Oral History Program Sarah Sellers Interviewed by Marina Kenner 11 November 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sarah Sellers Interviewed by Marina Kenner 11 November 2021 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Sellers, Sarah, an oral history by Marina Kenner, 11 November 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: Sarah Sellers, has led a multifaceted life defined by her passion for education, athletics, and nursing. In an oral history interview conducted on November 11, 2021 with Marina Kenner, she delved into her early life, emphasizing the importance of activities like running in her upbringing and the influence of her educators, notably Dr. Chugg and Coach Pilkington. Sarah's academic journey was paralleled by her athletic pursuits at Weber State University where she graduated with a bachelors of science in Nursing. Her dedication to nursing coexisted with her love for running, highlighted by her participation in the Boston Marathon and the 2020 Olympic Qualifiers. This synergy between her professional and personal endeavors captures Sarah's inspiring journey. Also present is Allison Hess. MK: Today is November 11, 2021, it is 10:48 a.m. We are doing an oral history with Sarah Sellers. The interviewer is Marina Kenner and Allison Hess is present. So I will start with when and where were you born? SS: Salt Lake City, Utah, and July 10, 1991. MK: Would you like to talk a little bit about your early life? SS: Sure, I lived in Salt Lake for two years while my dad was in medical school. Then we moved to Texas and lived there while he finished his residency and fellowship. Until I was eight and then moved to Ogden and lived in Ogden until I graduated from Weber State. I'm one of seven kids. I'm the second oldest, and my family loves to be active, hiking, and biking, and running were always a big part of our lives growing up. My parents are both very into learning, and so they always taught that studying and learning was important, even if it wasn't 1 something that you thought you were going to use in life, it was important just to get more knowledge. MK: Was there a specific thing growing up that made you fall in love with running or was it just the experience? SS: I started running really when we first moved to Ogden. We were a couple of miles away from the trail system and then we moved houses to where we were right next to the trails. And my parents started running in the mornings before my dad went to work, before we went to school and I started joining them. And that's really where I fell in love with running because I felt like it made me really cool to get in like four or five miles before school. So I started competing on the crosscountry team for school and I was not the best runner on the team. I was decent, probably the middle to top third of my class. So definitely not the best, but I loved it and wanted to keep getting better, and I had really good coaches. MK: Where did you go to high school? SS: Ogden High. MK: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? SS: Yeah, definitely. My parents are very supportive of our education. If I had questions in math or science my dad would sit down with me for hours and make it really interesting. And it's amazing to me now having been out of school for a few years, I don't know how he was able to dive back into concepts so easily. I feel like I'm going to have a lot harder time remembering things. But he very much encouraged education and learning. He always said that the most 2 frustrating thing was when people would ask, “When will I use this?” It doesn't matter when you're going to use it. It's good because it's knowledge and it's helps you to just have a wider knowledge base. MK: Why did you choose to attend Weber? SS: I chose Weber mainly because of coach Paul Pilkington. Growing up only a mile away from Weber, I had always liked the campus. I respected the school. But honestly, the deciding factor was I wanted to have a good running experience where I went to school and I'd seen coach Pilkington had a lot of success with Lindsay Anderson who had been to the Olympics pretty soon before I started Weber and then also with Natalie Hawes—who is now my sister in law, at the time there was no relationship there. But I was kind of friends with Natalie and she had improved a lot when she first went to Weber. So Lindsey and Natalie were two of the runners who I had seen Coach Pilkington had a lot of success with, and I respected his coaching style and wanted him to coach me. MK: What did you study? SS: Nursing. MK: Was there something that influenced you to go into nursing? SS: Again, my dad was probably the biggest influence there. My aunt is a nurse and he had talked about that being a great job for her. And then he actually worked with several nurse anesthetists. At the time I didn't really know what a nursing anesthetist was, but he told me that they practiced in the operating room administering anesthesia, and they all seem to really like their jobs. He liked 3 working with them, so I went into nursing hoping to do nursing and nurse anesthesia. MK: What was Weber like when you started? SS: I lived at home, but being part of the cross-country team definitely made it a very social experience. I even though I lived at home, I wasn't home that often between classes and running and clinicals. That was my biggest worry was from an outside perspective in high school. I thought, if I go to Weber, am I not going to make friends? I'm not going to have any social life. And that was very much unfounded. I had great friends and social experiences at Weber, and I felt like the professors really were invested in what they were teaching and in the students. I never had a class where I felt lost and like nobody cared and there wasn't support if I needed it. So I'm extremely happy I