Amanda Rice - A Big Year

By Joanna Harper

Amanda Rice first joined the Tuesday Red Lizard track workouts in April of this year. As I think back on my initial impression of her, the word coltish comes to mind.

Amanda Rice (L), her mother
Barbara & John Chapman.

I got to speak with her a little over the next few weeks and found out that she would soon be running the Eugene marathon and that her PR was 2:58. She told me later that track was a completely foreign concept to her until those sessions.

I remember thinking that she was running too hard in the last couple of weeks prior to the race, but her 4th place finish in 2:50 showed that clearly I was wrong. And it became apparent that the marathon had not been too draining for her. She ran her first ever 5K three weeks after the marathon and won the race in 17:49.

The first time I realized that she had grit in addition to speed came in early June. She was running her first track race ever. She was entered into the 5,000 meters at the Portland Track Festival. There she would be toeing the line with several women who had PRs that were under 16 minutes.

When the gun sounded, Amanda took off with the lead pack. She says that she has jack rabbit tendencies. I knew she didn’t belong up front in that field. I was worried that she was going to crash and burn and that the experience would sour her attitude towards track racing.

Sure enough she fell out of the lead pack by the end of the first mile and started to drift back in the field. But instead of giving up, she hung on as best she could and actually closed the race pretty strongly, finishing under 18 minutes. I was impressed with her tenacity and told her so after the race. This is when I knew that she’d be someone to watch.

I wasn’t the only one who had become impressed with Amanda. Rick Lovett directs the track workouts where I first met Amanda. He realized her potential pretty early. He was trackside when Amanda finished her 2:50 marathon in Eugene. Rick said “I knew she was special the moment I saw her round the last corner onto Hayward Field and hit the finish like she was running a 200. I thought, if she's got that at the end of a 2:50 marathon, she's got another big chunk she can lop off that time.”

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Amanda has always been driven, even if she hasn’t always been a competitive runner. She grew up in suburban Portland and was valedictorian at Clackamas high school in 2002. In 2006 she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biochemistry from Willamette University in Salem Oregon.

In 2005 her mother decided to run a marathon. It was at this point that Amanda started to take running a little more seriously. She was soon running an hour or so most days, but not doing any specialized training. She managed to run a 3:23 marathon in the fall of 2006 off of this sort of training. Over the next few years she continued her steady state running, getting her mileage up to 80 miles per week or more during peak marathon training. She gradually improved until she ran a 1:26 half marathon and that 2:58 marathon at Portland in 2009.

She also entered dental school at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in the fall of 2007. She is on a scholarship paid for by the U.S Navy. She will graduate from dental school in June of 2011 and then move on to Bethesda Maryland in order to take a general practice residency program focusing on surgical aspects in dentistry.

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But before talking about her future, let’s get back to this year. Rick convinced her that a summer of shorter distance races would help her marathon racing and she might even find a new running niche. She ran a hand full of local races at distances ranging from 1 mile to a half marathon.

She brought her 5K PR down to 17:05 on a day where the high temperature was in the nineties. In that race she ran most of the way with sub 16-minute runner Carrie Dimoff. She says that it was at this race where she was bitten by the competitive bug. She won a half marathon in 1:19:40 on the 4th of July, taking more than 6 minutes off of her PR. She describes the race as an ultimate high. She also explored the low end of her range with a 5:07 road mile victory.

She now understands the benefits of track work and shorter races to serious marathoners. Once the fall rolled around, she set her sights on qualifying for the Olympic trials marathon. The California International Marathon (CIM) has a reputation for its fast course and well organized race, so this is the one that she chose. She once again upped her mileage into the 80 miles per week range but still kept the speed workouts.

One of her favorite workouts was 5 x 1 mile at approximately 5:35 pace. She also did several 10K tempo runs on the track. In addition, she did a few long, fast runs. A month before CIM she did a 20 mile run in which she ran the first 16 miles at 6:20 pace and cut down to 6 flat over the last four miles. She was ready for the race.

While she waiting to catch her Friday flight to Sacramento, Amanda first met Kelly Jaske. Kelly has a 1:12 half marathon PR and was one of the biggest names in the race. Amanda only knew Kelly by reputation but the two of them hit it off and joked that it would be cool if they could bunk together.

The race organizers obviously had the same thought and the two Portland women were booked into the same room. They didn’t actually spend too much time together as Amanda had other friends in town she wanted to see. But they did spend some time talking to each other about their personal lives. Come race morning Amanda appreciated the way that Kelly got into the zone before the race.

Amanda had set a goal of 2:45 for the race. She tried not to go out too fast but still ran a 6 minute first mile and went through the half just under 1:21. She knew this was a little faster than she should have been, but it just felt so good. She even let loose a scream when she saw Rick standing at the 10 mile mark.

She continued to feel good until around 22 miles. She passed a bunch of runners over the second half of the race including Kelly. Amanda says that Kelly encouraged her when she went by and Amanda appreciated the gesture. It was around this point that her left quad started cramping up. She was still running strongly but it was starting to get tougher. The last three miles were a struggle but she never hit the wall.

She was still passing a lot of people, but she found herself in a battle with a woman named Katherine Lindell. Amanda first noticed her around mile 22 and the two runners went back and forth over the next three miles. At approximately 25 miles Katherine put in a surge and gapped Amanda. The margin at the finish was 3 seconds and it was this difference that kept Amanda out of the top ten.

When I asked Amanda about it after the race, she said she wasn’t really thinking about place at all and only about her time. She had no idea that she was racing for a top ten spot and was only focused on beating 2:45 and on qualifying for the trials. Her 2:44:08 chip time earned her both of those goals.

It also put a capper on a stellar 2010 year that has seen her take 14 minutes off of her marathon PR, and establish herself as a national caliber athlete. She plans on taking two weeks with no running before starting to train for 2011.

She hopes to run one more marathon before Houston in January 2012. She thinks that the A qualifying standard of 2:39 is within her reach. She also wants to work on her shorter events. Both she and Rick think that her best race distance might well end up being much shorter than the marathon.

She also has a lot of life changes in store for her in the next year or two. She will be moving to Bethesda next summer to start her year long residency. After completing the residency, she hopes to go to Colorado Springs to take part in the Navy’s running program. If that goes well, she might stay there until 2016 to see where the sport takes her.

If the full time runner gig doesn’t work out, there is always dentistry to fall back on. She would have a 4 year obligation to the Navy and there would likely be a lot of travel involved in fulfilling that obligation. She looks forward to the opportunity to see many parts of the world that she might never see again.

At some point she’d love to return to Portland and maybe even teach at the OHSU dental school. Of course all of this is well down the road. She has come a long ways in 2010 and who knows what the future has in store for her. All I can say that it must be pretty exciting to be 26 and be Amanda Rice right now.

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