Interview with Emily LeVan
By Beth Whitney

Emily LeVan running at the 2005 World Championships.

Emily LeVan, age 33, will return to the Boston Marathon on April 17. Last year, despite stopping midrace and considering dropping out, she was the first American woman finisher. During the summer, she was asked rather spur-of-the-moment to join the U.S. team for the World Championships Marathon in Helsinki. LeVan responded by setting a personal best of 2:38:32 and placing 35th in the race.

LeVan first came to national attention when she ran 2:39:54 to win the women’s race and place Fourth overall at the 2004 Maine Marathon. A graduate of Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, LeVan resides in Wiscasset, Maine.

Fast-Women.com: First of all, thanks so much for taking the time to break from your busy schedule today to talk with us. You’ve got a lot on your plate, I hear. Are you still in school for nursing as well, or have you finished that?
Emily LeVan: No, I’m actually in the working world! I finished school in December, and I’m now working in an emergency department in a local hospital.

FW: Wow. How has that changed your training schedule?
EL: Well, it’s been interesting. It’s made it a little bit more of a juggling act, mainly because the shifts that I work are 12-hour shifts, and so I usually work from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., or 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Finding time to run on those days is a little challenging. I’m usually working only two days a week, so I can get up really early in the morning and get in a run before I have to get my [2-year-old] daughter ready for daycare and head off to work. The school schedule was more conducive to having big blocks of free time for training and so forth.

FW: It’s funny, you’re following the opposite path of progression compared to a lot of other women who have made big breakthroughs in running. You’ve had a great race at the international level in the marathon, and instead of taking time off from work, quitting all your outside interests, joining a training camp and focusing on that, it seems you’re going in the opposite direction.
EL: Well, I guess I really just see running as a part of what I do and who I am. I enjoy having several different things that I’m pursuing at one particular time. I think if I committed my entire existence to running, in some ways a lot of the fun would be taken away from it. It might become more of a job, and I enjoy running for running’s sake. I like having a bit more of a diverse life. I love my nursing work, and I love being able to stay home with my daughter a few days a week as well. I think that helps me balance things out.

FW: Now that your daughter’s a little bit older, are you able to get off the treadmill a bit more often? You were doing the bulk of your runs on it last year.
EL: : It’s a little more season-dependent up here in Maine, because the weather in the late spring, the summer and the early fall lends itself a little bit more to being outside. I can take my daughter out in the running stroller during those parts of the year, unlike this time of the year, when I’m less able to do that. I’m still spending a lot of time on the treadmill, and at this age, she’s happy to play in the room where the treadmill is. She kind of does her thing while I get in some miles. I’m still pretty dependent on the treadmill, especially for Boston, because the weather outside doesn’t let us get out quite as much. I’m definitely looking forward to some warmer weather and getting outside again.

FW: Do you get a chance to do any of your hard workouts with other runners, or do you do all of those alone?
EL: I do most of it alone. Actually, during this training cycle, I’ve gone down to Boston three times on weekends to do some long runs with some folks from the [Boston Athletic Association]. The coach that I work with, Jeff Staab, is there as well. That’s the only time I’ve been running with other folks, so otherwise I’ve been on my own, which makes it more difficult. Mentally it’s more of a challenge to get out there when you’re all alone and the only one doing it—just kind of pushing yourself, and so forth.

FW: Up until just before the Boston Marathon last year, you were completely self-coached. I think a lot of recreational runners looked at your career and were very inspired by it, because from the outside you looked like somebody who was a hobbyist who just happened to run much, much faster than your average recreational racer through simple hard work. However, I’d assume you must be not just very driven, but also very analytical about your own training to have gotten this far. You’re now working with Jeff Staab from the BAA. How has having an objective outsider’s input into your training changed your views of yourself as an athlete?
EL: I think it changed my training in that it’s helped to have an outside perspective from someone who’s had a lot of experience working with marathoners, even just to bounce ideas off of and to get a bit of diversity in my training. I’d gotten into kind of a rut where I’d choose one or two speed workouts and just stick with those throughout the entirety of my training. I didn’t know a lot of different types of workouts, so the diversity has been really nice, and, as you can imagine, over the course of four months when training for a marathon, if you’re doing the same workouts week in and week out, it gets a little bit stale and a little bit hard to sustain that effort.

I really appreciated the different types of workouts and just the perspective that Jeff brings. He’s able to look at the long term as well as the short term. I like having that vision and that kind of guidance. We’ll look toward not only the race coming next month, but to next fall, and next year. At the same time, I don’t feel like I’ve had to make a lot of changes in terms of how I fit running into my life and how I fit the training in. Jeff is very easy to work with, and I think our personalities mesh really well. We have a similar style and way of working the training into our lives. He understands I have other things going on, and is able to work the workouts into my other commitments.

