The Victory Lap: Nell Rojas 🏆
This week Nell Rojas joins us after winning her first US title after taking down Jenny Simpson at the USATF 10 mile championships in 52:13. Nell is another fantastic example of traveling a truly unique road to success in professional running. She graduated from Northern Arizona University with a modest 5k personal best of 17:11, but after exploring other endurance sports, returned to make a huge splash on the roads recently. Although she won the 2019 Grandma’s Marathon and finished 9th at the US Olympic Marathon Trials, many running fans may still be unfamiliar with her story — let’s try to fix that!
You didn't have a crazy college career, were a 17-minute 5k runner, then you took some time off of just running and were competing in obstacle course races and triathlons. Did you want to take that time off away from running? Were you doing that other stuff just for fun? And what made you find your way back to running? Your path to where you are now is so fascinating to me.
You know, if you look at a picture of me you’re like oh, she's like an athletic girl. I don't think Ihave a traditional elite runner's body. I guess I do so more now than I did just because I've been running a little bit more and I’ve grown out of my child body.
But when I graduated college, I was like, I could be really good at the triathlon because I thought I had potential there and I also needed to be almost athletically reinspired. So after doing that for a bit, I was 24 years old, still living with my mom, trying to do triathlons and finally I was like, okay, I need to be independent, I don't want to do this anymore. I would if I could financially support myself, but I could not. I was very serious about triathlons but basically retired early from those to get out of my mom's basement.
But during that whole time people were always like, oh, you'd be really good at obstacle course racing. And they kind of said that because everyone's pretty naive about obstacle course racing and they don't actually know who would be good at it.
But also my best friend, Nicole Miracle, is this world champion obstacle course racer. And I would see her go away for the weekend and come back with a big $20,000 check. And so I was like, okay, I'll try doing that. So I got into that a little bit. I’d say I did fine. But really I’d say it’s not for strong people. It's for people who can run cross country especially on different terrains and people who have really solid grip strength. I didn't really commit fully to it because ultimately it wasn’t really my cup of tea. So what happened was, I was going to get back into triathlon and I committed to do an Ironman. So to do that, I wanted to first do a marathon.
And so I signed up for CIM and the plan was to go out and just jog it and see what it was all about. I ended up running like 2:31 and getting seventh, even with it being the Marathon National Championship. At that moment I fell in love with the marathon. After that everything started rolling. I won the citizens race at Bolder Boulder. I won Grandma's Marathon. And then I got ninth at the Marathon Trials. It was all snowballing.
I love these stories. I had a teammate in college, Kimber, who did the obstacle course stuff right after college and the same thing happened, she came back with some huge checks. And everyone in Eugene was like, what are we doing trying to make the Diamond League? I can see how it’s enticing.
Totally! There's so much money. Plus there's almost no one in it for the women. There’s some pretty solid group of guys up front, but for the women it's literally my friend Nicole and one other girl named Lindsay Webster. And they win everything. They make a shit ton of money and make me feel like an idiot.
In your college career, would you say you enjoyed running like this? Did you enjoy racing like you do now, or was it one of those things where you just needed to grow up and find yourself?
I was okay. I made nationals one time in the steeple. And I was like… semi-serious, but I also wanted to party and I wanted to have fun. So I was always torn between training well and partying. I think I just didn't take it that seriously. I also think I'm way better suited for a marathon compared to a 5k. That was also part of it and I can't run on grass to save my life so cross country was just a shit show. So I'm talking more or less about the level of fight that you have to have now, winning Grandma’s or winning the Ten Miler this past weekend. I imagine that it's super exciting if that's not something that you've been totally into previously. It seems like it's more about winning or competing right now rather than money or exploring triathlons or in college having the entire experience.
Oh! Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, it’s more about... I work a full time job, I make enough money, there's a reason why I'm not sponsored right now. It's just not worth it to me because of a couple different reasons. Now, I race because I love competing. I know I can be up there with these girls, I have no doubt. I want to prove to myself and all the other girls who people never really took seriously as athletes. I want to prove that I’m one of the best.
That's so cool. What do you do right for work?
I'm a running coach and I am a strength coach.
So That’s Rise Athletics?
Yeah it is. I have a lot of things going on and I'm like the worst business person ever. And I think a lot of that is because the coaching thing fell into my lap instead of like me starting it from the beginning with a set business plan.
You know, I've been in Boulder… I'm from Boulder, my dad has coached in Boulder since the 70s. And so I have a club high school team that's actually mainly full of sprinters. We have some of the best sprinters in the nation. They are so awesome and fun. And then I have an adult running group here that I coach as well and I do strength training one-on-one with people and then also do some remote coaching.
Did your dad have a pretty big influence? He ran post-collegiately, didn’t he?
Yeah! He ran for Nike back in the day. He ran with Frank Shorter and some of those guys and has a pretty prestigious resume. But he’s never put pressure on me, he's just a huge fan of mine. And I feel like that's so important, especially from the perspective of coaching high schoolers now. It’s so critical that the parents are just there to support and not to put pressure on their kids or get overly involved with the coaches.
