– Christopher McDougall, Born To Run
The 3,996 elementary school children participating in the 2012 Mercedes Kids’ Marathon ought to start streaming in at any moment. The race, held annually in Birmingham, Alabama, is a mile long—the culmination of a marathon’s worth of miles logged over five months during PE classes at local elementary schools. February weather is in full stride. The temperature gauge reads 32 degrees, but the wind is whipping hard enough to make it feel as cold as 17.
For delighted observers, it’s a cute precursor to the thousands of grown up marathoners and half-marathoners who will fill the streets the next day. But for the children, this is their chance to prove with undeniable evidence that they are the fastest kid in their school.
Every single child will receive a medal when they finish, right after they waltz through a high-five tunnel littered with their favorite heroes. Captain America, the Chick-fil-A cow, and—because it’s ‘Bama—Aubie the tiger and Big Al the elephant.
It’s a joyous scene…Smiles abound, parents cheer, and the kids wander post-finish exhausted and proud of themselves. “Future Olympic stars, today!” exclaims the announcer, audibly beaming.
Which makes it all the more stark when the first two kids come into view and one of them crosses the line in tears, finishing in a dead-heat to get second place.
It makes for quite the picture. The size-too-big shirts, the bright-red K-Swiss Ironman Flow kicks, the sheer joy on the faces of the audience, and Aubie the Tiger cheering them both on. Each child looks as though they’ve never wanted anything more in their life than to win this mile.
The third grader who finishes second, the one in bib #9, is clocked at 6:03—a blazing fast mile time for anybody. But what’s unseen is the fall he took about 400 meters out from the finish. Ran smack into a security guard around the final corner. BAM. He got back up, fought to make up the distance, but the tears were flowing.
It wouldn’t be the last time that kid wearing bib #9 pushed his body to the limit in a race. In fact, that 2012 Mercedes Kids’ Marathon might’ve been the catalyst for Ethan Strand—it wouldn’t make sense any other way.
The Beginning
Strand, now the NCAA record holder in the indoor mile and 3000m, looks back on this day and smiles.
“I remember being so mad and so upset that I lost that,” said Strand, laughing. “It sucked. I was competitive. I wanted to run fast and beat everybody.”
Strand was born in 2002 into a family of runners. Lori, his mother, was a competitive runner for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and coached for Samford University’s cross country team as Ethan was growing up. Scott, his father, placed 15th in the 2004 US Olympic Trials marathon, was a renowned steeplechase athlete, and is part-owner of a beloved, local chain of run specialty stores called the Trak Shak, where Ethan has worked.
With a background like Ethan’s, it would be easy to chart a linear path between who he was raised by and his current status as one of America’s most promising distance running talents. He might as well have popped out of the womb in trainers, reading off splits and planning out miles.
“He started walking when he was about nine months old,” said Scott. “By the time he was a year, he was running around the yard.”
“When he was probably a year and a half old, you know, we’d go out in the yard, and we had this little grassy slope in our front yard,” remembers Scott. “We just played ‘On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!’ He would start at the top of the yard. And he would say, ‘Marksetgo!’, and he would just run down into my arms.”
Even as a toddler, it was evident how much Ethan enjoyed running. Countless hours were spent running around the house, asking to be timed, up and down the hills. His desire to compete wasn’t solely limited to running, though—dinner had to be finished first, and vacations were just opportunities to bike six miles.
“His personality very early, showed that he loved competing and competition,” recalled Lori. “And we always tried to make it very fun for him for as long as we could.”
Lori and Scott made a point not to force their children into following directly in their footsteps, running or not. In the debate of nature or nurture, Ethan’s desire to run seemingly stemmed from both.
“He’s always been very passionate about winning in anything, soccer, baseball, recreational basketball—everything,” laughed Lori. “He’s very passionate about being the best he can be, in whatever he does.”
As he “graduated” from the Mercedes Kids’ Marathon, Ethan stayed active. Travel soccer and running fought for preeminence for years. It didn’t hurt that he was great at both.
“I would finish [cross country] practice in middle school, I’d run 15 to 20 minutes, maybe do some hill sprints, and then I’d go and have a two-hour soccer practice,” said Ethan. “I think it really hit me that I needed to choose one when I won a state championship my freshman year.”
The Vestavia Hills track team, due to its size or its exclusivity, mandated that if a runner played another sport, they had to run on the JV team. Ethan didn’t want to run JV. As a high school freshman he won his first two state titles in the highest division of Alabama outdoor track by running a one-mile race in 4:21.28 and a two-mile race in 9:30.26—and there was no looking back.
Ethan gives particular credit to the runner in third place of that two mile, James Sweeney, a senior on the Vestavia Hills team who ended up running at Butler University.
