Courtney Dauwalter Will Take Another Shot at the Olympic Trials Standard at CIM

Courtney Dauwalter ran 2:38:55 at the California International Marathon last December, a time only 1:55 slower than what she needed to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, and she told Runner’s World she is going back to Sacramento on Dec. 6 to make up the difference.

Trail Runner managing editor Abby Levene, who is also racing CIM, was first to report that Dauwalter was training for the race, writing in her Oct. 9 newsletter that the two had trained together in Kona. Dauwalter laid out the Trials goal in an interview with Runner’s World, published Friday. “If I have the opportunity to take part in the Olympic Trials, I mean, of course I would want to be there,” she told the magazine.

Last year she went through halfway in 1:18:33, a few seconds outside the pace the standard requires, and came home in 1:20:22. Plenty of the women around her did get under the line: in a race that doubled as the national championships, USA Track & Field counted 54 women and 52 men who ran Trials qualifying times that morning, and Molly Born won the women’s title in 2:24:09, a course record in her marathon debut.

Dauwalter, now 41, had run 2:49:54 at the Twin Cities Marathon only nine weeks before that, in her first road marathon in 13 years, so she took almost 11 minutes off her best in the space of a single autumn.

At UTMB in late August, she withdrew roughly 68K (42 miles) into the race, seven weeks after she had won the Hardrock 100 in 26:03:10, improving her own clockwise course record and making it four titles from four starts in Silverton.

The Trials are on March 25, 2028, in St. Louis, and USATF says six athletes, three men and three women, will come away with places on the U.S. Olympic team. Women need 2:37:00 or faster to get into that field.

This December’s race is the second straight year CIM has hosted the USATF Marathon Championships, and the last for now, since the national title race moves to the Chicago Marathon in October 2027. The Sacramento race is also set to double its field the following year.

The Ironman World Championship will carry the name of Dauwalter’s sponsor, Salomon, from 2027, under a five-year naming-rights deal. She told Levene she expects to race an Ironman herself at some point: “I would say there’s probably a 100% chance I’ll try.”