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In 2022, her first year at Louisiana State University, Michaela Rose missed out on qualifying for the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships by 0.34 seconds. She competed at the meet as part of her team’s 4x400m relay, but she was disappointed not to qualify in an individual event.

At the NCAA meet, her coach, Houston Franks, pulled her aside after the 800m final and told her that she was going to return to the meet the following year and beat all of the women in the race. “I took that to heart,” Rose told Fast Women. “Because I knew that he believed in me.”

And he was right. One year later, Rose led wire-to-wire and earned her first NCAA title, in 1:59.83. “It felt absolutely amazing just to see everything [come] together,” she said. 

Earlier in 2023, she had finished third in the NCAA indoor 800m. Outdoors, she lowered her 800m best to 1:59.08 and her 1500m best to 4:11.98. LSU put her on a billboard. And she ended her season with a sixth-place finish in the 800m at the USATF Outdoor Championships, competing against professional runners.

Now a junior in college, Rose, 20, is hoping for even bigger things in 2024. She announced that she signed an NIL deal with Adidas last month. And she’s hoping to extend her track season all the way to the Olympic final. “That’s the mindset we’re going in with,” she said. “We know that it’s going to be a long season, and it’s nothing I’m surprised by. It’s what I want.”

Rose grew up in Suffolk, Virginia, and her Olympic dream started early. Her parents, Marcia (Rush) Rose and Michael Rose, met when they were on the track team at Auburn. One of the school’s coaches at the time, Dennis Shaver, is now the head coach at LSU. The Roses coached track before they had kids, so it was natural for them to have their first born, Michael Jr., try the sport. Rose wanted to follow her brother when she was even younger, but her parents made her wait until she was three or four to enter the sport. She remembers running her first mile race at age four. “I told myself, ‘I’m four, I can run four laps.’” 

Her two younger siblings, Michail and Michailyn, also became track & field athletes. She was competitive right off the bat because she hated losing to anyone in her family. “We knew how to win and we knew how to lose, because we raced against each other,” Rose said.

When she was eight or nine years old, she knew she wanted to run for a living. It was partially a byproduct of growing up in a home where her family would watch all the major track & field championships. She remembers thinking God gave her a talent, and she wanted to take it as far as she could go. She began taking practice very seriously and started doing an intense core routine.

Rose’s father coached her until she got to college. And while she put in plenty of hard work, he made sure that she didn’t overdo it. “He’s seen the talent that has risen and fallen so quickly because of burnout,” she said. “In AAU and club teams, you see all these talented girls, and by the time they hit high school, they burn out and don’t want to do it anymore. So he really had a way to coach his team to where running was still just fun.”

Rose was homeschooled, so she couldn’t compete for a school team, but she raced for Faith in Action Athletics, which was affiliated with her church. As a sophomore, Rose won the 800m at New Balance Nationals outdoors in 2019, in 2:04.38, and she finished second to Britton Wilson in the 400m hurdles, in 58.86. She missed out on a lot of racing her junior year due to the pandemic and her senior year due to a stress reaction in her foot.

Rose began at LSU in the fall of 2021, and the adjustment to college academics and athletics was a process. As a biology major, going from homeschooling to having a lot of exams and deadlines was a challenge. She sat out that first cross country season, which helped her build the fitness she needed. While she didn’t qualify for NCAAs in an individual event, she ran a personal best of 2:02.49 for 800m and was the runner-up in the 800m at the SEC championships.

After the collegiate season was over, she earned a bronze medal in the 400m hurdles at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Cali, Colombia. Rose doesn’t think she’s done with the 400m hurdles, but this year, her focus will remain on the 800m. 

Some 800m specialists shy away from running cross country, but Rose sees it as important base training for track season. “And even though it’s base training, I’m very competitive with it,” she said. “So I give everything for that season.” Rose was LSU’s second runner in most of the meets she ran during the fall, and she finished 18th at the NCAA South Central regional meet.

Her cross country training includes 800m-specific workouts. She extended her long run to 11 miles this past fall, but it’s not as far as some of LSU’s distance specialists go. She trained 45–48 miles per week, compared to the 37–43 she does during track season. 

