Meet the Minnesota High Schooler Lining Up at the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials – runnersworld.com

During her first outdoor track season in 2018, Tierney Wolfgram was feeling restless. The longest events offered at high school meets—the 1600 and 3200 meters—seemed too brief for the teen running star, who had won the Nike Cross Nationals Heartland Regional and the Minnesota high school state cross-country titles as a freshman in 2017.

“After cross-country finished, I had high hopes for track, but it seemed a little short to me,” Wolfgram, 16, told Runner’s World. “I realized that as the distances got longer, I succeeded more. So in the middle of track season, my mom and I started talking about a marathon. We put that idea to the side, but it stuck with me.”

Throughout the summer of 2018, Wolfgram ran around 55 miles per week in her hometown of Woodbury, Minnesota, to build a base for the upcoming cross-country season. But training for a 5K left her wanting more, so in early fall, she decided to test herself at the Twin Cities Marathon in October.

“My parents and coaches were supportive of it,” Wolfgram said. While Twin Cities requires participants to be 18 or older, the race made exceptions for younger athletes who had a signed letter of consent from their parents. Wolfgram also received a permission form to compete from her coaches and athletic director at her high school, Math and Science Academy.

To prepare for a race eight times longer than her typical distance, Wolfgram, then just 15 years old, increased her mileage to a whopping 100 miles per week. Every morning, she did a base run with her dad biking beside her, then she doubled at afternoon cross-country practice. On weekends, she did a long run of up to 24 miles. Though she didn’t do marathon-specific workouts, she did practiced speedwork three times a week with her team and in meets.

“Every mile of it I enjoyed,” she said. “The long runs were my favorite runs. They were hard, which is why I liked them.”

At Twin Cities, Wolfgram, who found herself passing elite women twice her age, finished sixth overall and top American in a time of 2:40:03, qualifying her for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. On February 29, the high school junior will compete as the youngest female in Atlanta, but it hasn’t been all smooth-sailing to get to that start line.

Navigating Cross-Country Post-Marathon

After her marathon debut, Wolfgram received an overwhelming amount of feedback—both positive and negative—from the running community. Her supporters praised her feat and predicted that she’d dominate at the state and national levels in cross-country again. Others, meanwhile, speculated that the marathon would ruin her season because of the toll it took on her body.

“I let those people affect me,” Wolfgram said. “I didn’t read a lot of the negative comments, but the positive ones got stuck in my head. I felt a lot of pressure to win and live up to their expectations. I didn’t want to let anyone down.”

Wolfgram planned to jump right back into cross-country after Twin Cities, which took place four weeks before the high school state championships. But she underestimated how much mental and physical recovery time she needed.

“I was really tired after the marathon,” she said. “I started worrying that I wasn’t recovering, and that was stressing me out more. That’s when my season went downhill.”

After a few days off of running, she resumed a lighter training plan, but had trouble getting into a racing mindset again. At the 2018 state meet, she dropped out of the race. Then she dropped out of Nike Cross a few weeks later. She felt physically okay, but mentally drained.

“I don’t ever regret doing the marathon, but I do regret dropping out of those races,” she said. “I just felt like there was a ton of pressure on me. I needed to take a step back and really recover.”

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

After building up a solid winter training base following the cross-country season, Wolfgram was in the middle of her first outdoor track practice of 2019 when she felt a throbbing pain in her left foot. She finished the workout, thinking it would pass. Then suddenly she heard a “pop” when she landed.

A visit to the doctor revealed what she feared: stress fractures in her second and third metatarsals. To recover, Wolfgram had to stop running for 10 weeks, and needed to wear a stress-fracture boot for eight of those.

“I was able to run in two meets by the end of the season, but it was definitely not what I wanted,” she said.

Around this time, she transferred from Math and Science Academy to Woodbury High School, where Wolfgram planned to run cross-country in the fall of 2019. After a slow buildup after her injury, she was back logging 55 miles per week in the summer. This time, she had no looming marathons on the schedule; instead, she eyed redemption in cross-country.

Sadly, the teen’s dreams were short-lived. In early September 2019, just a week before her second race of the season, she felt a sharp pain in her left shin. She ended up racing anyway, finishing first in the Lakeville Applejack Invitational in 18:08.56. The day after the race, she headed straight to the doctor.

“I found out that I’d just raced on a fractured tibia,” she said. “Our best guess for why it happened was that I had been running on too much hard surface, like concrete, and I wasn’t sleeping enough because I was stressed. My body couldn’t handle it.”

To recover, Wolfgram was on crutches for a few weeks, then in a boot again. She couldn’t run for nine weeks total, which meant the rest of her cross-country season was shot. Still, she remained hopeful that she’d recover in time for Trials.

“My parents and a lot of positive people in our community supported me through it all,” she said.

The Comeback

In late December of 2019, Wolfgram and her dad flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they planned to stay until the Trials in February. Because of her injury, the teen had a shortened window to prepare for the race, and she wanted to concentrate fully on training without other distractions. She enrolled in online high school courses for that semester.

Before the trip, Wolfgram’s mother emailed several Albuquerque high schools to see if Wolfgram could train with a boys’ track team during her stay, and Albuquerque Academy welcomed her in. Throughout January and February, Wolfgram logged morning miles with her dad or the Dukes Track Club, then doubled with the team.

“It’s been fun to train with a bunch of boys. We get competitive in practice,” she said. “I don’t feel as lonely here, because there are always people to run with.”

At starting lines, Wolfgram often feels out of place. While she is surrounded by women who are training similarly to her in marathons, none are her age. She will be one of only a handful of runners in history who have competed in the Olympic Marathon Trials as teenagers. Before her, Kirk Pfeffer ran in the 1976 Trials when he was 19, while Cathy O’Brien competed in the 1984 Trials at 16. Alana Hadley qualified for the 2016 Trials as a 16-year-old in 2013, but she ended up dropping out of the championship.

When asked what she would tell other young runners who were inspired to run marathons, she advised them to think critically before making the leap.

“Make sure it’s something you really enjoy,” she said. “Even if you love long distances, a marathon is really long, and the training can be really hard. You want to make sure you’re having fun doing the training and the racing. Sometimes, half marathons suit you better.”

Wolfgram, who is the oldest of three children, is the only runner in her family. Her dad stays active by bike-commuting 15 miles to and from work each day (as well as riding alongside Wolfgram as she runs), and her mom is an enthusiastic walker, she said.

While Wolfgram is certainly forging her own path in running—and has suffered a fair amount of injury heartbreak along the way—she feels confident going into Trials. Last month, she averaged 85 miles per week, mostly on soft surfaces like trails. To prevent injuries, she has focused on getting plenty of shut-eye. “Sleep is my secret recovery weapon,” she said. No pain has resurfaced, thankfully.

On January 19, Wolfgram finished the Arizona Rock ’N’ Roll Half Marathon in 1:16:55 (the course was 285 meters short). Heading into her second marathon ever in Atlanta, she has a lofty goal: breaking 2:34:24, which Cathy O’Brien ran in the 1984 Trials. After the race, she’ll head back to Minnesota to get ready for outdoor track.

“I’m excited to line up alongside my running idols, like Sara Hall and Jordan Hasay,” she said. “Not many high schoolers can say they’ve done that.”

Digital Editor Hailey first got hooked on running news as an intern with Running Times, and now she reports on elite runners and cyclists, feel-good stories, and training pieces for Runner’s World and Bicycling magazines.