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UjENA FIT Club Running Interviews and articles with 100 Interesting People

Best Road Races and the UjENA FIT Club is speaking with 100 people who we feel have a lot to say about running, racing and fitness  We will give you background information as will as their insights into the future.  Be sure to post your feedback and comments.

Read All UjENA FIT Club Running Interviews

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The sport of Double Racing is about ready to Take Off!
Posted Thursday, February 19th, 2015
by Bob Anderson, publisher of Double Runner magazine (Photo Bob Anderson with world record holder Julius Koskei wearing the yellow... Read Interview
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2013 Ujena Fit Club Male Runner of the Year
Posted Monday, March 17th, 2014
The Chris Jones story is a running saga of epic proportions.  Don't try this at home! (Photo - Leadville 100... Read Interview
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Sharon Vos: Three in a Row
Posted Sunday, March 23rd, 2014
Aging ever so gracefully at age 59 and forging a career record that becomes ever more impressive, Sharon Vos is... Read Interview
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Julius Koskei: All In the Family
Posted Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
 By David Prokop Editor Best Road RacesJulius Koskei (pronounced Kos-kay), who set the current world record in the Double Road... Read Interview

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THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MOLLY
Friday, June 21st, 2013
The transformation of Molly Pritz from science-nerd non-runner in high school to world-class distance runner after college is an amazing story. Will a world record in the Double Road Race be the next chapter in that story?
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By David Prokop (Best Road Races Editor)

The women’s world record in the Double Road Race is 54:03, held by Tina Kefalas, American citizen/Greek Olympian, who ran the 10K in 35:55 and the 5K in 18:07 in winning the women’s division at the Pleasanton Double.

That mark may not long endure now that Molly Pritz, one of the top female runners in the US, has said “Deal me in!” to the Double.

Molly ran 2:31:52 in the 2011 New York City Marathon at age 23 in her marathon debut! The first American to finish, she was ranked third nationally in the marathon that year by Running Times magazine and fourth in the marathon by Track & Field News. That same year she won the 25K national championship in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a time of 1:25:38.

Last year she won the San Francisco Half-Marathon over a tough course in 1:10:45! She had run 1:11:05 for the half-marathon the previous year. Those times ranked her third in the country in both 2011 and 2012, plus her time of 1:12:14 in 2010 ranked her fourth in the country for that year. 

Molly, who grew up in Williamsport, Penn., but now lives and trains in Boulder, Colo., will run the Overland Park Double in Kansas on June 30 – and she’ll be one of the headline runners three weeks later in the Denver Double.

The wiry, 5”7”, 118-pound distance star wasn’t sure exactly how fast she planned to run  in Overland Park, considering she’s only started speed training after getting back into running in early May following surgery in March to repair two torn peroneal tendons in her left ankle (“My speed is a little lacking, but I certainly have the strength”).
However, she has gone on record saying she will be focused on going after the world record in the Denver Double July 21. And even though the Denver event is the first Double ever to be run at altitude, Molly clearly has a shot at getting the record despite the altitude. She’s that good!

Therein lies an intriguing story. Because, believe it or not, Molly didn’t even run when she was in high school.  “I’ve always been a nerd, was very interested in science. Came in last in my gym mile in high school. Played flute and French horn in the Williamsport High School marching band.”

It wasn’t until she was a freshman at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Penn., where she would eventually earn a degree in geology and geochemistry, that she started to run --  strictly recreationally at first (“Just as a form of exercise, a stress reliever between classes”).

At the time she had a boyfriend who was a serious runner. On his encouragement, she entered the Chamberburg Half-Marathon, which he was running in preparation for a marathon. On only 30 miles a week of training, in her first race ever, she won the women’s division, beating two female runners who had qualified for the US Olympic marathon trials! And she finished only two minutes behind her boyfriend. Good golly, Miss Molly!

Comments and Feedback
run Is Molly going to be able to break the Double Road Race World Record in Overland Park? After reading this article by David Prokop, I think she has a good shot at it. Go for it Molly!!!
Bob Anderson 6/21/13 1:35 pm
run congrats!
Waitman Gobble 7/8/13 5:18 pm
,,,,,

“Loved every minute of it,” she now reflects on that race. “It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, but that’s what I loved about it.”

