Most Minnesotans head to Florida or Arizona when they need a respite from winter. Tyler Jermann chose to spend the past two months in Fayetteville, Ark., where the hilly terrain was a bigger draw than the warmth.
It was a business trip for Jermann and other pro runners in the Minnesota Distance Elite club, who were seeking the best place to train for Saturday's U.S. Olympic marathon trials. In Fayetteville, they found a landscape that mimicked the undulating course they will run in Atlanta, preparing them for a race that will determine the half-dozen Americans who will run at this summer's Olympics.
The largest field in Olympic trials history — about 700 runners — will line up for the 11 a.m. start (live on Ch. 11), with the top three finishers of each gender receiving berths in the Summer Games.
The 21 Minnesota residents at the event include Jermann, with the 39th-fastest qualifying time among the men, and his wife, Katy, whose time ranks 29th in the women's field. Emma Bates, who is from Elk River but currently lives in Idaho, has the seventh-fastest qualifying time among the women.
"The primary reason we chose Fayetteville was because it's a lot hillier than here, and a lot hillier than we're used to,'' said Jermann, a former Iowa State runner who lives in Burnsville. "We tried with most of our hard workouts to find terrain that was as similar to the racecourse as possible.
"Our training went about as perfectly as it could have gone. But it's going to be hard, regardless.''
Jermann has run the Atlanta course before, at a preview race last year. It is an 8-mile loop that features several sharp turns along with its ups and downs.
He expects it to favor runners like himself: strong athletes who excel in cross-country and can handle variations in terrain, as opposed to track specialists. Jermann said the men's field is deeper than in past Olympic trials, with 20 or 30 legitimate contenders. Dakotah Lindwurm, another Minnesota Distance Elite runner at the trials, expects 10 to 15 women to be in the hunt.
