SPU Final Qualifier set for Saturday; big race looms for Lilly and Holmberg

By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
SEATTLE – For more than two hours, Turner Wiley breezed through the Windy City.
 
Down State Street "that great street."  Alongside Lake Michigan. Past Union Station. Through Greektown, Little Italy, and Chinatown. Up famous Michigan Avenue.
 
One mile … five miles … 12 miles … 20 miles.
 
And then …
 
"You hit Mile 26 and take a right-hand turn, you go up this last little bit of incline and it says 400 (meters) to go," Wiley recalled. "I knew at that point, 'Oh my gosh …
 
 

"… I just qualified for the Olympic Trials."
 
That was a Sunday morning in the middle of last October at the Chicago Marathon.
 
This Saturday morning, on the last day of February, the 2016 Seattle Pacific graduate will step to the starting line in the Peach City – that's Atlanta – for the 2020 United States Olympic Marathon Trials.
 
He'll be one of 772 men and women who reached their respective qualifying standards to earn a place in the field. The men's race begins at 9:08 a.m. Pacific time. The race will be televised live by NBC (KING Channel 5 in Seattle).
 
"I'm really excited for this opportunity," said the 26-year-old Wiley , who was inspired in part to run the Trials in the city where he was born and where many relatives on his father's side still live. "It was always something that I thought would be such an amazing experience. I don't think I truly realized it could come true until after I graduated."

 
GOTTA WORK FOR IT
Wiley came to Seattle Pacific from Issaquah, just across Lake Washington, arriving on campus in the fall of 2011. A lean, lanky 18-year-old, the only thing waiting for him when he got here was an invitation to walk on to the cross country and track teams.
 
Wiley brought a respectable level of talent, having run in three Washington state cross country meets for Issaquah High School.
 
He also brought the kind of work ethic that coaches in every sport everywhere dream about seeing in their athletes.

 

 

"I think he had a good attitude, was a good team player, and was a solid Falcon," said Erika Daligcon, the head cross country coach and assistant track coach at the time. "Light on his feet, out there working hard and not complaining about putting in the miles – that's what I remember about Turner. He was willing to work hard and just commit to the process. I feel that's what has led him to where he is now."
 
Through his four years in a maroon jersey – and in spite of missing a good chunk of time early on with a knee injury – Wiley twice broke the school record for the 10,000 meters. The second of those instances was April 1, 2016 at the San Francisco State Distance Carnival when his time of 30 minutes, 53.09 seconds made him the first Falcon ever to beat 31 minutes. (That mark still stands.)

  Just three months earlier, he was the first Seattle Pacific runner to break 15 minutes for an indoor 5000, clocking 14:56.77. That remained on the books until four weeks ago when current sophomore Colby Otero ran 14:35.10.
 
None of Wiley's accomplishments came as a surprise to SPU associate head coach Chris Reed, whose specialty is working with the program's distance runners.
 
 

"Turner has the utmost belief in himself, and he couples that belief with an extremely hard-working mentality," Reed said.. "He's one of those guys who sets a goal and is relentless in his pursuit of it – that's what I experienced working with him at SPU. He set big goals and never wavered."
 
Wiley readily credits his time at Seattle Pacific with helping him earn the trip to Atlanta.
 
"Every coach I've ever had – Erika, Doris (Heritage), Letiwe (Patton), Chris, Audra (Smith), Karl (Lerum) – just the work ethic they helped instill, not just in running, but also in life," Wiley said of Falcon coaches past and present. "One thing I really have appreciated about Chris is how much he truly cares about each athlete he has. How much time he has invested in me was incredible."
 
PILES OF MILES
The longer, the better.
 
In a nutshell, that's Turner Wiley.
 
Even as an SPU senior, he was already looking to branch out into a half marathon. In October 2016, he won his age division of the Vancouver Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon.
 
But why stop at 13.1 miles?
 
"That sparked the idea of maybe it wouldn't be too crazy to see how close I could get to the Trials standard," he said. "At first, it was, 'Let's just try to run fast and test the waters and see how I respond.'
 
