Hoka’s Northern Arizona Elite features some of the best distance runners in the world, who do great things on the track and on the roads.
Lauren Hagans, one of the premiere athletes of NAZ Elite, is looking to make the full transition from the track to the roads. So far this season, she has secured a second place finish at the USATF Half Marathon Championships, in addition to winning the Cardiff Kook Run 10k in February, where she set the course record.
So far, her training and her 2023 campaign has been a good one for her, even with a slight injury setback that she’s fully recovered from.
“It has gone well,” she said. At NAZ Elite, we have a new coach, Alan Culpepper. He’s been coaching me since July, I believe, of last year. And I decided that I, to be honest, have been a little bit burnt out on track, and I wanted to do more road stuff, and just experience different races, distances. And so we actually decided to focus on the half marathon championship in February. And that went very, very well. And I was second to my teammate, (Aliphine Tuliamuk) who was first and ran pretty quickly.
Then I kind of had a little bit of an injury flare up the month of March, and leading into April. I have chronic sciatica, so sometimes I just get weird little injuries that are kind of alarming and I have to deal with those. But so far, now I’m knock on wood, 100% healthy. I’m debuting in my first marathon in June. So I kind of have gone the other spectrum to where it’s really interesting. I’m curious to see how it will go, because I ran the 800m in college, and then I ran the 1500m and the 5000m as a pro. And I’m just slowly starting to transition (to the marathon.) My half marathons have gone well, and now it’s the big kahuna, the full marathon.”
Hagans found success and familiarity competing on the track, but she’s adapting to the training that comes with road racing. So far, there are things that she enjoys about road racing, and there’s also things that she’s getting used to.
“I think that there’s a few different things that I love about it,” she said. ”I’m still really new to really long distances, and so there’s kind of that level of the unexpected, where I don’t really know quite yet how good I can be in those events. So that’s kind of what’s more exciting than nerve racking for me. I do feel like because it’s 26.2 miles or 13.1, you know, that’s anywhere from just under 70 minutes to two and a half hours. So there’s a lot of room for improvement there.
And I think it’s just interesting, like, trying to figure out the puzzle pieces of these longer distances. And yeah, I love a challenge. So I truly, actually really have enjoyed half marathon training as well. It’s obviously very different than 800 meter, mile, or even 5000m training.”
Hagans, who is set to make her marathon debut in June at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota (editor’s note: Lauren won the Grandma’s Marathon in her debut with a time of 2:25), has knowledge about the training required for the marathon, even though she’s new to running it. Through Next Best Run she gives instruction and guidance to other marathoners. Despite her coaching expertise, she’s learning more about the event that she’ll be running in.
“I actually own a coaching business and I’ve been coaching marathoners and half marathoners down to the mile for years,” she said. “So I know about training. I also have a degree in exercise physiology, and a master’s degree in sports psychology and motor behavior. So I know a lot about the physiology and training, but I have never done the training myself. And so and I’ve also never done the training under either Ben Rosario, who was our head coach or Alan Culpepper. So I understand everything that we’re doing. It’s just a different experience when you are walking through the process yourself. So I’m finding out some things that I knew, but you don’t quite know until you do them.
And so, it’s been very interesting, I would say, because I have this background in speed – I am used to such intense events that just hurt from the beginning, like from the time the gun goes off, and when you’re already feeling like, you’ve got some lactic acid buildup. And so the difference for marathon training is just the element of patience. The paces for the marathon, the paces I’ve been training at, they just don’t feel that fast. And you’re almost going, am I really doing anything? But then you realize, oh no, I have to run this pace for 10,12,14 miles for tempos. And so I feel very lucky to have just people around me that can be like, Oh, you have a question about this. This is what’s happening or this is what you should do.”
NAZ Elite features incredible talent such as Stephanie Bruce, Aliphine Tuliamuk, Krissy Gear and Kellyn Taylor, just to name a few athletes. Hagans says that the women in her training group are there for her to guide her, encourage her and support her as she transitions to the marathon, which is something that means a great deal to her.
“Just knowing that I have women around me that are so strong, that have been there before, you know, I’m going into uncharted territory,” she said. “And they kind of know the lay of the land, so they can kind of, you know, talk me down a little bit off a ledge if I get nervous, like, I’m not going to be able to hit this and they tell me, yes, you can. This is the process, you know. So it’s definitely very, very helpful.”