I’m sure he’s been absolutely pumped these last two years.
Oh yeah, he is in heaven right now.
Do you have any training partners?
I train by myself! Sometimes I would love a training partner though. My dad's usually out there which is a tremendous help. So I think as long as he's there I’ll be fine. But I think as a marathoner training by myself mostly allows me to listen to my body. I can push when I have to, I can sleep in when I have to sleep, you know, those kinds of things. There’s definitely some advantages. But there's also times where I'm like, damn, I wish I had someone to push me today.
My goal with this is to rarely ask workout or weight room specifics, but we see a lot of marathoners are lifting quite a bit now and you also happen to be a strength coach. Are you lifting extensively and are you writing your own training?
It’s shifted this past year, I’ve always been in control of it, and I always made my own workout plan or strength plan. And I think lifting has helped me because I don't have any big injuries, my legs are pretty fresh, I think I have a lot of power. I think it’s really helped and translated for me.
But now I have someone writing my strength training because you have to sit there, when you're in my position and be like, okay, like how do I get faster? I can maybe run a little bit more, but what else can I do? And so some ideas were like, okay, make sure that I'm not like a freaking beast in my shoulders and my biceps. They don't need to be quite this big, you know. So I kind of have someone helping me with that now.
Who is in charge of writing your running program?
My dad coaches me!
That's amazing. These marathon preparation races can either go great or absolutely horrible and they may have no correlation to how the actual marathon goes for a number of reasons. Was being up there for the win a goal of yours going into the race this past weekend? How was training going into it and is that what you sort of expected out of that weekend?
Oh, not even close. It didn't even cross my mind. I’m basically running a hundred miles a week for this build up and I had a 10-percent taper, so I ran 90. My legs last week felt insanely good. I don’t know why they were feeling so good, but they just did. So I had a hunch that I was going to have a great race.
But I wasn’t thinking I was going to go out there and beat Jenny Simpson or Sara Hall. My goal going into it was to cover moves and practice the mindset of committing to go with these girls, you know, hang on until I can't anymore. That’s what I was planning on doing. I wanted to get a good fast workout out of it, maybe a little bit of a confidence boost if possible, and all of those were executed. I think that is really important and clutch to do in a race, to not focus on the win, but on all those little things.
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Once you realize you’re in it to win, you’ve got to change your mindset a little bit. At what point did you start thinking you would win the whole thing?
At mile seven I found myself in the lead and I felt like I was jogging. I really had to slow down and I didn't want to be in the lead at that point. It was way too early and I just kept on trying to tuck in and not be in the lead, but I couldn't do it because I felt like we were going so slow.
So I was like, okay, just hang on for a little bit longer where I am, and at that point in the race, you can tell when people are laboring, when they're falling off and then catching up again. So that's when I knew I felt better than almost everyone in the race. There were a few others in there but I also wasn't paying attention to them because I was just focused on the American championship.
And then I guess at mile about 9, I was like, okay, I have to go now because I'm racing Jenny Simpson. I went and she came with me and then at six hundred to go, I was like, okay, I know exactly where I am. I'm going to make a move, one last long push to the finish line. And right away I knew she didn’t cover the move I made, and so at that point I was like, pretty positive I was good for the win.
What are your goals for Boston and are you doing anything to adjust your training after the big win last week?
My goal is to be the top American in Boston. And, you know, there's basically Des, Jordan, and Huddle. I believe that I have to put myself in the mix there. So I'd love to be the top American. And that's basically what I'm focused on right now.
I'm just going to continue to follow my training schedule these last six weeks. So I have one more big, long run — a hard 20 miler — and then, you know, some marathon pace workouts, and a couple speed workouts. I'm not going to go crazy with anything, I'm just going to continue what I'm doing.
Where are you on the scale of Kipchoge to Molly Seidel on mid-race nutrition and hydration?
I know mostly what I'm going to do. I don't have it set in stone and I'm still tweaking a couple of things. I learned my lesson at the marathon trials. I didn't pay attention to that at all. I picked a certain flavor of gel I’d never tried before, and the first one, I puked in my mouth. It was so gross. I just wasn't used to that flavor — it had green tea in it or something and then I didn't want to take another one. So I way under-fueled and classically bonked at mile 20.
So now I at least have it worked out what gels and flavors work for me. I have a rough plan for this marathon but I think a lot of the time you have to go intuitively while you're racing with that rough plan in mind. So many variables happen. And so, like, you have to be flexible with that. I’d love to be like Kipchoge during his 2 hour effort out there with someone handing me the exact things I need, but this is the real world.
What are your plans after Boston?
I get to go to China for the Half Marathon World Championships! I think that’ll be late March and is definitely what I’ll be gearing up for.
We’d like to thank Nell for taking time for this interview and letting us tell her story! Make sure to cheer her on if you see her in the streets of Boston and if you won’t be there in person, throw her a follow on Instagram to stay updated or check out her coaching services at Rojas Athletics.
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