-34
Residence: Alexandria
Occupation: 6th/7th grade history and science teacher in the International Academy at Francis C. Hammond Middle School (ACPS) and boys’ long distance coach for T.C. Williams High School (cross country, indoor track and field, and outdoor track and field)
Why you run: This is a very loaded question. I could answer it differently every time I’m asked. Right now I’ll say for me running is nostalgic and uplifting. It’s hard to be in a bad mood post-run.
When did you get started running: I ran 400’s and the 4X100 my junior year of high school but moved to bigger and better distances my senior year. I have been running since.
Have you taken a break from running: After every marathon, I take about a month off to focus on pizza consumption. I also catch up on things that I have let running prioritize over leading up to the marathon, but mainly I eat pizza.
Racing a cross country 10K six days after running an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying time isn’t exactly a conventional decision, but Everett Hackett isn’t exactly a conventional guy.
He ran cross country and track at George Mason University, and his college coach, Andrew Gerard, said Hackett doesn’t have a filter or care what others think.
“As a person, he’s probably one of the most unique young men that I’ve ever interacted with,” said Gerard, who is the director of track and cross country at George Mason.
Hackett, who is 29 and lives in Connecticut, wasn’t originally planning to run the USATF National Club Cross Country Championship in Bethlehem, Pa., on Dec. 14. But members of his team, the Hartbeat Track Club, were excited about running it, he said, and it became a joke as to whether he’d actually run it so soon after his marathon.
He did, and while he said he could have run faster if he was just training for the 10K race, he still ran 33:47 on the extremely muddy course.
“I had to do it for my team, and it was fun too – I had a blast,” he said.
Zach Hine has been running for more than 15 years and has accomplished something few runners can boast: he’s never been injured. And, oh yeah, he’s qualified for the Olympic trials in the marathon three separate times.
“I’ve been able to do the distance training without any serious injuries so that’s why I’ve been able to move up and do a lot of races,” said Hine, a 32-year-old who recently moved to the D.C. area from Colorado.
While the no-injuries thing doesn’t hurt (pardon the pun), Hine boasts an impressive running resume that takes more than just “listening to your body” to achieve. He placed 10th in the Boston Marathon in 2016, has won numerous races around the country and is set to run his third consecutive Olympic Marathon Trials this coming February in Atlanta.
Virginia saw individual and team sweeps of the 4A and 6A divisions, with Loudoun Valley defending its titles, West Springfield boys winning their first title since 1995 and Lake Braddock girls ending their one-year title drought. Loudoun Valley nearly matched its 1-5 sweep from 2017, and Oakton’s all-underclassman team came close to upsetting the Spartan boys. The Bruins’ surprise competition came from John Champe, which made a brief stay in 6A before being divded up after redistricting next year.
See all the post-season picks for All-RunWashington Maryland Washington, D.C.
I’ve begun moving our photos from cross country races (there are a few college and open races in there too) and road races to a SmugMug page – you can see them here. You can also read all of this season’s cross country coverage here.
Suburban Maryland saw Northwood’s boys repeat as Montgomery County champions and state runners-up with a new cast and Walter Johnson’s girls fight back to the top three in the state, lead by Jenna Goldberg’s comeback year, but also a team-best finish by the Montgomery Blair boys.
See all the post-season picks for All-RunWashington Washington, D.C. Northern Virginia
I’ve begun moving our photos from cross country races (there are a few college and open races in there too) and road races to a SmugMug page – you can see them here. You can also read all of this season’s cross country coverage here. Read More
