FORMER MILER KAMPF HOPES HOUSTON HALF WILL BE HER TICKET TO THE TRIALS MARATHON

David Monti of Race Results Weekly wrote this piece about Heather Kampf, who competed in the last 4 Olympic Trials, at 800m and 1,500m, and now dreams of competing at the marathon distance at the 2024 Olympic Trials. 

FORMER MILER KAMPF HOPES HOUSTON HALF WILL BE HER TICKET TO THE TRIALS MARATHON
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2023 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission. 

(10-Jan) — Last year four-time USATF road mile champion Heather Kampf had a quixotic idea.  The 35-year-old, who won the NCAA indoor 800m title for the University of Minnesota back in 2006, had hung up her track spikes after the 2021 season and was experimenting with running longer distances on the roads.  Why not try to qualify for the 2024 USA Olympic Team Trials Marathon via the half-marathon distance (1:12:00 or faster), then make her marathon debut at the Trials?

“I realized that I wasn’t that far off of a qualifying time in the half,” said Kampf who ran a 1:13:19 half-marathon in Minneapolis last September, a race she had approached as a fast training run.  “I thought that would be really neat.  I’d have to look up the stats about how many runners have made it to five Olympic Trials in any events, but it would be pretty fun to do all the way from the 800 to the marathon.”

Kampf –who has personal bests of 2:00.04 for 800m, 4:04.46 for 1500m, and 4:27.23 for the mile– has modified that plan, slightly.  On Sunday, she’ll run the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon and will indeed try for sub-1:12 and her Trials qualifier.  However, she has also decided to run Grandma’s Marathon in June so she can have at least one marathon under her belt before the 2024 Trials.  She’s gone “over-distance” in her half-marathon training, and she now thinks that doing a marathon this year is her best strategy for the Trials next year.

“It’s a nice, fun, different frontier to chase and explore that’s so different from before,” Kampf told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview.  “I’m finding a lot of joy in it.”  She continued: “We did a 20-mile training run in this build-up for the half-marathon, which I know is unnecessary. But, if I can run 20 miles I can run a marathon.  From there, I just thought it would be fun to do Grandma’s Marathon from there.”  She added: “Everything ahead of me is a blank slate.”

It is unusual for an athlete who spent 12 years focused on the 800m to move up to the…