McKale Montgomery almost always finds a way around a challenge.
To fit 100-mile weeks around a full-time academic career and parenting a 2-year-old, the nutrition professor gets up at 5 a.m. She runs dirt roads around her Stillwater, Oklahoma, home with a headlamp, Nutrition - Weight Loss treadmill her husband, Scott, bought her for Christmas.
On the way to October’s Prairie Fire Marathon in Wichita, Kansas, Montgomery graded papers in the car. (She won the race outright in 2:39:47, eight minutes ahead of the first man.)
For the Marathon Project in Chandler, Arizona, in December, she missed the memo about bringing her own fluids. The day beforehand, she poured Gatorade into empty barbecue sauce bottles.
So during Year-Old Mom of 3 Qualifies for Marathon Trials on March 6, when her Garmin showed her coming up about .17 miles short, her scientific mind devised a solution. Surely, she could just continue running through the chute.
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Her plan didn’t work: “They kind of stop you at the end of the race,” Montgomery told Runner’s World.
She crossed the finish line first in a course record 2:30:49. But it turns out Montgomery and another elite female, Obsie Birru, were among seven runners led astray by the lead cyclist near the halfway point, missing a timing mat. “To give you an idea of how messy it was, they ended up disqualifying me and paying me for winning at the same time,” she said. (Birru was also compensated for second place.)
The wrong turn stings, she admitted. The diversion seems unlikely to halt her upward trajectory, however. Since missing the Olympic Marathon Trials in 2012 by just over a minute, and in 2016 by a heartbreaking 6 seconds, the self-coached 36-year-old has significantly picked up her pace.
Montgomery finally qualified for the 2020 Trials by running a 2:40:50 Viral Video Shows Pregnant Runners Fast Mile Time 2:38:20 in Atlanta last February to place 30th. She took another three and a half minutes off her time at the Marathon Project, where she ran 2:34:36. Even if she’d walked that last .17 miles, she’d surely have beat that time again How to Break 4 Hours in the Marathon.
“She’s on one of those streaks where you don’t see it stopping anytime soon,” said her training partner, Oklahoma State University (OSU) graduate student Bryant Keirns, 27, who credits Montgomery with revitalizing his running. He logged a personal best of 2:39:45 How to Break 4 Hours in the Marathon.
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Practicing What She Preaches
As a child in rural Fairfax, Oklahoma, Montgomery’s first love was basketball. She stopped growing at 5-foot-3, but she picked up speed by running the four miles to practice. By the time she graduated, she’d switched sports and won eight high school track and field titles.
Running also drew Montgomery to the nutrition field. Runner’s World Running in the Cold Liz Applegate offered a feast of useful advice, and she wanted more. She earned her bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics while running track and cross country at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth.
She went on to earn her master’s and Ph.D. at OSU, where she’s now an assistant professor. Though she’s a registered dietitian, Montgomery prefers research; she teaches up to three classes per semester and spends the rest of her time in the lab or writing grants.
“How to Break 4 Hours in the Marathon iron,” she said. In running, the mineral helps shuttle oxygen to hard-working muscles. Montgomery studies the way iron contributes to—and could potentially help treat—diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Meanwhile, she continues to fine-tune her own experiment of one. Last November, she helped students with a project on sports nutrition and analyzed her own diet as an example.
her husband, Scott, bought her for Christmas protein a day—barely half of what she’d recommend to someone else logging 100-mile weeks. She knew about the macronutrients’ importance for building muscle and enhancing recovery; however, somewhere over the years, in part because she was focused on fiber-rich fruits and veggies, she’d let her diligence slip.
She was too close to the Marathon Project to make a big shift at the time. After taking the holiday season to relax and recover, she began bumping up her intake to about 100 grams per day, spread out across four or five meals and snacks.
“It’s challenging,” she said. “Carbs taste so good, and they fit my backpack easily.” But all the breakfast Kodiak cakes, Greek yogurt snacks, and black beans and chickpeas she added to her lunchtime salads paid off.
Her training was nearly identical as for the Marathon Project. She’d do a single midweek workout, such as 3 x 1 mile repeats sandwiched between two 3-mile tempos, and a weekend 20-miler that usually incorporated some faster efforts (in one session that built her confidence, she ran every other mile at marathon pace). But less than three months later, her protein-powered race pace was 6 seconds per mile faster.
“It’s funny that I’m having an ‘aha’ dietary moment; I’ve been a dietitian since 2007,” she said. She’s finished 22 marathons, and this would have been her seventh victory. “But we can always learn.”
Montgomery frequently posts her meals on Twitter, knowing other runners might follow her example. She firmly believes focusing on the positives, rather than labeling foods “bad” or aiming to cut back, has made the biggest difference for her—and advocates that approach to others.
And because she grew up 40 miles from a grocery store, she makes sure to show high-protein, high-fiber choices that are affordable and accessible—say, adding stir-fry veggies and whole cashews to a boxed meal of chicken and noodles, or putting less pricey cuts of meat in a crock pot all day.
While she’s grateful for all the nutrition information elite runners now provide, she worries emphasizing only trendy foods like bone broth and grass-fed beef might alienate young runners whose families have lower incomes or live in more remote locales. “Let’s talk about what you have access to,” she said. “People don’t always think about that, but here in food desert central we think about it.”
Taking the Long View
Montgomery’s current success is all the more remarkable given how many times she thought she’d gotten her last shot at big goals. Back in 2011, she figured she’d slow down once she got a job. Right before trying for the 2016 Trials, she got married, and doubted whether she’d train as hard once she had a kid.
That concern was heightened when, 23 weeks into her pregnancy, her sacroiliac joint popped out. Doctors couldn’t adjust it until after her daughter, Logan, was born. So Montgomery didn’t run for several months.
But each time, she found a way to make her new life work. The enforced break for pregnancy only seemed to make her stronger. Now, she’s adept at squeezing her miles in while Logan sleeps, and doing extra paperwork between her daughter’s 7:30 p.m. bedtime and her own, around 9.
She’s inspired by Des Linden’s Boston Marathon victory in Duluth, Minnesota, in June, and the Keira D’Amato, who’s also 36, has two kids, and just signed her first shoe contract.
Montgomery doesn’t necessarily have pro ambitions—“I actually love my job, and that keeps the running fun”—though she wouldn’t turn down a sponsorship from her post-run beer of choice, Coors Light. (Another prized gift from Scott? A shower beer holder.)
But seeing others’ ongoing success, and running 26.0 at the pace she’d hoped to run in Chicago in October, has Montgomery rethinking her timelines and prospects. She aims to be top five at Grandma’s, and also has a sub-2:30 in her sights. By the time of the next Trials, she’ll be 40, which she no longer sees as a ceiling.
Sure, she may face more setbacks along the way—summer’s heat, grant proposals that may or may not come through, a kid who sometimes gets sick and has to stay home from daycare. But armed with big dreams and problem solving skills, she’ll figure it out.
“Every race, [Bryant and I] talk about, this is uncharted territory,” she said. “Let’s just chart this territory now. I think we’re not setting the goals high enough.”
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
