Interview with Megan Daly
by Kevin Beck

Megan Daly competes at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. (Photo by Alison Wade/New York Road Runners)

Megan Daly's inexorable rise through the ranks of distance running has been anything but typical. Despite not running competitively in high school or college, Daly checked in as one of the youngest competitors at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in St. Louis; then 25, she placed 53rd in 2:48:19. The native of Salem, Oregon, qualified for the Trials in October 2003 by winning the Portland Marathon — her sixth shot at the distance — in 2:47:53, seven seconds under the qualifying standard. She ran her first 26.2-mile race in 1999, finishing the Big Sur Marathon in 3:52. Two-and-a-half years later, two months after beginning her studies at Stanford Medical School, she won the 2002 Silicon Valley Marathon in 2:53:06.

Daly also received her undergraduate degree, in biological sciences, from Stanford and is now halfway through her third year of medical school. Representing the Impala Racing Team, she took 16th at the USATF National Club Cross Country Championships in December. More locally, she was the 2004 Pacific Association USATF individual champion in both the short-distance road circuit and the cross country series.

At the time of the marathon trials, Daly's 5K and 10K bests stood at 17:33 and 37:12. Despite the demands of third-year medical school rotations, she has since lowered her PRs to 16:57 and 35:06. Since the Olympic Trials, she has run almost 20 races on the West Coast and, despite the competitive Bay Area environment, has finished in the top three in every one of them.

Last month, Daly took second at the California 10-Miler, knocking more than three minutes off her 2004 time despite rainy conditions. Fast-Women.com caught up to her between catnaps in Palo Alto.

Fast-Women.com: Did you have any experience in organized team or individual sports growing up?
Megan Daly: I was a competitive gymnast for quite a while. I did two seasons of middle school track — mostly the high jump and the 400; I really wanted to be a sprinter or jumper and felt that anything above the 400 was just too long. I also did one season of middle school cross country and was in a summer swim league for five years.

FW: What factors were at work in your becoming a regular runner?
MD: When I first started running regularly, in my freshman year of college, I missed having a sport and wanted to keep in shape. I started running with a group at Stanford, the Stanford Running Club. There were some pretty quick guys in the group and I had fun trying to keep up with them. I also did like the idea of running road races and had that as a potential goal.

I would say that I didn't start really training until about three years ago, in terms of actually doing workouts and having a purpose for each run, rather than just heading out the door and running for an hour. After college, I worked for a year, then took my last summer entirely off. During that summer, I started running races with a great team back home (Salem, Oregon), sponsored by the local running store, Gallagher Fitness Resources. I had so much fun racing with them that I got into doing regular workouts, and also started thinking about running with a in California once I headed back there for med school.

FW: So early on, running was more a fitness/stress-relief thing, but it didn't take long for you to establish some competitive goals (e.g., finishing a marathon).
MD: Yes. I had always had a sport to do, and once I got to college, I suddenly felt like there was something missing. Running was just a really easy sport to fall into. I tried a few low-key road races, and since I've always been a little competitive, I really started working on bringing down my times. It was great to have some goals to work toward.

The marathon idea came up when some of the other Stanford Running Club members decided to do Big Sur; I just kind of fell into it. I had a marathon in my junior year go pretty well, a 2:58 at Napa Valley off of maybe 45 to 50 miles per week. That marathon was just a few weeks after the 2000 Olympic Trials, and I decided right then that I wanted to run the 2004 trials. That said, I was inconsistent for the next four years in my training. I didn't have another good marathon until 2003.

FW: Did Stanford's being a distance-running juggernaut influence you at all once you started racing?
MD: Not really; I'd say that if anything, it was almost a disincentive — I think that if I'd been at a low-key DIII school, I probably would have tried to walk on to the cross country team once I'd run a few 5Ks and 10Ks in the 19:30/39:00 range. At the same time, it was (and still is) inspirational to have such incredible track meets less than five minutes from my door and see such great runners out around campus.

FW: For someone who used to think the 400 was a distance event, you wasted little time signing up for your first marathon. Could you describe your overall progression?
MD: My first road race was the MBA Challenge for Charity 10K on the Stanford Campus, during my freshman year. I think I ran 43-something. I also ran quite a few road races while I was home in Salem over the summer. I don't remember any of the times off hand, but I do remember that I kept trying to break 20:00 for 5K and couldn't quite do it. Big Sur was during my sophomore year, and I really didn't have any idea how to train for a marathon. I had pretty bad iliotibial band syndrome for several months before the race, so I just trained on a stationary bike and a stairmaster instead, and did one long run of about 24 miles two weeks out from Big Sur. Needless to say, that was a painful marathon.

FW: With some of your medical school rotations being predictably more demanding than others, are you finding yourself planning your racing schedule further in advance then during your first two years of medical school?
MD: Yes, I definitely have to think about what rotations I'll have the weekends free and which ones I won't. However, I've also been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to make it to races. Even in my hardest rotations I've usually had one weekend day free, and I usually have some say over which day that is. I raced just about every weekend on my surgery rotation, for two months straight, and that's definitely one of the heavier rotations, time-wise.

I think that if anything, the heavier schedule has led to a little overracing; if I've got a weekend free I feel like I have to take advantage of it and race. I absolutely love racing, so if it's a rough week I'll just spend the whole week looking forward to racing that weekend. The main thing I've really backed away from this year has been marathon training. I just don't feel like I can really put in the mileage that I'd need or plan far enough in advance to make sure I had a full weekend free.

