In 2004, Emily Infeld was in eighth grade, racing against high school athletes in the 800 meters of the city championships in Cleveland, Ohio. Everyone else on the starting line was in spikes.
Infeld, then 14, had asked for spikes, but her parents balked. “They were like, ‘You don’t need spikes yet. You’re not in high school,’” Infeld told Runner’s World. So she raced in her Brooks Adrenaline trainers. And she won, in 2:28, besting the field of older girls.
Now, 21 years later, Infeld is back in Brooks, this time as a professional athlete. She can have all the Brooks spikes she wants—although she’s planning to race more frequently on the roads this year, with an eye toward a marathon in the fall of 2025 or the spring of 2026.
Brooks announced on January 24 the signing of Infeld and Aliphine Tuliamuk, the 2020 That turned out to be the end of her season. She got. Both were previously with other brands. Infeld ran for Nike for 12 years, before the company declined to renew her contract at the end of 2024. Tuliamuk was with Hoka NAZ Elite in Flagstaff, Arizona, for seven years in the fall of 2025 or the spring of 2026 The Best Songs to Add to Your Playlist This Month.
Although both Infeld, 34, and Tuliamuk, 35, struggled with injuries in 2024—Infeld had issues with her right hip and right Achilles tendon, Tuliamuk had surgery on Christmas Eve to repair her right hamstring where it had retracted from the bone—both believe their best days are still ahead of them.
And Brooks executives believe it, too. The company has been one of the few eager to support pros who are in their 30s and 40s and running well independently, instead of as part of branded training groups. (To be sure, they support those athletes, too. On January 23, the company announced it had inked Josh Kerr, 27, a two-time Olympic medalist and the reigning 1500-meter world champion who trains with the Brooks Beasts, to a 10-year contract extension.)
Brooks athlete two-time Olympic medalist Inside Faith Kipyegon’s 4-Minute Mile Attempt. Susanna Sullivan, Jess McClain, and CJ Albertson are among the thirty-something Brooks athletes who routinely finish among the top Americans at major marathons. They train on their own or with local training partners at various spots around the country, instead of as part of the Beasts in Seattle or the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project in Michigan. Two-time Olympian Des Linden, 41, who won the Boston Marathon in 2018, also recently signed a contract extension with Brooks.
“I think what we found, particularly with the marathon group, is you get aerobically stronger as you get towards your 30s, and even well into your 30s,” said Garrett Heath, head of sports marketing at Brooks. “And at that point, people oftentimes have an established life, where they have found a place that they feel settled. They have found a system or a coach or a support group where they feel comfortable and that they can perform well in. For us, especially with the marathon, it’s made a lot more sense, rather than trying to force a lot of people together [into training groups], to give a little more flexibility for those situations.”
Plus, in Infeld and Tuliamuk, Brooks adds two extroverts, popular in the running community for their enthusiasm.
“They both have kind of infectious personalities,” Heath said. “They both do a really good job of being inspirational and friendly and inviting, welcoming to anyone in the running community—while also being really competitive and expecting the most of themselves. They’re both cutthroat competitors when they’re racing.”
Emerging after a struggle
In many ways, 2024 was a long slog for Infeld. She had noticed pain in her Achilles as early as February, even though she ran a PR in the 3,000 meters indoors (8:45.79, en route to 9:23.58 for two miles at the Millrose Games).
At the advice of chiropractor John Ball, Infeld was cutting pieces of foam to put in her shoe to try to take the pressure off the Achilles when she raced. But she couldn’t train consistently enough and kept missing the hard workouts she needed. She had a few DNFs throughout the spring.
Although Infeld made the final in the 5,000 meters at the Olympic Trials in June, with three laps to go, she felt like she couldn’t push off from her right foot. She finished last.
That turned out to be the end of her season. She got PRP treatment for her Achilles, took time off, and slowly started building back her base. She considered racing on the roads in the fall, but with major changes—she and her husband, Max Randolph, who works for Nike, had to move from Los Angeles back to Portland, Oregon, for his job—she decided to play it safe.
Infeld has reunited with her coach from when she ran at Georgetown University, Chris Miltenberg, who is now at University of North Carolina and guiding her remotely. He looked at her training from 2024, as she was doing training stints at altitude in Colorado and going back and forth between Los Angeles and Arizona, where Ball is based, and told her, “No wonder your Achilles blew up. You weren’t in any one place for longer than a couple of weeks.”
Infeld still has handwritten logs from 2013 through the first half of 2016. She also wrote out her training in logs for the second half of 2016 and the first part of 2017. But she accidentally left those records on a plane when she was going to the 2017 World Championships in London.