FW: Do you set time goals for your marathons based on workouts, since you don’t have those benchmarks at shorter race distances to guide you?
EL: What I’ve been doing for the last few years—I’m not sure it’s very scientific—is I’ve used previous marathon experiences to set goals for future ones. During the course of training, I’ve used a specific marathon pace goal as a gauge to set times for certain speed workouts, and during the course of training following that path get to a certain level of training. Sometimes I’m able to be right on, and sometimes I’m not so successful. Sometimes it is a little bit of a crap shoot, because I don’t run that many races. I’m putting a lot of stake in where I think I can be ultimately, and putting a lot of stake in the fact I’m doing the workouts and I’m hitting my time goals, and putting faith into the fact that it will then ultimately translate into the goal time.

FW: You’ve a had a lot of breakthroughs in the marathon, the most recent, of course, in Helsinki. What was your first international experience like?
EL: Oh, it was just fabulous! I went into it really not knowing what to expect. I received the invitation on such short notice, I didn’t have time to develop any expectations other than wanting to go and enjoy the experience. I think in some ways having that short notice and not enough time to analyze it too much was a good thing. I went in, I was relaxed, and I said “Okay, I am just going to enjoy this experience and see what I can do with it.”

I was a little bit concerned because I had originally been training for the Twin Cities Marathon, which was the first week in October, so I had to cut my training about six weeks short. I hadn’t done the number of runs I usually like to fit in. I hadn’t really hit the peak of my work in my speed sessions. It was a matter of going on faith, knowing I was in pretty good shape and wasn’t going to be overtrained.

It was just a fabulous experience all around. I felt fortunate to be part of the team. The team was well-supported by the coaches as well as the fans. It was an inspiring race, the fact that it was a loop course that we ran three or four times was great because that fan support was pretty nice. The race felt good, and I was really happy to hit a PR—that’s a pretty special stage to be able to run that kind of time on.

FW: How has your recovery been? I’d heard you’d had a foot injury, but that appears to have been brought to bay, judging by your recent 15K performance.
EL: In the fall... well, my husband and I live on a farm and we raise all sorts of animals, and I ended up cutting my foot on a chicken pen. I wasn’t really wearing the right pair of shoes—I was wearing sandals because I was in a hurry and thought I could just get this one chore done quickly and move on. I had to get my daughter somewhere or something. So I managed to get a pretty deep laceration in my foot and needed a few stitches. It took several weeks to heal, and a few weeks before I could get the stitches out, so that was the longest period of time that I can remember being laid up and unable to run. It put a little damper on the fall. I’d already decided not to run a marathon, but I was going to focus on some shorter races and work on those shorter distances a little bit. Once I got my stitches out, I got back into things and the rest of the fall went pretty well. I didn’t run any races, but I focused on getting my fitness back and on starting to prepare for the Boston Marathon. Really, overall the training for Boston’s gone very well. There’s always a few bumps in the road along the way, but I feel pretty pleased overall with how it’s gone, so I’m hoping for good results in a few weeks.

FW: I actually saw you shortly after you finished at Boston last year, where you employed a rather interesting race strategy—you stopped and decided to quit halfway through the race, but instead ended up running again and still finished as the top American woman. I’ll assume you aren’t planning something similar this year. Do you have a specific time or place goal this year?
EL: [Laughs] Sure, I always have time and place goals. I often have a couple of different tiers of goals. A lot of it depends—the weather is always a big factor at Boston. It’s always hard to know until the day of the race to see what the weather’s going to do. I feel like I’m on target to run a PR time, as far as my training has gone and how I’ve been feeling. I’d love to run a PR and at the same time, if I run a PR, I’ll get under the “A” qualifying standard for the Olympic Trials. That’s another goal that’s out there. I think I’m looking to get under 2:39. I think if I were able to accomplish those two goals, I’d be pretty pleased with my effort, and would then use this race to build toward a race in the fall, probably the Twin Cities Marathon, and I’ll just see if I can continue to lower my time, with the ultimate goal pointing to the 2008 Olympic Trials.

Editor's Update: LeVan ran the 2006 Boston marathon in her fastest marathon time yet, 2:37:01. Again, she was the first U.S. woman to cross the finish line; she finished in 13th overall.

Interview conducted on March 24, 2006, and posted on April 7, 2006.