With a young team already realizing success, St. John’s figures to be a force in D.C., though Gonzaga wasn’t ready to concede the boys’ title just yet. The girls, on the other hand, avenged a state meet loss in 2018 to Woodrow Wilson. Cullen Capuano ran away for the boys’ win, but Georgetown Visitation sophomore kicked away from St. John’s freshman Meredith Gotzman for the girls’ title.
See all the post-season picks for All-RunWashington Maryland 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.
Brian Harvey has come a long way from his 24-minute 5k during his freshman year of high school. The Ellicott City native, who now runs for the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), qualified for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials with a 2:17:48 finish at the 2018 California International Marathon. It will be his second appearance at the Trials.
The key to success for this Cambridge, Mass., resident has been his ability to balance consistent race performances with his full-time jobs as a biomedical engineer and as a father to his two-year-old daughter. Most days his training is done by 7 a.m. so that he and his wife can get ready for work.
“Running has become less of a priority than it was ten years ago, but it’s still something I care a lot about,” the 32-year-old says.
Name: Molly Allen
Self-described age group: 35-39
Residence: D.C.
Occupation: Housing Program Specialist at HUD
Volunteer roles in the running world: I love volunteering at races when I’m not participating. I pride myself on my aggressive cheering as a volunteer. I’m really excited to be volunteering at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta at the end of February!
Why you run: Because I love running. I don’t think I can explain it better than this quote by Martin Fritz Huber from Outside Magazine- “Running has always given me a sense of joy and time well spent. It’s one of those rare pursuits where, while engaged, I’m never beset by the feeling that I should probably be doing something else.”
Some people spend years training to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials, but George Washington alumna Megan Hogan did it twice before she ever got to run a marathon.
But eight years after she left D.C. to embark on a brief professional running career, Hogan finally ran a marathon, finishing Boston in 2:42:00 to qualify for the Trials for the third time. It followed a “pretty conservative” training cycle, and she is now eager to begin training for the trials and devote more of her focus to marathon training, in hopes of making it to the race without injury for the first time. She made the 2012 Trials with a 10k time qualifier and the 2016 Trials with a half marathon time.
The Ballston Spa, N.Y. native still maintains a relaxed approach to her running and nutrition, openly admitting that she sometimes misses training runs because of work deadlines she faces as an interior designer and regularly indulges in a glass of wine.
For one of his latest outings, Jarad Schofer zig-zagged through the residential areas bordering Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, but he wasn’t perfect.
“I’m going to start checking Strava before I leave a neighborhood,” he says with a laugh.
When he studied the log, he saw a blank strip in a thicket of lines, about one-tenth of a mile of Nash Street NE. The oversight — or overstep, maybe — cost him a 20-minute drive both ways.
Missing even a tiny portion won’t do when Schofer aims to cover each and every street in D.C. with his footsteps. This from a guy who couldn’t run a mile just a decade ago.
It took U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Lindsay Carrick two hours and 43 minutes (and 43 seconds) to run the Military World Games marathon in Wuhan, China. It took more than three weeks to find out her effort was good enough to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials.
But the course and race management checked out, and it made the fall and winter a lot simpler for Carrick, who had been aiming to run under 2:45 for two years.
Her coach, Patrick Gomez, said the Olympic Trials qualifying time was a larger goal, but he wanted her to be able to do well at the Military World Games without overdoing it. They had a backup race planned if needed.
“We went into the race saying let’s set ourselves up to be as successful as possible, and it just happened to be an Olympic Trials qualifying mark,” he said.
Loudoun Valley’s boys and girls team finished 10th at Nike Cross Nationals Dec. 7 in Portland, Ore. West Springfield’s Sean Stuck finished 104th in 16:19.
Andrew Bumbalough’s marathon career began almost by accident.
A professional runner for Nike since 2010, Bumbalough was training with the Bowerman Track Club in Portland, Ore. and focusing on chipping away at his 5K PR, aiming to qualify for the Olympic and World Championship teams. But then one of his teammates was trying to make the 2012 Olympic marathon team, and he needed a pacer.
So Bumbalough went to Houston to pace his friend, planning to run 10 miles. Except one of the other pacers had cramps and had to stop. Bumbalough, though, “felt amazing.”
“I was running a 5-minute pace, I felt strong, I kept clicking off the miles,” said Bumbalough, 32, a 2010 Georgetown graduate. “I went all the way to 16 miles. I think my coach was impressed, but also a little irritated. That kind of planted a seed in the back of my mind that I could do a marathon at some point.”
Now Bumbalough is hoping to earn a spot on the 2020 men’s marathon team when he competes in the Olympic Trials in Atlanta on Feb. 29. He finished as the fourth American in the 2019 Chicago Marathon, running a 2:10:56.
Bobby Van Allen, coach of the Division III NCAA champion Johns Hopkins women’s cross country team, discusses his team’s sixth national title and rising men’s team.
Sam Affolder was hurting in the third mile of Nike Cross Nationals last December.
After leading Loudoun Valley throughout the year in defense of its 2017 first-ever national title, things were looking grim for the senior. Most runners behind him saw him as a target to pass, but Carlos Shultz saw him and knew that’s where he needed to be.
“I saw Sam up there, and I knew if he was falling off, I couldn’t be ‘back there,'” he said.
