How Treadmill Training Helped This North Dakota Runner Qualify for Trials – runnersworld.com

When Val Curtis, 32, won the 2019 Fargo Marathon in May, the smile stretching from ear-to-ear reflected so much more than the excitement of the victory.

With the names of her husband and their two children written on her hand—which she raised above her head as she broke the tape—Curtis crossed the line in Fargo, North Dakota, in a personal best time of 2:43:08, which met the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials “B” standard (sub-2:45) that she just missed four months earlier.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to beat that feeling of not only did I win, but I got an OTQ, and I did it in front of my family,” Curtis told Runner’s World. “It was definitely one of my top life moments.”

The native of Minot, North Dakota, was inspired to chase the standard after watching the 2016 Trials in Los Angeles. Seeing Bowerman Track Club teammates Amy Cragg and Shalane Flanagan support each other while making Team USA, as well as the everyday runners and working professionals giving it their all, was motivation to make it into the big race herself.

While it’s one thing to dream of making it to the Trials starting line in Atlanta next February, as all of the 2020 Trials qualifiers know, it takes a huge amount of work, grit, and unwavering commitment to make that a reality. For Curtis, achieving an OTQ required a mindset shift from ordinary runner to competitive marathoner, a careful balance between family and running, and weeks of hard training on a treadmill during the brutal North Dakota winter.

Adapting Her Mindset

At the time of the 2016 Trials, Curtis was a 3:07 marathoner who didn’t dream of being fast enough to be on the 2020 start line. She had a short-lived history of competitive running—she ran track for one year at Southern Utah University—but Curtis stopped after transferring to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and didn’t pick up the sport again until after she gave birth to her second daughter in 2013.

From 2013 to 2016, she slowly began running and racing again, but it wasn’t until she watched the Trials that she really became inspired to step up her marathon training and dream a little bigger.

“I was so pumped up after watching that,” she said. “I thought, ‘What if I got to be among one of those people, one of the best in the country to line up and be there in person?’”

Breaking the 3-Hour Barrier

Because her marathon PR in 2016 was more than 20 minutes slower than the standard, Curtis was afraid to share her goal out loud. She was afraid of failing and letting down the people she would share her dreams with, and she was afraid that her body simply couldn’t do it.

“To be honest, I felt like there weren’t a lot of fast runners who looked like me,” she said. “I don’t weigh 100 pounds. I don’t have killer six-pack abs. I felt like I didn’t look the part of someone who could run that fast.”

When she spoke her goal aloud for the first time to her husband, Chris, a member of the U.S. Air Force, he quieted her doubts. “He told me, ‘What are you talking about? You could totally do that! You’re a hard worker,’” she said.

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Curtis began training under coach , who guides her remotely through an online training program. In May 2018, Curtis finished fourth at the Fargo Marathon in a then-personal best of . Then later that October, she shaved off another two minutes, running at the Twin Cities Marathon in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Her breakthrough came a few months later at the 2019 Houston Marathon on January 20. She finished the race in —a personal best by seven minutes, but less than a minute shy of the standard. Initially, Curtis was heartbroken to see that she missed the mark by so little, but she was quickly reminded by her coach that the massive improvement was still a success.

Using a Treadmill to Achieve an OTQ

After Houston, Curtis was even more determined to hit the standard—especially since she had a little less than a year to qualify (the window to qualify for Trials closes on January 19, 2020). After a two-week break in February, Curtis began preparing for Fargo with a training plan that would make her “too fit to fail,” she said.

While her hopes were high coming off a PR in Texas, Curtis’s buildup for Fargo was not easy. Chris was deployed to Guam in January, so Curtis had to take care of their two children—Bela, 9, and Christian, 7—alone until he returned in the summer. In addition to managing the kids’ schedules and her own work duties as a substitute teacher, Curtis had to fit in workouts and runs, which often started at 4 a.m. before the kids woke up.

On top of her time-strapped schedule, she had to deal with the frigid winter and early spring weather in Minot. With an eight-day stretch of temperatures dipping well below zero and roads constantly covered with ice and snow, Curtis did nearly all of her February runs on the treadmill.

“I don’t know how I did it,” she said. “I just wanted it so bad.”

Curtis said that there were many days she didn’t know how she would manage to train at a higher level while making sure that her children’s lives remained consistent with activities. When she spoke to her husband over the phone, Chris soothed her worries and reminded her to take things one day at a time.

When the day came to put her fitness to the test in Fargo, Curtis was ready. She ran her first half in 1:22:36, then ramped up her tempo to negative split by more than a minute on the second half, averaging 6:14 mile pace through the finish line.

“I’m a strong runner,” Curtis said. “I just keep getting better and better, so obviously I’m doing something right. I realized I don’t have to change how I look if I keep getting faster and faster.”

In that emotional moment when Curtis broke the tape, the same runner who doubted her body’s ability to run sub-2:45 just a few years earlier earned an opportunity to compete alongside the best marathoners in the country next February. Ultimately, her victory was validation that her Trials goal was not just worth sharing. It was achievable.

“The fact that I was able to accomplish this when I was so busy and my husband was away lets me know that I can do a lot more than I think I’m capable of doing,” she said. “That confidence translates to whatever I want to do.”

Want more inspiring stories of Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers? Read more here as the buildup to the race in February approaches.

Taylor Dutch is a freelance writer living in Chicago.