He’s the American road 5K record-holder and two-time top American at world cross country championships. She placed fourth at the 2012 Olympics in triathlon. Together, Ben and Sarah True want to compete at the Rio de Janeiro Games in August—a feat few athletic couples ever achieve in the same year.
The Trues are an endurance power couple, connected by her agent and their shared New England roots. Ben is training for the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the Olympic track trials in July. Sarah has already qualified for Team USA at an International Triathlon Union (ITU) meet last August in Rio de Janeiro, where she was fourth overall and the second American behind Gwen Jorgensen.
The Trues reside in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, next to Hanover, the town where Sarah was born and Ben was an All-American Nordic skier and a sub-four-minute miler at Dartmouth College. After a brief professional stint with the Oregon Track Club, he came back to New Hampshire in 2010.
Sarah was an All-American swimmer at Middlebury College in Vermont and was a well-established triathlon pro by 2007, when she won the ITU Aquathlon World Championships in Mexico. In 2010, she returned to New Hampshire, where her brother still lived, to use it as a base from which to travel to international competitions.
“Her agent was trying to get us to connect,” Ben said. “I was resistant—why do you want me to show her running trails around here when the Dartmouth women’s cross country team could do that?”
Then Ben broke a toe doing barefoot drills one day—and as fate would have it, his forced cross-training brought the couple together.
“I was told that a handsome runner and former Nordic skier had moved back to the Upper Valley. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he's also very smart, funny, and sweet,” Sarah said, in an email. “I was instantly smitten.”
They went on bike rides together, which “turned into dog park dates, which turned into real dates,” she said. They married in 2014 and began a life of shared Olympic aspirations, which sometimes draw them closer, and other times lead to long stretches of separation.
Ben, who had won the U.S. 15K championship the past three years, originally planned to debut at 13.1 miles at the NYC Half Marathon this month, but a small injury kept him out of the race. While he was disappointed, the decision to prepare for the event meant that he and Sarah spent four consecutive months together, a rarity when their race schedules often take them in opposite directions. Ben hasn’t raced since September, when he ran a 13:05.54 at a track meet in Brussels, the fastest American 5,000-meter time of 2015.
“We finally did get time to spend time together at home,” Ben said. “A lot of times, I’ll do road races in the fall, but with the year coming up, I wanted to give myself a break to totally recharge.”
The Trues spent the first part of 2016 in Athens, Georgia, training at facilities managed by Adam Nelson, world champion shot putter and fellow Dartmouth graduate. They have spent previous winters in Clermont, Florida; Lynchburg, Virginia; and Santa Barbara, California.
“It’s good for my wife for us to get away,” Ben said. “It’s easier to train on the bike without temperatures in negative numbers.”
Although the similar drive and goals can bring the Trues a level of understanding that few other couples can boast, the relationship isn’t without challenges. In a perfect world, Ben would rather not travel at all, while Sarah recently competed in Abu Dhabi and has races coming up in Australia and Capetown, South Africa.
“I wanted to get in a block of races and a month of warm weather training in the spring,” Sarah said. She also leaves home for multiple competitions in Europe, generally in the last spring and the summer.
But when they are both home, they’ve learned to respect each other’s training demands. Ben’s workouts don’t often overlap with Sarah’s schedule, because her focus is split in three—swimming, biking, and running—requiring an alarm each morning two hours before Ben wakes up.
“She has to fit in a whole lot more in a day than I do,” said Ben, “even if I run twice a day.”
In the two-athlete True household, a lot of compromise also ensues. Who tends to the piles of laundry? And what if both are too exhausted to cook dinner?
“We try to be attentive to the other person and take turns being the nurturer,” Sarah said. “We can easily read fatigue levels and we instinctively know when it's our turn.”
The signs are usually pretty evident.
“When either of us is dragging around or creaking, it's pretty easy to tell. Usually if we're cranky, it's because we're tired or hungry,” Ben said. “We need a nap or need a snack."
Ben typically reaches 100 miles of running per week. With thousands of miles of swimming, biking, and running between them, the calorie consumption can reach untold levels. The estimated grocery bill reaches about $100 per week.
“People would be astounded by the amount of food we consume,” Sarah said. Ben added, "We have a nice little co-op we go to, and there's a farmers market on Saturday."
The Trues are partial to pizza and tacos, but they support local farmers and in the case of tacos, they make everything, including the corn tortillas, from scratch. “It’s all actual food, nothing processed,” Ben said.
Tim Broe, a 2004 Olympic 5,000-meter runner, is coaching Ben and when Sarah returns to New Hampshire in April, Broe will also coach her running. He considers the couple his close friends, too.
“I just hope this turns into one of those dream summers,” he said. “That’s what I’m crossing my fingers for.”
