As I mentioned, Michelle Rorke qualified for the Olympic Trials Marathon, which is this coming Sunday. Michelle has come up before on EphBlog, but this is the first time I’ve advertised her race before the race is reported on EphBlog. Here is an excerpt from an interview with her:

What has the reaction to your 2:43 been like on the Williams campus?
It’s been fun having people congratulate me. I think they hear “Olympic Trials” and assume that means I have a chance of actually going to the Olympics. Most people don’t realize that 100 plus runners will be chasing three spots. I have to explain how big a gulf there is between 17th at Boston and 10th at Boston.

What kind of marathon training schedule do you follow? Do you have a coach?
Pete Farwell, my cross country coach at Williams, is a 2:20 marathoner and a Boston veteran. He gave me some good training guidelines. I am not good about doing really structured workouts on my own. I did one 800 workout in February and then couldn’t get myself to back to the track.

My schedule was very flexible. I took a day off every week and used the great hills around Williamstown to give my long runs some intensity.

For the rest of the interview, see Elite Running. To see Michelle run, go to Boston on Sunday.