“I really think I’m much stronger than I was last cross season,” she said. “That says a lot because last season, I was surprised with what I was able to produce in cross country, and that correlated well with track season. So this year, I’m expecting much better things.”

Outdoors, she’ll focus on the NCAA season first, but she’ll also keep the Olympic Trials in mind. Franks is structuring her training a little differently this year, so she has the strength to run well far into the summer. “Last season, I probably peaked early, but it was the collegiate season so it wasn’t a problem,” she said. “I just have to build myself stronger to where I last longer, and I think we’ve been hitting the important points right now so I won’t die out throughout the outdoor season.”

At last year’s USATF Outdoor Championships, Rose competed in the senior category for the first time. She was the only collegian to make the final. “It was something I was definitely prepared for, but the feeling 100 percent is different, because these are ladies I have looked up to and cheered for,” she said. “I knew that this was the place I was supposed to be at, and these were the girls that I needed to compete against. [But] racing with them was definitely a surreal moment.”

And she felt very supported by her competitors. Raevyn Rogers and Charlene Lipsey both had kind words for her. And Athing Mu, who raced the 1500m but is the reigning Olympic champion in the 800m, gave her a hug and told her she was proud of her. “They are so supportive of the new generation,” she said.

Rose’s generation of NCAA athletes is the first to have the opportunity for financial support from companies in the form of NIL deals, and it’s allowing more of them to stay in the NCAA for longer. Rose always planned to return to the NCAA this season. But her NIL deal with Adidas will help her start saving for the future while preserving her collegiate eligibility. And it’s an opportunity to build relationships that will help her in her professional career.

Being at a Nike school, Rose will wear Nike products when she competes for LSU and Adidas at the Olympic Trials. “Adidas has been my favorite brand for as long as I can remember, so just to see it happening, this is a life-changing moment for me,” she said.

Balancing college with being a top athlete is not always easy, but Rose is approaching the track season with gratitude. “This is a dream of mine that is being fulfilled right in front of my eyes,” she said. “Of course you want to hit your goals, but the journey itself is what you have to live for. This journey of preparing for my first Olympic season, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge that I accept and I will give 100 percent for it.”

Late in the Cursa dels Nassos 5K on New Year’s Eve in Barcelona, Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet led, but two-time defending champion Ejgayehu Taye of Ethiopia was still within striking distance. As Chebet, 23, went around the course’s penultimate turn with 500m to go, she dropped the hammer. She charged to victory in 14:13, setting a pending world record.

Chebet’s time surpassed both the women’s-only world record of 14:29, previously held by Ethiopia’s Senbere Teferi, and the world record for a mixed-gender race, 14:19, set by Taye at this event in 2021. 

Ethiopia’s Kassie Wubrist Aschal, 18, paced the race through a little past 2K. According to World Athletics, the pack hit 1K in 2:49 and 2K in 5:38 (another 2:49 split). But they slowed in the middle, after Aschal dropped out. Chebet did most of the pace pushing as they hit 3K in 8:38 (3:00 split), and 4K in 11:36 (2:58). According to the reported splits, Chebet was flying in the final kilometer, which she ran in 2:37. (That’s about 4:12 mile pace.) It’s also possible that the splits aren’t exact. That has happened more than once this year.

Taye, who has shown remarkable consistency at this race, finished second in 14:21, matching her 2022 time, and only two seconds slower than her former world record. Kenya’s Lilian Kasait Rengeruk rounded out the top three in 14:26. And Ethiopia’s Medina Eisa, 18, took fifth in 14:40, the fastest 5K ever by a U20 woman. (Results | Race replay)

• David Woods did an excellent job of telling Andrea Pomaranski’s story in this article, published by the Indianapolis Star. She has previously discussed on podcasts losing her twin sons, being diagnosed with osteoporosis, having three more children, and returning to high-level running after years off, but even if you’ve heard it all, the article is a great read.

• Celestine Karoney wrote a nice article looking back at Faith Kipyegon’s record-breaking year. “I wrote in my diary that 2023 will be a special year and it came true,” Kipyegon said.