went to Weber, it was a great experience and lived up to all my positive expectations and did not fulfill any of the fears I had. MK: Do you have any particular memories of your time at Weber? SS: A lot of memories. Let me think. A lot of my memories are based around running and becoming really good friends with my teammates. One kind of funny memory is I got hit of the week from the Weber State football team one time. We were training for a cross-country regionals…I think my junior year and we were on the track. It was dark, it was in the evening. There a group of probably, I don't know six or seven of us doing intervals on the track. So we were running hard, we were really focused and the football team was also practicing at the same time and 4 they were doing sprints across the field. I was really focused in the workout. I wasn't paying any attention to the football team. And I came around the back straightaway and out of nowhere, I was in the air. One of the football players was also very focused on his workout and he didn't realize we were coming along the backstretch and he ran into me at full speed. He was a linebacker and ran into me on the track. I wasn't injured, I was fine it winded me for a second, but I was fine. He felt terrible and he was extremely nice about it. But then they gave me the hit of the week. So that was kind of a cool experience. SS: That's my only football experience. MK: What years did you attend Weber? SS: 2009 to 2013. MK: Did you have any favorite professors? SS: Yes. Dr. Chugg. I took physiology from him I hope he's still there, I'm sure he is. He just made it extremely interesting and engaging. I took physiology from him before I started the nursing program. When I was in the nursing program, I would often study in the same building that he taught in and whenever he walked by the table I was sitting at he would stop and say hi and ask about school and how things were going. Just another example of the professors really caring. He had many hundreds of students, but he would stop by when he saw me studying there, even though I wasn't even in his classes anymore. It's going to be hard with nursing professors because I had a lot of really good nursing professors. I would say the whole school of nursing was just a great 5 experience, and especially a lot of the clinical faculty who are currently nurses, who work in the community, but then took time to engage with and work with the Weber State nursing students. MK: What was your experience with the track team at Weber? SS: My experience with track was… I don't know how to sum it up. It was amazing. It was really good. Coach Pilkington really was the best college coach and best coach that I could ask for. He really responded to my needs individually. I would often come to him with concerns that I wanted to be doing bigger workouts, or should I be running higher mileage? And he very much had the long term perspective where he thought, like, "No, we're going to take gradual progression because maybe in the short term, it would help you to jump into bigger mileage and bigger workouts. But I think that'll get you injured or you're not quite ready for that." So he very much had the long term investment strategy. And then my teammates were my best friends then and still are now. I felt like I had the best opportunity to compete at Weber. But then also the friendships and relationships are what stand out the most. MK: Were there any other student organizations that you were involved with? SS: Institute, and what else…? The answer is probably no, I feel like I was between nursing and the track team, and that was probably most of my life there. MK: What events did you attend at Weber? SS: Like social events at Weber? Some football games, basketball games, track meets, cross-country meets. I guess, mostly sports. 6 MK: What degrees and certifications do you have? SS: A bachelor's of science in nursing and then masters of science in anesthesia. Those are my degrees. I don't know certifications there's nothing probably that very noteworthy. There's lots of little certifications you have to maintain, but yeah, that's most of it. MK: Where did you get your master's from? SS: Barry University in Florida MK: What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? SS: At Weber, or both? MK: Both. SS: At Weber, I said running was a huge part of my life and I knew there was only a very limited amount of time. I have basically four years to compete. So I didn't want to compromise on training and recovering. But then, fitting the nursing schedule around that was sometimes challenging. I think it mostly, in retrospect, was challenging recovery-wise. Like I never missed workouts. I would get up at four before clinicals and go for my first run, and then I'd go to clinicals, and then I'd do my workout afterwards. That was all doable. But I wasn't necessarily getting…like all college students, I wasn't getting as much sleep as I should, and I think sometimes I would get run down during the season competing because I just didn't recover well enough. I actually ended my running career early at Weber. I didn't finish all my eligibility. I had a navicular stress fracture in my foot 7 that happened when I still had two seasons left. I had an indoor and outdoor track seasons left that I never used because my foot didn't heal. It took a couple of years, and by the time my foot healed, I was long done with college. When I went to Barry University, I wasn't competing. I was just doing school and school itself was very demanding, but kind of getting used to the new normal of not being a runner and I would occasionally go for long runs by myself just to try to get back into it. But it was very much like my foot was not normal for several years. So I don't know if that tied in directly. AH: What was that like? That had to be