Last April, Wiley entered the Paris Marathon – a lovely place to try 26.2 for the first time.
 
Naturally, the scenery was terrific. The results?
 
Not so much. Hoping to break the Trials qualifying standard of 2 hours, 19 minutes, Wiley clocked 2:30.
 
"I probably did everything wrong that you could do wrong," he said. "I didn't run my own race plan – I got carried away with the moment. My nutrition wasn't on point. It was a pretty big eye-opener. It shocked me a little mentally because I did so poorly.
 
"I had a good half (marathon) leading up to it and I felt confident and ready," he added. "It just didn't click."

 

OK, LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN
Wiley stepped back. Did he want to take another shot at it?
 
Instead of changing his goal of making the Trials, he changed his approach. Rather than prepare on his own, he focused more on training with a group from Club Northwest, one of the best-known running clubs in the region.
 
"I kind of dove in head-first," Wiley said. "I went to training more, increased my mileage per week, and kind of fully embraced the idea that it's going to hurt regardless of how fast you're going to run."
 
It was all geared toward Chicago, considered one of the six major marathons in the world (along with Boston, New York, London, Berlin, and Tokyo).
 
"We had a group of four from our club, and we had done all of our training together," Wiley said. "I met with one teammate (Connor Peloquin) every day during the entire buildup. Our goal going in was sub-2:19. That was the only thing on our mind."
 
IT TAKES A VILLAGE – OR AT LEAST A SMALL GROUP
One of the beauties of racing is that competition and camaraderie often go hand-in-hand. That can be especially true in the marathon.
 
"You want to run in a group and help each other out," Wiley said. "We were talking among the American development corral and said, 'Hey, we're going for the Trials standard – jump on board."

 

At the starting gun, Wiley said that group had grown to between 15 and 20. By the halfway point, it was down to about seven. Approaching the end, it was down to three, and they all finished within three seconds of each other. Wiley's time of 2 hours, 17 minutes flat – exactly two minutes faster than the 2:19 standard – put him 35^th in the field of 45,870 (of which 24,575 were men).
 
As he turned the last corner toward Grant Park, Wiley knew where the finish line was, although he acknowledged his vision might have been a bit blurry at that particular moment.
 
"I actually started crying," he said. "I saw my wife and family there. She remembers seeing me turn the corner and saw tears in my eyes. I had worked my butt off, and it paid off.
 
"There was pride not only to represent myself and the club and SPU, but I think the coolest part was I turned around and I see my teammate (Peloquin). We had become like brothers, pushing each other constantly, and we finished side by side."
 
MAN WITH A PLAN
When nearly 800 runners gather in Atlanta on Saturday, most – including Wiley – know that a trip to Tokyo for this year's Olympics is not in the cards. Only the top three men and top three women finishers will make the team.
 
But Wiley is not heading to Georgia with a "just happy to be there" attitude. He has a race plan for the hilly, three-loop course that has approximately 1,300 feet of elevation gain. (By contrast, Boston – even with Heartbreak Hill – has about 900 feet of gain.)
 
"I think the big thing for me is I'm treating it like a championship race," Wiley said. "I'm going to go out how the pack goes out, and Miles 13-18 will be a pretty big section of the race. Once you get to 20, it's just stay engaged and stay focused."
  This likely won't be last marathon for Wiley who, when he's not running, is a clinic administrative supervisor at Seattle Children's Hospital. But he said his focus is probably going to shift back to the track for a while.
 
"I still have a pretty big bone to pick with the 10K," he said. (His PR is 30:27.21 from the 2018 Portland Track Festival, and he wants a sub-30.) "I'm going to run 10K at the Portland in June and I'm hoping to knock a good bit off my 10K time."
 
For now, though, the Rose City is off in the distance.
 
Come Saturday morning, the Peach City is paramount.
 
"It's really incredible to watch someone grow as a runner the way he has," Falcons coach Reed said. "It's so nice to see somebody be truly rewarded for their hard work. He's ready to run a really good race this weekend."
 
Because, as Turner Wiley put it …
 
 "What kid doesn't want to run the Olympic Trials?"