• Sara Vaughn posted about having to take a week off of running, right in the middle of her Olympic Trials buildup, because she had the flu. No time is a good time to get the flu, but better now than race week.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier Elaine Estes, who is a high school Spanish teacher. You need a subscription to read the article, but if you have Apple News, or maybe even if you don’t, you can read it here.

• Another Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier, Polina Hodnette, said that she will not be running the race. She tripped on a curb while walking in the dark and tore her peroneal tendon.

• With two days left in 2023, Kim Conley realized that if she didn’t run a sub-5:00 mile before the year ended, her 20-year streak would be over. So on New Year’s Eve, she went to the track and knocked out a sub-5:00 mile, for the 21st year in a row.

• I’ve enjoyed following freelance writer Frankie de la Cretaz for a while now. They wrote a great cover story about Nikki Hiltz for Runner’s World earlier this year. In a year in review post last week, De la Cretaz wrote, “The freelance market is in shambles, especially sports media. There is just nowhere for me to even send sports stories, aside from a publication here or there.” That’s something I’ve suspected for a while now, and I have heard the same from journalists who focus mostly on running. De la Cretaz also said the rates are “absolutely dismal.” But their highest-paying assignment of the year, the Hiltz cover story, paid well: $7,200.

• The San Silvestre Vallecana 10K on New Year’s Eve in Madrid came down to a three-way sprint. It was an Ethiopian sweep as Ababel Yeshaneh won in 30:31, 18-year-old Asmarech Anlay took second (30:31), and Likina Amebaw was third in 30:32.

• Kenya’s Edinah Jebitok won the International Raiffeisen Silvesterlauf, a 5.1K road race, held in Peuerbach, Austria, in 15:26. (Results)

• Italy’s Nadia Battocletti became the first Italian to win the BOclassic 5K in Bolzano, Italy, in 35 years, running 15:30 for 5K. Kenya’s Nelly Chepchirchir took second in 15:33. (Results)

• England’s Jess Warner-Judd won the Ribble Valley 10K in 32:42. (Results)

• Molly Seidel answered listeners’ questions on the latest episode of The Build Up with Molly Seidel and Julia Hanlon. I always appreciate Seidel’s honesty, and she talked about dealing with knee pain during her Trials buildup, not overthinking during races, and staying in the moment during workouts, among other things. 

• It was good to hear from Summer Allen and her husband, Christian Allen, on The Headlamp Hour. Allen had her first child while she was still a student at Weber State, and she did her best collegiate running after that, including finishing seventh at the 2020 NCAA Cross Country Championships (held in March 2021). She has since had another child, and is due to have her third this week. She ran a couple of trail races during her pregnancy, and it was interesting to hear her talk about how she has balanced running and parenthood. She plans to get back to competitive racing once her body is ready again.

• I enjoyed hearing from Dom Scott on Lactic Acid with Dominique Smith. Scott talked about her marathon journey being somewhat frustrating so far, mostly because she felt like her Chicago result didn’t reflect the work she put in. (She ran 2:29:19 in London and 2:27:31 in Chicago in 2023.) And while those are solid results, it got me thinking about some of the pros who have come a long way since their marathon debuts. Some examples: Tigst Assefa (2:34:01 debut, 2:11:53 PR), Brigid Kosgei (2:47:59 debut, 2:14:04 PR), Keira D’Amato (3:49:50 debut, 2:19:12 PR), Sara Hall (2:48:02 debut, 2:20:32 PR), Des Linden (2:44:56 debut, 2:22:38 PR), and Gabi Rooker (2:54:57 debut, 2:24:35 PR). So take heart if you don’t knock your first couple marathons out of the park.

Additional Episodes: Kara Goucher and Ali Feller looked back at 2023 on the Ali on the Run Show | Briana Boehmer, 2:33 marathoner, on For the Long Run | Carley Thomas, of the University of Washington and Australia, on The Running Effect

This is one of the quietest times on the racing calendar, but it’s fitting that even in a quiet week, another world record fell—a theme in 2023. Things are going to pick up again soon, and once they do, they’re not going to slow down for a long time.

This week’s newsletter doesn’t have a sponsor, so it’s reader-supported only. I am so thankful to all of you who have contributed via Venmo and Patreon, and Fast Women would not be possible without you.

Happy New Year!

Alison

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