Running With an Olympian

Way back in October, of 2013, I had the privilege of running with Olympian Carrie Tollefson. I had the idea of interviewing her while I ran, and I was hoping to get a version of the story I wrote published in a national running magazine. The Q and A format made it into "Run Minnesota" magazine, but the long form has sat idly on my hard drive.

Whether I took too long to submit and the story lost its timeliness, it was too long, or just not well-enough written, the long version of this article didn't make it to publication. So, I figured I'd share it here:

Interviewed on the Run: Carrie Tollefson

Looking into the overcast fall morning in St. Paul, I wait in a Caribou Coffee to meet Carrie Tollefson for a run. The smell of the coffee keeps me alert as I read through my list of questions about Carrie's first marathon, the Twin Cities Marathon. After I check my iPod to make sure it's ready to record our conversation,  I look out the wide-pane windows, not wanting to make Carrie wait outside in the brisk fall weather.

An Olympic Athlete and winner of the 2004 Olympic Trials 1500m, Carrie, a mother of two, splits her time between Reebok Ambassadors, "C Tolle Run," training and racing, and caring for her family of four. Her newest, Everett, was born sixteen weeks before her first marathon as a little brother to her daughter, Ruby, age three.

“How far do you have on your schedule today?” she asks after we shake hands and exchange Minnesota pleasantries.

“I can go as far or short as you want,” I say. I’m nervous about recording our conversation on my iPod while asking questions from my laminated notecard, all while trying to keep up with an Olympic athlete.

“Is 40 minutes OK?” she asks. “My glute’s been acting up a little bit.”

“That’s OK with me. Since my knee started hurting, I’ve pretty much thrown my plan out the window,” I say. I’ve been training for my next race, the St. Louis Marathon, but a broken knee from the previous year has begun to flare up again.

We run down Randolph Ave, and begin chatting about Carrie's first marathon. Carrie is all smiles as she talks about her training for her first marathon. I hope I’m not slowing her down at our seven minute-per-mile pace. “I ran consistently five days a week, and my highest week was 63,” she says as we run from the Caribou toward the Mississippi River.

Carrie’s training consisted of about 45 miles a week, but she added in more quality workouts than normal. “When I did 40 miles, it was a good 40 miles — not a lot of junk,” she says. “Sometimes I only had time for five, so I’d make it a hard five."

Her routine normally consists of more strength training, but for her marathon training, she didn’t have time. “I didn’t do much core work,” she says as we continue towards Minneapolis. She’s talking easily, while my breathing is becoming a little more labored. “They recommend you wait eight weeks after your pregnancy, and by that point I was halfway through my marathon training.”

Carrie started the Twin Cities Marathon with her friends, Angela Voight and Angela Williams. They soon met up with Katie McGregor, a 2:31 marathoner, professional runner, and Carrie's best friend. “I was feeling pretty good, and Angie Voight was saying, ‘I think you’re going to surprise yourself,'" says Carrie. "At mile five I had to stop and use the bathroom, which I never really have to do.”

At that point, McGregor waited for Carrie while “the Angies” kept going. “I feel like I was overhydrated and I was so uncomfortable,” says Carrie. Her bathroom break was unusual, because as a nursing mother she’d been constantly dehydrated. Carrie had also been dealing with a sore back after spending time driving to Grand Forks, North Dakota and flying to New York City the week before the race.

“I started running 6:20 pace after I went to the bathroom, and that felt better to me,” she says. I hadn't said much as we crossed the Ford bridge from St. Paul to Minneapolis. Carrie's story about her first marathon sounds like a lot of other first-timers' stories.

“Katie and I caught up to the Angies,” Carrie says, “but got separated again at a water stop around mile seven.” She then told Katie she was feeling better and ready to run a 6:30 pace.

Carrie had plenty of crowd support along the way. Katie McGregor told me that people were cheering for Carrie all along the race course.

As we ran toward Minnehaha Park, we passed Cretin Ave, the first of a long section of uphill on the last six miles of the Twin Cities Marathon course. “Want to run up Cretin?” I ask. She laughs. “No,” she says, “I live on those hills; I run those dang hills every day. But during the race I was thinking, when are these things going to end?” The last few miles of the marathon were tough for Carrie. She slowed from a 6:35 pace through 30k to a 6:52 pace through the next 5k.

