Dot McMahan has built a career on persistence, and on Sunday in Houston, she added another chapter.
McMahan, 49, finished the Houston Marathon in 2:36:24, placing 13th and slipping under the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying standard by 36 seconds. The performance secured her a place at the Trials for the sixth time, a feat unmatched in the modern era of American women’s marathon running.
The race also marked a milestone for her training partner, Caroline Garrett, who qualified for the Trials in her first marathon, finishing one place ahead of McMahan in 2:36:04.
A shared effort from start to finish
McMahan and Garrett train together with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project in Rochester Hills, Mich., and approached the Houston race as a joint effort. The pair ran side by side for much of the course, averaging just under six minutes per mile before pressing the pace over the closing miles.
Only late in the race did McMahan realize she was on track to qualify.
“I wasn’t totally sure I was under until I saw the clock,” she said in a phone interview with Runner’s World. “That part was pretty surreal.”
At the finish, Garrett was waiting for her, celebrating a debut that doubled as a breakthrough.
Experience meets youth
McMahan said her preparation for Houston was solid but unremarkable. There were no standout workouts or signs that pointed clearly to a qualifying performance.
Instead, she relied on years of accumulated experience, and on the energy of training alongside a runner tackling the marathon for the first time.
“We trained together for 12 weeks and talked through everything,” McMahan said. “What could go wrong, how we’d handle it. To see it all come together was really rewarding.”
Garrett, 25, joined the group after graduating from Wake Forest and brought a sense of excitement to the training cycle. McMahan said watching her younger teammate handle long runs and demanding workouts helped her stay motivated through the winter.
“It reminds you how special this distance still is,” she said.
A career that keeps extending
McMahan, who grew up in Hilbert, Wis., ran her first marathon in 2006 and qualified for her first Olympic Trials two years later. She has since competed in every Trials, with top-10 finishes in both 2008 and 2012.
She was the oldest woman to qualify for the 2024 Trials and is likely to hold that distinction again as the sport looks toward 2028.
Away from racing, McMahan works as an assistant track coach at Oakland University, balancing coaching duties with elite-level training. Her longevity, she said, is rooted in consistency and in the support of her training group and longtime coach, Kevin Hanson, with whom she has worked for two decades.
A late-career resurgence
In the past year, McMahan has found renewed form. She finished seventh at the 2025 Houston Marathon in 2:35:04, a result she later described as frustrating given how strong she felt. That disappointment fueled a faster performance at the 2025 Boston Marathon, where she ran 2:33:43, her quickest marathon in more than a decade.
She also credits a new source of motivation: her daughter, El, a high school runner who has quickly become a competitor in her own right.
“If I’m racing El, I can’t take shortcuts,” McMahan said, laughing. “She knows all the tricks I taught her.”
Still giving back
Within her training group, McMahan has increasingly taken on a mentoring role, offering advice and pacing teammates through workouts even when it does not directly serve her own training.
That instinct surfaced again on Sunday. After the race, teammate Eva Jess completed her first half marathon and mentioned she might want to move up to the full distance. Others immediately suggested McMahan should run alongside her.
After a moment’s hesitation, McMahan agreed.
“I love the first-timers,” she said. “Helping them through it, being there for that experience, that’s fun for me.”
At an age when most elite marathoners have long stepped away, McMahan continues to qualify, compete, and guide others, one marathon at a time.
