Unexpected career leads Sioux Falls woman to Olympic Trials

Heidi Greenwood is a couple days from running in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials, but after two years of intense training for the biggest race in her life, there's one thing missing.

"I don't feel any pressure at all, to be honest," she said.

Greenwood's career as a marathoner was never a long-term plan. She started college as a volleyball player first, and while she had a highly successful career as a college runner, it was in middle-distance events. But Greenwood is addicted to the feeling of improvement, and running marathons has shown her almost nothing but that.

When Greenwood, who is living and training in Sioux Falls while her husband completes an ophthalmology fellowship at Vance Thompson Vision, runs in the trials, it will be the culmination of a career that has rarely evolved according to plan.

"I never envisioned this," Greenwood said. "It was never my goal when I was 23 years old to be lik,e 'Hey, maybe in 2016, when I'm 31, I'm going to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the marathon."

Sioux Falls Marathon: More hills, fewer Boston qualifiers

Greenwood came from Roseau, Minn., to the University of North Dakota as a volleyball player, and the only time the Fighting Hawks' track and field coaches recruited her was during Greenwood's official visit for volleyball. She had a successful career at UND, winning a national title in the 1,500-meter run, and while Greenwood had always kicked around the idea of a marathon, it was more of a "bucket list" goal than the next step of her competitive career.

"It would have been very interesting to see if she decided to keep running the 1,500 after college," said Cley Twigg, Greenwood's coach. "I think she probably could have made an Olympic trial there as well."

Greenwood bumped up her mileage the summer after her senior year in preparation for the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon. For the first half, she ran with a friend.

"I was feeling really good," Greenwood said. "So then I was like, 'Yeah, I think I'm going to speed up,' and I ran the second half on my own."

She ran the last 13.1 miles almost 10 minutes faster than the first, a huge split for a first-time marathoner. Greenwood still wasn't totally sold on marathons, but her time of 3:10:54 had qualified her for the Boston Marathon, so she ran it the following spring and the one after that.

Greenwood's times dropped with every race she ran, but she still held a bit of doubt. She had gotten married and moved to Cleveland, and with the long hours Greenwood was working as a personal trainer and health club manager, she hadn't dedicated herself to a specific marathon training regimen. She considered making the Nationwide Children's Hospital Columbus Marathon in 2012 her last race before taking a long break.

That was until Greenwood ran it in 2:47:45, less than two minutes away from the Olympic trials qualifying standard. Instead of taking a break, she did the opposite, starting to work with Twigg and dedicating the next year to hitting the standard, which she did with a 2:42:08 time back in Columbus in 2013.

Since then, she's run just one other marathon, dedicating the rest of her time to preparing for the trials.

Training in Sioux Falls has its share of challenges. Greenwood has lived most of her life dealing with vicious upper Midwestern winters, but she said they don't get any easier to run in, especially after the relative balminess of Ohio. She also has been alone during almost all of her training in Sioux Falls.

"One of the hardest challenges of marathon training is staying mentally focused and engaged and not losing your motivation," Greenwood said. "Because it's so mind-numbing, almost. That's how to become a successful marathon runner: It's training your mind to be able to handle that amount of work at a time."

Greenwood has the perfect type of mentality to handle that workload, though. She doesn't describe herself as a competitive person, as least with other runners. Her main drive is improving her own performance; setting a goal, working towards it and getting better with every repetition.

"I'm really just so self-motivated that it's me versus me," Greenwood said. "And I need to get out of my own head sometimes and try to race that girl down."

Greenwood has also found plenty of positives for marathon training in Sioux Falls. She has struck up a relationship with South Dakota State cross country head coach Rod DeHaven, who won the 2000 Olympic marathon trials in Pittsburgh and competed in Sydney, and has used the 300-meter track at the Sanford Jackrabbit Athletic Complex in Brookings for workouts. Greenwood also gushes about the roads around Yankton Trail Park, which are "flat as a pancake" and perfect for mile loop workouts.

As for her goals for the trials, Greenwood is frank. She knows she isn't going to make the Olympic team, as her qualifying time puts her roughly two-thirds down the list of the 246 runners who have qualified for the trials. Only the top three make the Olympic team, and Greenwood's qualifying time is more than 15 minutes behind third-ranked Amy Cragg's 2:27:03. She's also probably not going to set a personal best on Saturday, as the race starts at 10:22 a.m. on a day when the temperature is forecast to be in the 80s.

But Greenwood  is in a place that she never could have imagined occupying when she went straight from middle-distance to marathon, so her goals are simple: Stay healthy, run well and enjoy the experience. It could be her last marathon for a while, as she and her husband are moving up to Fargo in July and want to start a family soon.

"After the trials, I might take some downtime," Greenwood said. "And I'll probably see if anybody wants to go running."

2016 Olympic Marathon Trials

When: 12:06 p.m. Saturday (Men's start first, women 16 minutes after)

Where: Los Angeles

How to watch: NBC; Streaming on NBC Live Extra, NBC Live Extra app

Top competitors: Men: Meb Keflezighi, Dathan Ritzenhein, Luke Puskedra, Sam Chelanga, Jared Ward; Women: Shalane Flanagan, Desiree Linden, Kara Goucher, Amy Cragg, Deena Kastor