FW: In terms of day-to-day training, do you roll with the punches — i.e. do harder workouts and longer runs when you have the time and energy — or stick to a fairly consistent schedule?
MD: I definitely roll with the punches — I'll have a general idea of what workouts I want to get in for a given week, and then I wind up doing them whatever days I get off early enough. I do try to stay consistent and get in the basics — a long run on the weekends, a track workout, and a tempo run of some sort — but I'd have to say this fall that I didn't even do that very well. I had weeks where I'd essentially miss all of my workouts; heck, I had weeks where I only ran once or twice, period. Luckily not too many, though.

FW: Are you surprised to have not only kept up with racing after transitioning into your clinical years, but with how much you've continued to improve?
MD: I guess I've been a little surprised by it. If you'd asked me this summer how the fall racing season would go, I would have said terribly. I was taking the boards over the summer, and also had a foot injury acting up. Between those two things, I went a full month with not only no running, but no working out at all. When I first got back out on the track, I could barely hold 6:00 pace for one lap.

I think I basically raced myself back into shape — I did quite low mileage for the next few months, by necessity, not by design, but raced every weekend (11 races in three-and-a-half months) and hammered my workouts. I think that because I had run some fairly good, high mileage for five or six months earlier in the year, I was able to get away with it. But to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure why this season went so well. It's not a training approach that I'd recommend to people.

FW: Do you ever find yourself running at odd times, in odd places, or at odd hours?
MD: I'm really lucky to live right by the Stanford campus, where not only is it decent weather year-round, but it's also totally safe to run outside at night. I do a lot of running around campus between 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. I keep hoping that I can become a morning person and run before I have to be at the hospital, but so far it hasn't happened. I wish that I had some great stories about running laps in the hospital corridors or working out on the EKG lab's treadmills, but it hasn't been necessary so far.

FW: Do you have a coach?
MD: I've been running with the Impala Racing Team in San Francisco for just over a year and working with the team's two coaches, Tony Coffey and Tony Kauke. They're both fantastic coaches and have been a huge help this year. My teammates are also incredible — they're one of the most inspirational groups of women I've met. We have a big range on the team, everyone from girls right out of college to women in their sixties who've been on the team for more than 20 years, about 130 women in all. There's a lot of history that goes with the Impalas, and it's just really special to get to be a part of a group like that.

FW: School considerations aside, do you keep your weekly mileage fairly consistent? What about long runs?
MD: Unfortunately, not really. I jump all over the place with mileage, and I'm not very good about even keeping a log. One of my goals for the year is to at least log my running so I'll have an idea of my mileage. I would guess that last spring I was running between 60 and 85 miles a week, depending on the week. Most of the summer was a wash, since I was injured. For the past four to five months I've fluctuated between 20 and 75 a week, probably running about 45 to 55 a week for a lot of the fall. Now I'm trying to get more consistent and run 60 to 70 every week. I feel like I've gotten in some nice even mileage and training in the past two months, trying to rebuild a base. I'd really like to eventually hit 80 to 90 consistently, but I've found that it's not just the extra time that running takes, it's the extra sleep that I need when I run higher mileage that makes it hard to fit in.

FW: Up until the Trials, it appears that the marathon was essentially your singular running focus. Having now experienced similar success at shorter distances and in cross country, do you still regard yourself as a marathoner first and foremost?
MD: I wouldn't even say that the marathon was my only focus; it just was the only thing that I felt that I'd been at all successful with. I became fixated on hitting the trials 'B' standard and just worked toward that until I hit it. I also didn't really understand how to do speedwork until fairly recently. All the way through college, I basically trained at one speed. That worked okay for marathoning, but didn't get me anywhere with the shorter stuff. I broke three hours for a marathon before I broke 40 minutes for a 10K. Once I finally started to do speedwork about two-and-a-half years ago, the shorter distances started to come together more. I'd really like to do a mix of marathons, cross country, and shorter road races for the next few years. I'm thinking about trying out a track race sometime this spring, since I've never done one, and I'd really like to get my 5K and 10K PRs down more this spring.

So I guess that short answer to that question is no, I consider myself more of a distance runner in general than purely a marathoner. I actually think my marathon PR is probably my weakest PR at this point.

FW: That said, have you already started thinking about the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials?
MD: Yes, it's definitely on my mind. I don't know exactly what my situation will be in terms of my residency training in 2008, so I might not be able to go. Regardless, though, I'd like a qualifier, hopefully the 'A' standard, if it stays at 2:40. A sub-2:40 marathon is one of my long-term goals. If the qualifying window is opened up early at Twin Cities this year, I'm hoping to get out there to run. The 2004 Trials were absolutely the most fun I've ever had in a race, even though subjectively I'd say I didn't run that well. I really want to have that experience again.

FW: Given that your academic and occupational life is fairly solidly mapped out for the next half-dozen or more years, do you see your competitive running as an open-ended proposition or do you envision a point at which you no longer dedicate quite as much energy to training and racing?
MD: Right now I'm taking an open-ended approach. I haven't planned much beyond running [the USA Cross Country Championships in February]. The next five to 10 years of my life will depend a lot on what specialty I go into. Some specialties are fairly amenable to at least modest training, even in residency, while others really aren't. I'm not going to pick a specialty based on how much I can run, so there is a chance I may wind up in something that will slow me down for a while. However, I've been really heartened to see that many of the physicians I've worked with have time-consuming hobbies. There are a lot of athletes floating around the hospital — one of my surgery attendings runs ultras, and a resident I worked with was training for an Ironman.

As much as medicine will always take precedence over running, I don't think that a medical career is incompatible with running well. Seeing how so many women seem to run extremely well into their forties, I feel like I have some time left, even if I have to take a few years or more of down time.

(Interview conducted January 28, 2005, and posted February 10, 2005.)