How to win a marathon

I AM UAA: Yon Yilma

B.B.A. Marketing and Management '13
Hometown: Edmonds, Wash.
Fun Fact: A regimented ration of Pedialyte is one of his race-day secrets.

As frost and football descend on the nation, most Americans are content enjoying their hard-earned lazy Sundays. But for former cross-country standout Yon Yilma, Sundays are the perfect day for a 22-mile run. Every Sunday. Even when his Seahawks are playing.

Last year, Yon won the Seattle Rock n' Roll Marathon, completing the 26.2-mile course in a blistering 2 hours, 29 minutes, 53 seconds. It wasn't just his first marathon victory-it was his first ever marathon as well. He hadn't even raced an official half marathon before. That's how you make an entrance in the world of distance running.

North to Alaska

Whether he was running the full 90 minutes of a soccer game or kick-returning on the football field, Yon made a speedy name for himself in middle school. Coaches asked him to join the track team, where he clocked his first mile in just over five minutes. Freshman year, he dropped his time in the mile to 4:35. This was before he even knew what he was doing.

"In high school, nobody really took it seriously," Yon said of his early cross country career. "Half of our practice we'd go back to our friends house and play video games and at the right time we'd all come back and sprint really hard so we looked like we we'd been working hard the whole time."

Things changed when Shelby Schenck-local coach and owner of Run 26 running stores-took notice of Yon's natural abilities. "My junior year I started working for him at the store and I started getting coached by him and this whole world just opened up," Yon said. Before he met Shelby, he had no interest in long distances. After, though, he buckled down with college scholarships on his mind. In his senior season, Yon ran 25 races, taking the top spot in 22 of them.

He launched his college career on Shelby's team at Everett Community College, but started looking elsewhere after two seasons. "I didn't want to go [Division I] because I just wanted to get my degree," Yon explained. He viewed the major university programs as fitness factories, where the focus on crushing workouts would wreck him by semester's end. He instead turned his attention to Division II schools and flew North for a visit to UAA.

"I came to Anchorage and I met the Kenyans and my whole idea [of running] just changed," he said. "I just totally fell in love with it... I came in February too," he added.

"Alaska is a great program. Having been able to train with the Kenyans, not a lot of people in this country get an opportunity to train the way they do and understand their philosophy of training," he continued. "That alone was worth putting up with the snow."

Yon arrived in Anchorage and quickly latched on to his Kenyan teammates, pushing himself to their level. "This guy was finishing races at 23 minutes for an 8K and he'd be smiling," he said of teammate Marko Cheseto. "I'd be a minute behind and dying."

"UAA is so close that it gets very competitive," he continued. "And when you're competitive with your team, it makes you a better runner, and a better competitor against other teams." His statement is backed up by his statistics. After a year with the Seawolves, Yon started tearing up the track. He even beat close friend and four-time national champion Micah Chelimo by milliseconds to take the top spot at two meets in 2011.

As his senior track season wound down, Yon started lining up interviews and landed a job on the marketing team with a remodeling company back in his hometown. But before hanging up his shoes, he decided to run a marathon back in Seattle. Shelby, his former coach, encouraged the decision after noting Yon had the same height and weight as the top two distance runners in the world.

Yon graduated in early May, won the 10,000 meters at the GNAC championships the next week, moved back to Edmonds and ran his first marathon a month later.

Game day

"Everyone was joking around... I felt like I was just going to die," Yon said of the atmosphere at the starting line. He hadn't slept the night before, kept awake by the daunting numbers driving through his head (a 5:30 pace for 26.2 miles against 20,000 competitors!?). He posted up on the starting line against stiff competition, including last year's race winner and the former cross-country captain at Washington State University. Shaky and uncertain, he asked to drop down to the half marathon. But Shelby wouldn't let him.

"The race goes off, I sat right next to the guy who'd won before," Yon said of his strategy. He broke out in a three-man pack and started traversing the streets of Seattle. When last year's winner started to fade, he picked up the pace. WSU's former captain faded next as the race descended onto the floating bridge across Lake Washington towards Mercer Island. After 15 side-by-side miles, Yon held a solo lead. Now he needed to maintain it. Unfortunately, Shelby hadn't told him all the hills were in the last six miles.

Exhaustion ramped up as miles ticked by. "I didn't know if I was going to collapse, I just knew I couldn't stop," he said. " I thought they were right behind me. Then a police officer cyclist tells me 'They're a couple minutes behind you,' and I was like 'Thank God!' and I slowed down."

"When you get to that point, it doesn't matter if you're at the elite level or an everyday runner, mile 20 through 26 just hurts," he said. "You can't prepare yourself. It's gonna hurt." He pushed through the pain and notched his first marathon in under two and a half hours. Teshome Kekobe, last year's winner-and fellow Ethiopia-born Seattleite-crossed the line next 6.5 minutes later.

Coaching in the Cascades

With a marathon victory behind him, entrepreneurship didn't seem like such a crazy idea. Yon recently launched Cascade Running Club, a running program that primarily attracts aspiring marathoners. Yon recruited two other coaches-Shelby, of course, and Ginny Morris, who also owns a Seattle-area running store. They split their marathon participants into three tiers, with folks really into training on one end and a crew who just wanted to finish a marathon on the other.

"I didn't think I was ever going to like coaching," Yon said, "[but] it's so amazing to see people that couldn't even do 20 minutes running in the beginning of the year get up to an hour and a half." Yon took the we-just-want-to-finish crew and crafted a four-month program of workouts, miles and yoga to prepare them for the next marathon. "It's nice to see them build up that confidence. It really changes people's lives."

When Yon first launched Cascade Running Club, he was simultaneously training for his own elite marathon, holding down a full-time marketing job and working weekends at Run 26 (between his Sunday 22-milers). The grinding schedule-up at 5 a.m. to run, off work at 5 p.m. to run again-caused him to reassess, and he decided to resign from his job three weeks before the 2014 marathon. Now, it's all running all the time for Yon.

"I never actually gave running 100 percent," he noted. "In college there's always been school and social life going on, in high school I [rarely] took it seriously, but this is the first time in my life when I'm actually taking running serious and giving 100 percent."

Thankfully, he always has a job at Run 26, where he's been a store manager since high school. "It's not just the place I work, it's a second home to me," he said. "I get to work every day with my boss, who's also my best friend, who's also my coach. I can't beat that."

"I want to be able to wear a Run 26 jersey if I get to the trials," he continued. "I want to represent. I wouldn't be the runner I am today if it wasn't for Run 26."

Around the next bend in the road

That chance to represent may come sooner rather than later. Yon earned an invitation to the California International Marathon, a pancake-flat course from Folsom to the Sacramento Statehouse well-known among runners as the destination for Olympic hopefuls.

Yon would love to qualify for Team USA in 2016, but his sights are definitively set on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. "With marathons, the older you get the better you get," he explained. "We'll see what it brings. I think I have a long way to go, ... [but] I really do believe I have a shot if I keep maintaining my speed and my training and going out for races year after year."

"I'm very new to this sport," Yon acknowledged. "Running on the marathon scene is completely different from track. I'm excited to see where the journey will take me. Everything's a gamble ... I want to make sure I gave it 100 percent and then move on with my life. Leaving it the way it was and trying to get in races here or there, I'd rather just give it everything I've got.

"Since I was a little kid, since I made the running transition, I've felt like I was born to run. Completely," he reflected. "I thought after college it was going to be over, but now the next chapter of my life is running. I love that."

Learn more about Yon at his Run 26 profile, including his favorite shoe, favorite race and favorite TV show (okay, it's Full House).

Written by J. Besl, UAA Office of University Advancement