Carrie Strickland's "A" Standard

The breakthrough came, appropriately enough, in Eugene, at a 5K held in conjunction with the inaugural Eugene Marathon. Strickland surprised herself, running 16:59 to clip a full 40 seconds off her PR. Suddenly, winning shoes, dinner coupons, or cases of beer in local races wasn't enough. "I got the sense that maybe I did want to run something fast," she says. "Not just for the prizes."

Soon, she and her fiancé/coach, John Dimoff, were studying Olympic Trials qualifying times, looking for an event that might be within reach.

"She wanted to qualify for the Olympic Trials in something," Dimoff remembered as we chatted in a cafeteria on Nike's Beaverton campus. "I was thinking the 10K."

Strickland shot him a look. "I'm so relieved I didn't have to do a 10K," she said.
 
But when they began the chase for the Trials, they both admit, it could have been for any event from the 1500 to the 10K.

"We started in November or December, not really knowing what event," Dimoff says.
Then, in February, things began to heat up. In an indoor meet in Seattle, Strickland ran a flat 3,000 meters in 9:20. In the 3,000-meter steeplechase, the "A" standard for the Olympic Trials, guaranteeing admission, is 10:00. (There's also a slightly slower "B" standard that allows entry to whatever portion of the 24-runner field is still available.) A 9:20 on the flat and 10:00 in the steeple are almost equivalent. The game was on.

Four weeks later, in her first outdoor meet of the season, she ran 4:23 for the 1500. The 5,000 and 10,000 weren't off the table, but suddenly, shorter races were looking very attractive.

Her second outdoor meet of the season was April 18, at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, California, where she entered what would be her first full-length steeplechase since college.

There were two women's heats, and she was unable to convince the race organizers that her 3,000- and 1,500-meter times were good enough to place her in the fast one. "So I knew from the start that I was going to have to run it by myself," she says.

"One thing that can get you in trouble in the steeplechase is if someone trips and you're in a pack, then everyone falls." On the other hand, she says, "I'm a front runner. I get nervous stuck behind a bunch of people. I'd rather rely on myself to know the pace than to have someone else rabbitting me."

Besides, she knew exactly the pace she wanted: 80 seconds per lap. Dimoff wasn't able to be there, but another friend called splits and she led, wire to wire. When she got to the final straight with 100 meters to go, she could see the clock: 9:42. All she needed was to cover the final 100 meters in 18 seconds and she would be going to Eugene.

"I took off," she says. "And then I heard them announcing my name. I couldn't believe it had just happened." Her time was 9:59:66 – nearly 40 seconds better than her collegiate best, and more than 11 seconds ahead of anyone else in her heat.

Dimoff beamed, telling me about it. In all the events that had multiple heats that day, he says, "I think Carrie was the only person to run the "A" standard in a "B" heat."

"We were hoping I'd qualify for the Trials," Strickland adds. "We didn't think it would happen in my first steeplechase of the season."

There are differences, Strickland has found, between racing for a college team and pursuing a difficult goal in that intermediate level between recreational and professional running.

"This year I've had to give up road racing," she says with evident regret. "When it came down to it, it didn’t translate to what I was doing on the track. That was a wake-up call to me that if you want to be serious about track racing, you can't have it all. This year I'm missing out on the free beer and all the other prizes."

Training, she adds, also requires a lot more internal motivation. No easy weekend runs with friends if the schedule calls for a 5-mile tempo run. Happily, though, when she needs to Nike lets her take two-hour lunches so she can train on their private track, then take an ice bath afterward in their on-campus fitness center.

But even Nike's track isn't set up for the steeplechase, so Dimoff and his brother made a homemade barrier for her to use in practice. They even painted it to look like the real thing, she says.
 
While she was rejoicing at Mt. SAC, Strickland was sure that simply getting into the Trials was everything she'd ever want. But it didn't take long for her goals to ramp up. She gives the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "I'm just competitive," she says. "I see the next challenge. I don't think I have a shot to go to the Olympics, but now that I'm qualified, my goal is to make the final."

The race will be held in two stages, three days apart. The first, a pair of qualifying heats on June 30, will winnow the field of 24 down to 12. Strickland's ability to hit the "A" standard indicates she has a decent chance of making the cut. "I think I'll be a little bit disappointed not to make the final," she says.

And after the Trials? "I thought this would be the end of my track running," she says, "but I have a feeling that I'll suddenly be asking what's next?" She might try her hand at the 5,000 and 10,000, neither of which she's ever run on the track. "It's a guaranteed PR," she says.

Meanwhile, she and Dimoff are getting married in July. This fall, they're entered in the Chicago Marathon, an event she got interested in when watching friends in last fall's Portland Marathon.

And she's been doing what she can to improve her steeplechase. "I have eight weeks to try to be a presence at the Trials, rather than someone who's just there," she said in early May.

By the time this prints, she'll be putting the finishing touches on that plan.