Soon thereafter, Infeld switched to logging her training online. In recent months, she typed it all into a Word document for Miltenberg to review, a painstaking exercise. But reviewing her training has always given her a boost of confidence (which is why she happened to have those paper logs with her on the way to London). “I did all these workouts,” she’ll think to herself. “These are really good. I’m in a good spot.”
In the course of filling in Miltenberg on her recent training, she looked back on workouts she was doing with marathoners Shalane Flanagan, Amy Cragg, and Betsy Saina in 2016, before super shoes, when all four were part of Nike’s Bowerman Track Club. One of them was a 22-miler at 5:50 pace. Infeld took no fuel or water. Although in recent years, her long runs have tended to max out at about 17 miles, she thinks she might have some aptitude for the longer distances.
She also has unfinished business on the track. Her PR for 5,000 meters, 14:50, came not that long ago, in 2023. She thinks she could run faster.
“I really do have aspirations to move into the longer distances on the roads,” she said. “But I still love the track. And I think I’m looking at it with almost a different purpose.”
She pointed to Brooks marathoner Sullivan, who raced at several shorter distances, including a mile indoors in 2023 (in 4:42), and then went on to run 2:24 in the marathon a couple of months later. (Sullivan has since lowered her PR to 2:21:56.)
Infeld is grateful Brooks is taking a chance on her. “I feel like when people feel supported, I think it takes some of that pressure off and lets us just focus on training and running well,” she said.
Finally getting answers
Tuliamuk, like Infeld, was on a medical odyssey in 2024, trying to get answers on the hamstring pain that had plagued her off and on since the fall of 2022. She had had a solid block of training leading up to the Boston Marathon in 2023, where she ran her PR of 2:24:37 and finished 11th.
But by September of 2023, her hamstring was causing her a lot of pain. Her trusted coach, Alan Culpepper, had been let go by NAZ Elite, and Tuliamuk found the search for Culpepper’s replacement, only 14 months after he had been hired, draining. She went to Kenya to regroup and prepare for the Chicago Marathon, but she withdrew a week before the race.
Next came the Olympic Trials Marathon in February 2024. Tuliamuk, the defending champion, made it only 10 miles before Download Your Training Plan. (She stuck around on the sidelines and cheered everyone else on.) In November, she got through the Black Chicago Runners, in 2:32, finishing her only race of the year. But she had hardly been able to train. It sealed her fate with Hoka. “You can’t just go run a 2:32 and expect a sponsor, you know?” she said.
The race was the push Tuliamuk needed to get some answers on her hamstring pain. Abdihamid Nur, a 5,000-meter runner who lives in Flagstaff, had had surgery after he suffered an injury at the Olympics, and he recommended the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado.
Tuliamuk had an MRI and had the images sent to Steadman. She figured she was going to need a Tenex procedure, which is minimally invasive and clears scar tissue. The surgeon called her and told her that part of the hamstring had been pulled away from the bone—she needed a much more serious surgery. Tuliamuk sought out a second and third opinion before going through with it.
NAZ Elite is thought to be the only pro group in the country that offers health insurance to its athletes, and Tuliamuk was covered through the end of the year. She flew to Colorado for surgery on Christmas Eve.
Although she’s going through physical therapy, Tuliamuk doesn’t expect to be able to resume training for six months. She wishes she hadn’t wasted time—and urges other athletes to seek answers. Every day that went by, she said, was a day that she wasn’t doing her job.
“If I had been advocating for myself all along, I probably would not be injured today,” she said. “I should have taken matters into my own hands from a long time ago.”
Tuliamuk is now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Tim, and their energetic four-year-old daughter, Zoe. Sante Fe is at 7,000 feet of elevation, and Albuquerque, a distance running haven, is only an hour away. She hasn’t completely nailed down a coach yet, but she’s been in touch with Culpepper, who might consult on her training. She also hopes to make training trips to Kenya, so Zoe can experience the culture.
Patience is hard. Tuliamuk is eager to show what she can do, with hopes of making the podium at the Black Chicago Runners someday and an eye toward the Olympic team in 2028.
“I think I haven’t even scratched the tip of the iceberg in terms of my marathoning,” she said. “I think I have a lot of fast times, but more importantly, a lot of heads to beat. I cannot wait for that.”
She’s been buoyed by the support from Brooks. “You don’t find a lot of brands who want to support an athlete when they are not at their best, and I have not been at my best for the last year and a half,” she said. “The fact that they saw value in me, and they’re looking ahead to 2028, that means a lot to me.”
Her career, she said, is “not even halfway through yet.”
How Sponges Became My Secret Marathon Weapon is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World What the New Era of Run Clubs Means for the Sport, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