“To have someone who doesn’t really know me, watches me run a little bit, and is then very invested in what I’m doing was super cool,” said Strand. “I don’t feel like most people get that … so to have a teammate that was like that right away was super cool, super helpful.”
For Scott, the teammate support system can’t be underappreciated.
“James would come to the house and pick him up and they’d go do the long run,” said Scott. “So James was the one that also helped Ethan be accountable at that young age.”
“We joked ‘Good job, James, you developed Ethan to the point where he’s now beating you.’”
A Short List of Ethan Strand’s High School Accolades
Ethan’s sophomore year continued the momentum, winning a state title in cross country, a state title in the indoor mile, and a state title in the 800 meters, 1600 meters, and 3200 meters at the outdoor meet.
Junior year cross country saw major improvements with a state title, 6th place at Foot Locker Regionals, and 29th place finish at Foot Locker Nationals—leading to Strand’s first Alabama Gatorade XC Runner of The Year award. Track and field wasn’t contested due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Senior year cross country saw Strand take 12th at the state meet but 14th at the RunningLane National Championship. He also ran 14:36.88 for the 5k at the Southern Showcase, breaking the state record and leading to his second Alabama Gatorade XC Runner of the Year Award. He continued his dominance in indoor and outdoor track, winning the state titles for the 800, 1600, and 3200 meter races for both seasons, along with a national title at the Adidas Indoor National mile.
For those counting, that’s 14 individual titles at the highest level of competition in the state of Alabama. Ethan Strand graduated from Vestavia Hills in Alabama a bonafide star, and it was time to become a Tar Heel.
Running with The Heels
For Ethan, a prep runner with an absurd amount of promise, the coaches came calling. But recruitment during a pandemic followed an unorthodox schedule.
Zoom meetings were the litmus tests for a program. Athletes could have conversations with coaches, but in-person visits with coaches weren’t permitted. With the uncertainty around pandemics and programs, there wasn’t a more disorienting time to make life-changing decisions.
“We got it narrowed down between Carolina and Virginia,” remembers Scott. “[Ethan’s] like, ‘There’s nothing that I don’t like about Virginia either, you know.’ I think it was just a gut feeling.”
Heading the two programs were two of the best coaches in the game: Chris Miltenberg for the University of North Carolina and Vin Lananna for the University of Virginia.
Prior to taking over at UNC, Miltenberg made a name for himself at the helm at Stanford, which enjoyed great team success under his guidance. Beyond the team aspect, Miltenberg has a track record of developing the best high school athletes into the best college and professional athletes—like Grant Fisher, Sean McGorty, and Emily Infeld.
However, running for Vin Lananna, the then-president of USA Track and Field and head men’s coach for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, was just as appealing. When it came time to make a decision, it wasn’t easy.
“It was very difficult to tell Vin Lananna that he wasn’t coming to Virginia,” said Scott. “He’s a legend, so it’d be like telling Bear Bryant, you’re not going to Alabama.”
But Ethan did. Maybe it was because he’s an Auburn fan, and Auburn fans have no problem with telling Bear Bryant no. Regardless, he committed to UNC. Senior year followed, and upon graduation, he was officially a Tar Heel.
Ethan realized, as many high schoolers do upon graduation, that he had some growing to do.
“Coming out of high school, I could grind it out because I wanted to win,” said Ethan. “But I really wasn’t that strong.”
When Ethan talks of strength, he primarily speaks of mileage. As a high-school runner, building too much mileage can mean burnout—too much too soon, and any hope of long-term development flies out the window. In this area, and many others, Ethan ascribes his success to Coach Miltenberg.
“You take a kid who, coming out of high school, is not strong, and I feel like most college coaches, their first instinct is to just throw a ton of mileage at him and hammer him into the ground and say ‘It’s either going to stick and he’s going to be really good, or it’s not,’” said Ethan. “So Coach Milt had a lot of patience with me. And I think that patience has paid off.”
Sheer will and determination (along with good workouts and training, of course) propelled Ethan to this point. But to get him over the hump, he had to trust something beyond his control. Coach Miltenberg was up to the task.
“I think what we do better than anybody, is being really, really dialed in on and connected to each of our people,” said Miltenberg. “That’s what we enjoy the most, that individualization, fine tuning, and connecting.”
Some of that fine-tuning and connecting meant trusting the first two years would be about building a base. For Strand, that meant being okay with a 12th place finish in the 2023 NCAA Outdoor 1500m, and finishing 45th in the nation the following cross country season. These were great results, but they weren’t where he wanted to be.
In 2024, his patience paid off.
2024 USA Olympic Track and Field Trials
If you’re a USA track and field athlete hoping to get to the Olympics, you have to go through the Trials. For the 1500m racers, it means running three races in the span of four days—designed to whittle the entire field down to the three top metric milers in the nation.
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