a very emotional and mentally draining time to have your track career stopped like that so unexpectedly. SS: Yeah. It very much was. My biggest goal in college, running wise, was to be an all-American. In fact, my freshman year, I made this silly bet that I wouldn't eat ice cream until I was an all-American. And I wouldn't even have like a smoothie that had ice cream in it and I love ice cream, but it wasn't really a restrictive eating thing. It was more like just one more thing to motivate myself and I finished my collegiate career without ever achieving that. And I didn't eat ice cream for five years after that because I was just punishing myself because I had never achieved that. And when I got injured I very vividly, remember my last collegiate race, it was at the University of Washington indoor track. It was called, "The Last Chance Meet" because it was a meet that was the last chance to qualify for nationals. And I needed to run just under 16 minutes through the 5k, and I was in shape to 8 do that. Amber Schultz--she's now Amber Schultz, but she was Amber Henry at the time--was my teammate and she was pacing me and she did an amazing job pacing me and my foot had been pretty sore, leading into the race. But midway through the race, it was just excruciating and I couldn't run normal and I slowed way down. I didn't hit the time I needed. I finished the race. But I slowed way down the last half of the race and then found out that my foot was broken. That was the last time that I ran in a Weber State uniform, so it very much ended at the time on a very disappointing note where I never achieved all-American. I didn't finish my eligibility. I had all these unfinished goals and I was still in school and I still had a little over a year left to finish my nursing. So I think it was really hard to feel like I was suddenly completely disconnected from the track and cross-country team. And I kind of did to myself too I didn't really reach out. It's kind of like with the ice cream thing where I could have still been connected to the team, but I was like, "well, I'm injured. I can't be part of this now." That's a long answer. It was very hard, for sure. AH: How did you get over it? I mean, it took five years to eat ice cream again. How did you reconnect with Paul and feeling better about yourself and being satisfied with what happened at Weber State and then get back into running? SS: I think the ice cream thing, even though it was like this silly thing that I did and I think kind of trivial. I think that was actually just eating ice cream again was a big deal because actually my husband took me to on my birthday. He brought me to an ice cream place, and I was kind of mad. I was like, "You're making me eat ice cream on my birthday? I don't deserve this. I'm not going to do this." And he's 9 like, "No, you need to just eat this. Get over it. It's over. You did great things at Weber and this part is just hanging over your head." So I think that was part of just moving on and like, no, I didn't accomplish the goals I wanted, but being grateful for what did happen. Then actually, that summer, was the summer before I ran Boston 2018, and that was another coming full circle to achieving something that was never a goal of mine. Coming in second in Boston was never a goal because I didn't think it was even a possibility. So on the one hand, I didn't achieve the goals that I set. But then I also, achieved something that was never even a goal MK: I'm going to circle back a little bit to your career as a nurse, what mentors or resources did you have available in your program, in your career? SS: You mean the program at Weber specifically? MK: At Weber, at Florida, at your current job. Is there anybody who really stands out? SS: Oh, boy. Well, I'll start from where I am right now. I have a 10-month-old, so I was pregnant during the initial outbreak of the pandemic, and most of it. My whole pregnancy was COVID. My coworkers here in Arizona were huge supporters when there wasn't much known about it. It was known that pregnancy is a risk factor for serious illness with COVID. But there wasn't that much known about it. So I was working full time and we had a fair number of COVID patient responsibilities. I worked mostly in the operating room, so I wasn't in the ICU COVID unit. But, as anesthesia providers, we were sent to areas of the hospital, like the COVID units, because they were short-staffed. And the ORs were less 10 busy because we weren't doing elective cases. So that’s a long way of saying that my coworkers really stepped up and protected me, even though I was otherwise young and healthy. They didn't let me go to the COVID units or take care of COVID patients, which I was very much willing to do so. But they just said, "Because you're pregnant we don't want you to be exposed." So that was a huge sacrifice on their part and something I will always be grateful for. And then going back, to Barry University, I feel like my biggest mentor, was probably my husband. He's also in the medical field. He's currently an orthopedic surgery resident. But at the time, he was in medical school. Just having him also be in the medical field, so being able to talk about the frustrations and the stresses of going through training and feeling like you weren't always succeeding. That was huge. Then at Weber, I finished my R.N. and then had a year left for my bachelors. So I was working as an RN, I finished my bachelor's at Weber and I was working in the ICU and Jen Gordon was one of the nurses that really took me under her wing. As a pretty new grad and new ICU nurse, it was very stressful, feeling like you're responsible for patients in these life-threatening situations. And she was extremely meticulous about her own patient care and she was very supportive, but also had very high expectations. Where if I felt like I made a mistake, I took it very seriously and she would take it very seriously, but she would also help me. So she wouldn't just like brush things off. But she also supported me through learning how to do things well. MK: Other than Paul, did you have any other mentors in your running career? 