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Emma Bates Looks To Conclude A Difficult Year With Something Good

Published by
DyeStat.com   Dec 17th 2020, 11:34pm
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Bates Feels Ready For PR Effort, Predicts 'Special Things' On Sunday In At The Marathon Project In Arizona

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Photo by John Nepolitan

Living with the pangs of regret is never easy, and when ASICS professional distance runner Emma Bates finished outside the top three Feb. 29 at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta, she didn't hide her disappointment. 

Bates, representing Idaho Distance Project, felt she was ready and able to make the Olympic team. Instead, she finished seventh in 2:29:35 and said afterward she was nearly reduced to walking on the third and final loop of the race. 

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From Atlanta, she and her husband, Kameron Ulmer, flew to Europe for a pre-planned vacation to rest and recover. 

Within two weeks, they were both sick with undiagosed cases of Coronavirus after travelling through early global hotspots — Spain, New York City and Seattle. 

When they arrived home in Idaho and dutifully went to Boise to get tested for COVID-19, on March 19, they were turned away because there were not enough tests to go around and their symptoms — diarrhea, shortness of breath, the "worst headache of my life" — were already easing. 

Bates carefully described her ordeal with the illness, essentially conducting her own contact tracing, and posted it to her Twitter feed. 

Then she and her husband, a UPS employee and also her coach, quarantined themselves for 14 days. 

And that was just the first quarter of 2020. 

This coming Sunday, Bates and 43 other elite women (and 54 men) will get an opportunity to do the thing they train every day for — racing 26.2 miles. They'll run at 10 a.m. EST in The Marathon Project on a closed 4.3-mile loop on the Gila River Indian Reservation, which borders Chandler, Ariz. 

The end-of-year race is designed to give some of the nation's top distance runners a chance to perform, possibly run a new PR and satisfy shoe-contract requirements and perhaps collect bonuses. The prize money, without a sea of recreational runners' entry fees, is scant: $5,000 for first place, $2,000 for second and $1,000 for third. 

But for Bates, it's not really the point. 

"I'm hoping to redeem myself from the Trials a little bit," she said Wednesday during a virtual press conference. "I didn't make the moves that I wanted to. And to not be able to get into a race and change all of that (memory) until months and months later has been hard."

When the idea for The Marathon Project was first hatched in Septemeber, between agent Josh Cox and HOKA ONE ONE Northern Arizona Elite coach Ben Rosario, Bates circled Dec. 20 on her calendar. 

"I knew it would be something special," Bates said. "I think special things will happen Sunday."

Bates, who was the 2018 U.S. Women's Marathon champion after running 2:28:19 in her debut in Sacramento, feels good again about her training and her fitness. 

She relishes a chance to prove that the seventh-place finish on that cold, windy day in February does not define her or put a ceiling on her promising career. 

"I'm hoping for a big PR," Bates said. 

Bates speaks for many in Sunday's field when she voices confidence and optimism about ending 2020 with something good. 

Even after the roller-coaster of late February and March, Bates felt the anxiety and frustration of the nation's messy reckoning with racial injustice and the protests over police brutality. It didn't end there during an election fight and with a new, frightful surge in the pandemic.

Bates returned to racing Oct. 28 at the Michigan Half Marathon, where she finished second to Keira D'Amato with a personal-best time of 1:09:44. 

She also ran in the ASICS World Ekiden, which was a virtual event Nov. 11. She ran 33:06 on a 10K leg for Team Tsunagu. 

And now the former Boise State star is back with a marathon opportunity that she won't let go to waste.

"This year has been difficult, not being able to train with people as often as I hoped," Bates said. "I'm really, really excited. It's been a big build-up."



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