Susanna Sullivan’s rise through the ranks of elite American marathoners has been slow and steady but still remarkable. After a disappointing collegiate career at the University of Notre Dame, Sullivan was pulled aside by a fellow distance runner and alumnus of the program who encouraged her to keep running competitively. “I’ve always remembered that,” she said. “I still had a lot of goals I wanted to accomplish.”
Sullivan took the advice to heart and joined a running club in the D.C. area after college and gradually began to fulfill her potential. Often the underdog, she recently signed her first major professional contract with Brooks after years of high-level performances. This contract allowed her to stop working her second job as a math tutor so that she could spend more time focused on training and recovery.
Playing “Calendar Tetris”
Despite her contract, Sullivan chose to keep her full-time job as a middle school teacher. She also volunteers as an assistant coach for the cross country and track teams at George Mason University, where her personal coach, Andrew Gerard, works as the head coach. She works closely with Gerard to ensure that her training load isn’t too much for her busy lifestyle. “I try to be consistent, but sometimes the day has been particularly draining, and I really appreciate that he takes those things into account,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan’s packed schedule gives her a rather unconventional approach to training. She teaches 40 hours a week, which means she spends a lot more time on her feet throughout the day than most elite marathon athletes. As a result, she has found that she is more successful when she keeps her mileage a bit lower than her competitors, and she supplements her training with work in the pool.
This approach has helped her stay healthy and stack weeks of training during her return from a stress fracture of her kneecap that she sustained last year. “It’s been a dream couple months of training, I’ve been super patient, and I’ve gotten to be back better than I ever was before,” she said in her post-race interview.
“It’s been a dream couple months of training, I’ve been super patient, and I’ve gotten to be back better than I ever was before.”
More Than Just an Athlete
Naturally, people often question why Sullivan remains in her full-time teaching job and whether she might be more successful with more free time and less work-induced stress. But Sullivan describes herself as “pretty type A” and feels that she thrives off of the structure of a busy day.
She’s also not the only runner who has found running success while working a full time job. Former American record holder in the marathon, Keira D’amato, also had her breakthrough races while working at her full time job as a realtor. Both Sullivan and D’amato have tested the boundaries of conventional elite marathon training, and their results are a testament to the fact that there is no single best way to approach competitive distance racing.
Life Lessons From Running
Sullivan also likes to use her races as teachable moments for her students. After running 2:24 in the London Marathon, she returned home to students eager to hear about their teacher’s competitive success. “I tried to reflect that it was a dream come true and it was exciting because I set my personal best," she said. "I was 10th, and some of them will see that as a failure because I did not win. But I was showing them that I could be incredibly happy with how it went because for me it was a victory. That's something that's important to bring back to them -- that I compare myself to my previous self. That's something they can relate to."
We may not all be middle school math students, but we can still learn a lot from Sullivan. Her patience and discipline are invaluable qualities that proves that we are not defined by our collegiate performances and we don’t have to choose between our sport and our career. Women athletes can have it all.
