Aliphine Tuliamuk and Fulfilling the American Dream With Her U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials Win

“If you had seen my workouts and all the marathon-effort workouts that we had been doing, you would have picked me…If you had asked Stephanie or Kellyn or the rest of our team, they had confidence that I could make that team. Kellyn had better credentials compared to Stephanie and me. She had run 2:24 and then 2:26 in New York. But what a lot of people don’t understand about my New York City Marathon run was that I was out on June 22 – that was my last real run until the end of August. (When I jogged for 12 minutes on August 26th.) I ran the New York City Marathon off of about eight weeks of training. My longest long run 20 miles at an average of about 6:29/mile. I ran New York and ran it five minutes faster than two years before that, when I was in the best shape of my life at that time…I felt great. Looking at the way I finished New York, I was feeling powerful. I had an almost even split for my half marathons. If anyone had paid attention to that and not the fact that I was 12th place, I think a lot of people would’ve predicted I would’ve made that team or at least would have come close to that. Des Linden, for instance, texted me after New York and said something like ‘If you can run that well off of eight weeks of training. I think when you have three months for a build-up, the Olympic Trials is your thing.’ She was one of the only people outside of my circle that texted me and told me that. I think she had followed what I was doing…It’s fine though. I went into (Atlanta) very inspired by the fact that not a lot of people believed I could make it. I also didn’t have the pressure of people predicting that I could make the team. It worked out great for me in the end.” – Aliphine Tuliamuk


The sports world has stopped but the world could use the positivity of Aliphine Tuliamuk. At the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, Tuliamuk made her first U.S. Olympic team by winning in 2:27:23.

On this show, we’ll discuss how the race was the culmination of her American dream and why she is very appreciative of the opportunity to represent the United States – a place that has given her so many opportunities in her life. We talk about how she developed the self-belief that she could win the race and much more.

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Chris Chavez

Chris Chavez launched CITIUS MAG in 2016 as a passion project while working full-time for Sports Illustrated. He covered the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and grew his humble blog into a multi-pronged media company. He completed all six World Marathon Majors and is an aspiring sub-five-minute miler.