What are the success stories

Casey Smith was one of the first athletes I worked with that had already had success. She was a Division III All American in the 10K and was looking to continue to run after college. I think I started coaching her in 2002 but I am not sure. In the first year we talked about her trying to qualify for the olympic marathon trials. She ran the Chicago marathon in 2003 but it was not going well and I pulled her off the course at mile 18. We decided to try again a few weeks later at Philadelphia and she ran 2:54 - not good enough for the trials but we knew she could run much faster.

Who is the coach?

Nate Reilly. That is me. I have been coaching since 1998 or so. It started when I was running with some other members of the Washington Running Club in Washington DC. One of the women asked if I would coach her. I said sure, and I have been coaching ever since.

Why did she ask me to coach her?? Well, I have been running since 1985 when I started in high school (now you know my age). I ran well enough in high school (4:25 mile and 9:30 2 mile) to make the team at William & Mary where I eventually ran 4:09 for the mile, 8:30 for 3000m and 31:15 for 10K. Nothing great but enough that I wanted to keep running after college. I had great coaches in high school and college so maybe that pushed me a little bit or maybe it was that I knew I did not have the talent to be as good as I wanted to be.

I started with just that one women but soon was coaching a group of 6-7 women from the club and things were going really well.