So how does a self-confessed science nerd who finished last in her gym mile in high school morph into a topflight runner within such a short time frame, within any time frame?

“I think one of the things that attracted me to running is you get out of it what you put into it, “ Molly says. “That suits my personality and mentality. I don’t think I would have started running if I was good at it right from the beginning. If you dedicate yourself to it (running) and think long term, every mile you put into it will help you in the long run and there’s no telling how far you can take it.”

It also helps if you have a talent for distance running, no matter how deep that talent may initially be hidden.

After beating those two Olympic marathon trial qualifiers in her first race, Molly thought perhaps it would be a good idea to try to qualify for the marathon trials herself. She got more serious about her training, moved to Michigan after graduating from Bucknell in 2010 to train with coaches Keith and Kevin Hanson, and she put herself prominently on the map – did she ever! -- over the next two years with the series of performances alluded to earlier.

Unfortunately, this gifted young marathoner has also trod a trail of misfortune as a runner; it’s almost as if she was given this great talent, this drive and the grit and capacity for hard work, but she’s also been dealt a series of obstacles which have made it difficult for her to fully capitalize on those attributes, really mine that vein of ability that’s obviously in her. For instance, after running that 2:31:52 in the 2011 New York City Marathon, injuries and other circumstances, including a hurricane, have prevented her from running another marathon since then.

In 2011, just as Molly started training for the US Olympic marathon trials, she slipped while running on a flat sidewalk next to a duck pond, fell and broke her left kneecap. She was out for six weeks.

Finally fit again in 2012, she developed pneumonia. The illness was so severe she was bedridden, sleeping 18 hours a day and it took her about a month before she could breathe freely again.

Only a week after getting back to running following her recovery from pneumonia, she broke her left ankle while doing an interval workout on a square indoor track in Michigan. The stress fracture healed, but then she felt a weakness in that ankle, and the weakness soon turned into a searing pain. It turned out she had torn two peroneal tendons in her ankle. She had surgery to repair those tendons in late March of this year – and it wasn’t until early May she was able to resume training.

Now Molly, who’s 25, is living in Boulder, Colo. She has a new coach, Brad Hudson, who coached Dathan Ritzenhein when he made the 2008 US Olympic team and was the top American in the marathon at Beijing, finishing ninth. After Molly’s successful tendon surgery she’s back to running 90 miles a week, is pain free and is finally looking forward to some good times ahead (or should we say fast times?), hopefully starting with the next two Doubles.

Speaking about the Overland Park Double, Molly says, “I’ll run the right pace for the fitness level I presently have. Hopefully that will be fast enough to break the record.”

Regarding the Denver Double, she says, “It’s going to be harder to run a fast time in Denver because of the altitude, but my fitness level will be higher because I’ll have three more weeks of training.”

She adds that last year in preparing for the New York City Marathon, she did a 10-mile fitness run in Boulder at just over 5:20 per mile pace! Good golly, Miss Molly! Then the New York City Marathon was cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy.

“You could say 2012 just wasn’t in my favor for running a marathon,” she says

Follow up (June 30 - Overland Park Double Road Race):  

For Molly Pritz, the Overland Park Double was truly a return to arms (or was it legs?) and a coming out party at the same time. Competing in her first race since undergoing tendon surgery in late March, she ran the opening 10K leg in 35:24, giving her a commanding lead of almost four minutes over the women’s field and a clear shot at the world record. She then ran a controlled 17:48 in the concluding 5K leg to finish with an aggregate time of 53:13.

The previous world record has been 54:03, set by Tina Kefalas in winning the women’s division in Pleasanton. Tina, who’s from Hillsborough, Calif., but represented Greece in the women’s marathon at the London Olympics, had run the 10K in 35:55 and the 5K in 18:07 at Pleasanton.

Before the Overland Park Double, Molly had said, “”I’ll run the right pace for the fitness level I presently have. Hopefully that will be fast enough to break the record.” It was, by a considerable margin.

Her next race will be the Denver Double. With three more weeks of quality training under her belt (or should we say shoes?), she hopes to improve the women’s record even more, despite the fact Denver will be the first Double ever held at altitude.

 

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Double Road Race