11 SS: Yes. Lindsey Anderson was. Especially when I started Weber I remember our summer camp, Coach Pilkington said, " If you want to be good at something, find someone who's really good at what they do and copy what they do." Lindsey was an Olympian, she was really good at what she did. So I just copied her. I lifted the same way Lindsey lifted. I would go on a lot of morning runs with her and distance runs. I do a lot of her track workouts. My workouts were shorter and slower, but she really just showed me the dedication that she puts into it, and I just copied everything that she did. That's probably kind of annoying from her standpoint, but she never made it seem like it was. MK: Were there any resistance or battles that you faced as you progressed in your career as a nurse? SS: Yes, I felt like there were several kind of developmental milestones as a nurse. One was having my first nursing job. I worked really hard in school and you learn all these things, but then when you're actually the one with the license and responsible, especially in the ICU. It was just very, very, stressful to feel like I was the one who had this responsibility and that I was capable and I needed to rise to the challenge. Not just think, "I'm not good enough. I'm not capable of doing this." So I think just the imposter syndrome and knowing that I'd studied hard, I learned the things I needed to, and I was going to take good care of my patients. Having that confidence, that was a huge challenge for me. Then during anesthesia school, I think there were a lot of times that I remember thinking, I had a lot of respect for anyone who was a nurse anesthetist because there were times when I was thinking like, "This is this seems too much 12 of an uphill battle." And I guess maybe that same struggle of the confidence that like, "No, you are doing this. You're doing a good job." And now that I am a nurse and anesthetist and I see students that have those same feelings, I really just want to be--I want them to have confidence. I feel like one of my biggest...When I have students, one of my biggest goals is for them to have confidence in themselves and not misplaced confidence, like if they're doing something poorly, just like the ICU nurse that I talked about, who wouldn't just brush off mistakes, like I want them to know these are very high expectations. There's a lot of serious things that you are responsible for, but you're completely capable of doing this. MK: Are there any nursing organizations that you are a member of? SS: I'm currently a member of the American Association of Nursing Anesthetist. As a nursing student at Weber I was a member of the National Student Nurses Association. MK: Are there any running organizations that your member of? SS: Currently, USA track and field. That's kind of it right now. I do a lot of runs by myself-- not entirely by myself. I do a lot of stroller runs right now. So me and Emery, we go on a lot of runs. MK: Good running partner. SS: Exactly. Great running partner. 13 MK: After you got out of your master's program at some point you started training again and running again. What was your progress from starting that to the Boston Marathon? SS: I graduated from Nurse Anesthesia School in June 2017. Then we immediately moved from Florida to Arizona, and my brother, Ryan Callister, told me he wanted to run the Boston Marathon that spring. You have to run a qualifying marathon. And at that point, my foot was feeling like ninety five percent better and I thought I could probably start training again. So that summer, moving to Tucson. I started training, but definitely not serious marathon training I was just basically doing distance runs. So I wasn't doing any speed workouts or any structured training, but I was just increasing my mileage. So I ran the Huntsville Utah Marathon and qualified for Boston and then I contacted Coach Pilkington and told him that I was planning on running Boston and asked if he would coach me for that. That was in probably October of 2017. So that winter is where I really started structured training It was what I considered very unideal circumstances if I was trying to compete at an elite level, which I didn't think I was. I thought, I'm going to try to do the very best I can do. But these real elite marathoners, they're able to be so much more focused. So I was doing my workouts before and after work, and I thought that was a huge hindrance to training, and often Coach Pilkington would tell me “you're going to do five by mile at 5:20 pace.” Sometimes I would do the first one and I would be at a 5:25 pace, a little bit slow and it was way harder than it should have been. So then I would cut down to just eight hundred, so half mile 14 repeats. And they were, probably half the workouts that I would have to alter in some way because I was just tired from work and just wasn't able to hit pace. So really, I kind of thought of it as like, I'm doing the best that I can do. But those elite marathoners, they're at a totally different level. So I was honestly surprised that I that I got to start in the elite with the elite women because they start all by themselves. They don't start with the mass start. My time from Huntsville just happened to qualify me to start with the elite, women, but that was a surprise to me. I was just planning on starting with the mass start. MK: How did you balance nursing and that kind of training schedule? SS: When I was at work, I was very much focused on work and this is what I'm doing. And same thing when I was