Unfortunately, Carrie didn’t quite hit her goal of a sub three hour marathon. “At mile 25,” Carrie says, “Angie Williams went by me and ended up running a 2:59:28.” Carrie’s other two friends also ran great times. Katie McGregor finished in 2:47 as a workout, while Angie Voight, a sports medicine doctor, ran a 3:08. All four finished in the top 15 in their age groups.

“If I’d just tried to run the race I meant to run, stayed with the Angies, then I would have maybe snuck under [three hours],” she says. Carrie ended up running 3:02:47. “I just can’t complain about this,” she says. “It was an amazing journey and a really good race, even though I had to walk and wanted to go home rather than finish. I feel good that I can go and speak about my marathon experience and relate to 99.9% of the people, because how often does it go perfect?” 

Carrie knows how to keep up a good conversation while she runs. Normally when I run with others, I talk their ears off, but now I’m able to ask questions, share a little about my own running, but mainly listen.  For her part, Carrie acts just as interested in how my wife and I did at our Twin Cities Marathon weekend races as I did about her race.

I’m so engrossed with her story, I don’t even notice the beautiful fall colors along the Mississippi. Normally I gape with awe at the views along Mississippi River Blvd, but we’ve been running for almost twenty minutes when I finally notice some of the scenery.  “Last time I was over here, there was almost no water in Minnehaha Falls,” I say, gesturing toward the falls. After a couple days’ rain, water from the falls cascades into the pool below.

“This is my favorite thing,” she says while we run along the walkway overlooking the falls. “When I have the girls come run with me, I make them stop and look.”

We wind our way back over the Ford Ave Bridge into St. Paul. I finish off my questions by asking Carrie about the current household record holder in the marathon, her husband Charlie. A former college football wide receiver at the University of Hamline and three-time Iron Man, Charlie has run a 3:01 marathon. At Twin Cities, in 2013 however, Carrie beat her husband by almost an hour.

“Charlie’s a great dad and works really hard. He doesn’t want to miss out on anything,” Carrie says. Charlie and Carrie started their marathon training with Wednesday night date runs, and a long run on the weekend. “Pretty soon date nights went away, and he was only doing the Saturday long run,” she says. “He calls it the ‘lifetime taper plan.’”

As we come back toward Caribou Coffee, Carrie tells me about her weekly web-show, “C Tolle Run.” Carrie’s been doing the show since December of 2010. “I love sharing stories about running and physical fitness, and just the joy that we can get out of life,” she says. “There’s a lot of heartache and stress in life, but if you can’t smile and try to enjoy 90% of it, it’s going to be a rough life to live.”  Carrie also likes to get a little goofy on camera. “I don’t care if people think I’m funny,” she says. “I’m a goofball in real life and a goofball on camera.”

“C Tolle Run” enjoys a wide following, and many runners recognize her from the show. She credits Julie Heaton, the director, and Tim Bornholdt, the producer, for the show’s quality production. “I’m trying to share with people that running is one of my favorite extra-curricular activities, and I’m just lucky enough that I can do it at a high level. Even if I didn’t, I could still get so many rewards from it. We’ve enjoyed “C Tolle Run” and hope it continues.”

We finish our run, and after chatting a little about some of my favorite runners, Geoffrey Mutai and Bernard Lagat, Carrie heads back toward her home in St. Paul. She’s not sure when she’ll do her next marathon — her work with “C Tolle Run” and Reebok Ambassadors keeps her busy. She does pre-race coverage of many of the races she runs, and being on her feet all day the day before a marathon makes racing a difficult proposition.

I jog back to my car, blowing on my hand, numb from the cool breeze and its locked position around my iPod. I stop the recording, climb inside, and coax the engine of my old Honda to life in the Minnesota morning. When I get home, I sit down to plan my next race, my next marathon, and how to make my schedule work. If Carrie can get the training in, maybe I have time too.

So that's that story. I'd love to do another one of these sometime. Any comments and advice are more than welcome.

Happy Running!