running, especially when it was a run before work, I would try to put it out of my head if I was stressed about my cases or what work was going to be like that day. I would just be really focused on my work out. At the time, I thought it was a hindrance to be balancing the two. But then in retrospect, I think that's what prepared me to do well at Boston because if it had been like a normal Boston… not normal, there's never normal. But if there had been decent weather there is virtually no chance I would have been second place. The reason I was second place is, it was horrible weather and I think physiologically I was able to handle it. But more importantly, I had been training, usually when I was tired after work, I was used to pushing myself when I was mentally fatigued and didn't really feel like doing it. And that's just how Boston was that year. MK: How have you stay connected with Weber State since you graduated? 15 SS: My family still lives a mile away from Weber, and Coach Pilkington is still my coach. A lot of my teammates, I'm still really good friends with. Since I graduated, I have pretty much lived out of state. But I'm planning on moving back to the area when my husband is all finished with his training and hope to be involved with, the running track and cross-country at Weber. AH: You said you would not have succeeded as well as you did without terrible weather, which is really interesting if you hadn't been in that elite group? You probably wouldn't have been able to take second, either. Would you? SS: Yeah, it definitely did. So they actually made an exception that year because typically there's about forty five women who start in the elite group and it's a women's only start. So the women elite start first and then the men starts like a half hour later, right before the mass start. And in the past, there was never a circumstance where someone from the mass start time wise beat someone from the elite start, that year the fifth place actually was from the mass start, so they had to make an exception. Being in the elite start is a game changer for sure. AH: When did you realize you're doing really well? When did it come to you that you are going to place in the Boston Marathon? And what was that like? SS: So the race started, I am going into the race. I initially had a time goal I wanted to beat. I wanted to run the Olympic Trials A standard which was a 2:37 pace. But as the weather unfolded the days before the race, I saw that was not going to be possible. So I changed from a time goal to just this nebulous goal of I'm just going to run the best I can and hopefully place well. But I told myself, I'm going to 16 run very conservative in the early miles. I'm going to try to tuck in when I can because I think especially in bad weather and headwinds tucking in is really important. So in the early stages of the race, I was towards the back of the elite women in the first mile, we were just one huge pack. It went super, super slow through the first mile. It felt like, we were jogging. Then after the first mile, it slowly broke apart and I kind of ran with different packs of women where we would run together. And then at some point I would go to the front and there were a couple of times when I said, “let's take turns leading a little.” And then I didn't realize that I dropped the group I was with. So that happened a few times. So I slowly made my way up throughout the race. Then, probably around mile 18 or 20 or one of the spectators shouted that Shalane Flanigan was just ahead. And she's a many time U.S. Olympian, and she won the New York City Marathon. So that was kind of the point where I knew like, oh, I'm must be doing really well. Shalane must be having a bad day, for one thing, but also I must be doing well. But I had no idea what place I was in, and even when I crossed the finish line, I had no idea what place I was in. It wasn't until, I asked the race officials what place I was, and they told me I was second. But it was all very surprising. AH: And that moment for you second place when that sunk in, what was that like? And then how about all the attendant attention you received? I think you still might have. We might have more news hits from that moment than we have had in anything that's happened at Weber State University. 17 SS: So when the race official told me I was second, I first made them repeat it several times because I was like, “no, no, no. What place was I overall?” I thought I misheard it. And after they repeated a couple times, I kind of got this feeling of like fear and thinking, is this real?, I mean, this is kind of exciting, but also I don't think this is real and I need to find somebody. My husband happened to get to the finish line right as I crossed, which was kind of a miracle because there were many thousands of people and somehow he managed to get there. So I saw him, and I went up to him and I asked him if he knew what place I was. And he said “no,” because the race tracking app wasn't working for him and I told him I was second and I completely expected him to be like, “no, no., you misheard, you were seventh or twelfth or something.” And he just started jumping up and down and was like, “your second in the Boston freaking Marathon,” and he was very excited. But then, the attention after that was very overwhelming. My husband had a weeklong conference and residency out of state right after that, so I was by myself for the first week, just going back to work and on the way to work, I was talking to podcasts, and radio, and BBC, and different media outlets. I guess the end of that answer is that it was very overwhelming. On the one hand I felt very grateful. And on the other hand, I've never been a very public person and I run because I love running. I want to do well, I want to compete. But, I've never done it because I want tons of attention. And so it was really hard, especially trying to get back into racing because I felt like no matter what I do, I'm going to 18 disappoint people because people think I'm going to go win the Olympics now, I want to do well, I want to keep competing. I had a great performance at Boston, but also it was different circumstances I raced really well in those circumstances, but I felt like, how do I go run what for me is going to be a really good race and I might be 20th place. But other people are going to say, “Oh, that's a huge failure, Boston was a onetime thing.” So I don't know, just getting used to being able to have it be a public thing, but also not worry about what other people thought and that they may think, “oh, she didn't even make the Olympics. I guess that was a bad race.” When in reality like it's hard to make comparisons. AH: I do wonder if Paul works with you quite a bit on your physical, but also your mental. I have this sense that you're a bit of a perfectionist and he has to work with you to keep you, straight in your own head on needs in your training. SS: Yeah, very much. And that has actually been huge especially early when I was having a hard time not caring what other people thought. I would try to compartmentalize and say, I care that Coach Pilkington thinks I do well, and he can objectively assess whether or not it was a good race. And just because some online forum doesn't think I did well, if my coach thinks I did well, if he's pleased, then I can be pleased. That was a good benchmark. AH: I was here in this role when that happened. I was very well aware of what was happening. I was reading it, it was exciting to watch, but I wondered what it was like, not being an athlete. I'm always wondering what that experience is like. 19 SS: Oh, thanks. That's cool to hear from your perspective as the PR director. AH: We were celebrating like crazy for you and for the university. For Paul, it was awesome. SS: Oh, that's so good. And it very much was like having ended up feeling like I didn't accomplish everything at Weber that I wanted to. Then having that come back around and hopefully reflect well on Weber was very fulfilling. MK: How has your running career progressed since then or where has it gone? SS: I ran a few races that summer. They were kind of, tough races for me. I don't think I recovered very well after Boston just because there was all that attention. And the first week after Boston, I hardly ate anything because it was just nerve racking and I wasn't hungry. It was just very overwhelming. So I ran some races that summer, I ran the New York City Marathon that fall, and did decent, and then ran Boston again in the spring. So I raced a few more marathons between Boston and the Olympic Trials. The Olympic trials were really my next goal race and that was February 2020. And I raced that, I was in Atlanta and I was eleventh. And actually, that was a really good race for me. It was a really tough course, but I ran my best time. Only the top three make the Olympics, so still eight places out of making the Olympics. But there were probably, around 400 or 450 women who in the race. It's the Olympic Trials. It's pretty hard to qualify for the Olympic Trials. So, 11th was a really good place for me. I was really, personally pleased with my race, and I think it was a good. Like, Boston had calmed down enough, and I was 20 able to really appreciate that. I just ran a good race for me and no, I didn't make the Olympics, and some people are going to be disappointed by that, but actually this was a good performance for me and I was able to be happy with it. And after the Olympic Trials, I had a baby, so that's been my running career since then. MK: I was reading an article that's from Tucson that was saying, you're trying to get back into everything after having a baby. SS: I've done 17 miles with the stroller so far. So Emery is getting there. She usually runs a marathon with me now. MK: I think I am about ready to wrap up, Alison, do you have any other questions? AH: Not you've said so much. Gosh, there's so much to go with here, but maybe reflecting just about on Lindsay and Amber because I've had the pleasure of meeting both of them and they're both awesome. I'd love your input on what it's been like to have the two of them in your life as mentors. And then how you plan to kind of pay it forward for future runners. SS: Lindsay was…besides Coach Pilkington, she was probably the biggest influence on my running career from little things like how she lifted and how she did her morning runs, to just her outlook and how she handled herself and was able to race and our friendship. I don't think I can over state like how what an influence that was and then with Amber too. I would also say Taylor Ward as well. Taylor was a big reason that I went to see marathons. Because after college, she started doing marathons and she just made steady progression I mean, she has a faster marathon time than I do, she's run some really great marathons just 21 seeing her being able to stay healthy and put in the training. And we stayed friends. Lindsey was a huge influence, especially early and then Taylor even though we were living in different states, just watching her success, and same with Amber. Taylor and I are probably more similar runners. Amber has much more leg speed. But having the three of them as influences throughout my running career and my sister in law, Natalie. I don't know it's cliché, but the relationships really are what is made running so fun and I see myself coming back to Ogden, hopefully, and being able to be involved with the running community and especially the collegiate runners. That would just be full circle and be really cool. AH: Well, for my from my perspective, it's been just a delightful hour to spend with you. SS: Thank you both. 22