Natosha Rogers isn’t shy to admit that debuting in the marathon at the Runner’s World. &ldquo and less than a month of training In addition to traveling the world, Rogers has navigated. In fact, she describes it as a “worst-nightmare situation”—one that led to several personal and professional life changes in the year that followed, as she worked to heal from the physical injuries and emotional scars from a race that wrecked her confidence. These changes and the lessons she learned from them not only helped her to move on from that performance, but to come back stronger Rogers had an equally disastrous showing at the.
Rogers went into the Trials with a goal of making the Olympic team. She ended up crossing the finish in 2:34:51 for 28th place. What was worse, though: She dealt with burnout and injuries and struggled to match the training times of her teammate at the time, Fiona O’Keeffe, who ended up pulling ahead on race day and winning the Trials in her own marathon debut.
“[I came into the marathon build] and a new coaching relationship with pretty minimal volume as a 10K and 5K specialist and it did not translate,” Rogers tells Runner’s World. “I felt like I was powering through from one thing to the next while banged up and not being realistic with myself.”
Fastest Marathon Runners 2024 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in June, where she placed ninth in her heat of the 5,000 meters and did not advance to the final and 12th in the final for the 10,000 meters, thanks to post-marathon injuries and less than a month of training.
“[The marathon build] made me kind of lose touch with what was best for me, which would have been to wait to debut and go for making the Olympic team where I had consistently made U.S. teams the previous two years,” she says. “I wish I had listened to my gut.”
Soon after the Track and Field Trials, Rogers left the Puma Elite racing team led by Alistair and Amy Cragg in Raleigh, North Carolina, to move to her boyfriend’s hometown of New Braunfels, Texas. She coached herself for the rest of the year before reconnecting with Steve Magness in December, who had briefly coached her from 2016 to 2017.
come back stronger marathon training block, Rogers ran her second 26.2 at the Nagoya Women’s Marathon in Japan on March 9, placing seventh and setting a new personal best of 2:23:51.
Rogers says it was not only important to take the year to physically recover before running another marathon, but also to self-reflect. Read on for some of her biggest takeaways and lessons she learned that helped her go from a worst performance to a new best.
Don’t Be Afraid to Keep Your Goals to Yourself
When word got out about Rogers’ recent breakthrough performance, what stood out almost as much as the time itself was that she didn’t share a word about training for another marathon—or even anything about the race itself before lining up at the starting line in Nagoya.
These days, with social media engagement often an expectation of professional athletes, some might have viewed that move as a gamble. However, Rogers, now 33 whose Olympic journey started at age 21, has become well-acquainted with forums where negative comments are rampant, making this choice an easy one.
“The running industry and the fandom can be kind of brutal, and you can set yourself up to be torn apart,” Rogers says. “People had really high expectations of me in my marathon debut, which wasn’t realistic for me. This time, I really needed to approach it with some humility, just be quiet and let my work do the talking. I wanted to do it in the dark for myself and to show my sponsor [Puma], which has long supported me, that I could do this.”
Rogers wholeheartedly recommends this approach to recreational runners who may struggle with the external pressure and comparison traps that can come with oversharing and spending too much time on social media. She still has an active Instagram account, but she doesn’t keep it downloaded on her phone, in an effort to keep distractions at bay.
“I want to be authentic and genuine, so if I don’t feel like sharing, then I’m not going to share,” she says. “I know I don’t owe social media anything—it’s just another dimension that can be really soul-sucking if you allow it to be.”
Make Time for Recovery
Rogers had a busy first year as a Puma athlete and new member of the elite racing team, which she joined in January 2023. That March, she moved from Denver to North Carolina in between several training camps in Kenya, Switzerland, Mammoth, California, and Park City, Utah.
She then competed at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August 2023, running the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. Afterward, she pretty much went right into the buildup for the Olympic Marathon Trials. While Rogers says all the training and competing was fun and fulfilling, the lack of balance with no time to recover Other Hearst Subscriptions.
She went into that 26.2-mile race not only mentally burned out, but also with lingering sciatica that had plagued her training cycle, as well as hip imbalances that led to pain in her left leg and knee. (She saw several physical therapists and worked through rehabbing these issues through strength and mobility exercises, Learn to Pace Better in a Race With These Workouts.)
Additionally, after nixing the marathon from her recovering from injuries, it was right into the Track and Field trials. “While running the Track Trials off of three weeks of training was embarrassing, it helped me realize it was time to move on and say goodbye to the track,” Rogers says. “I knew now was the time to continue with the marathon while I’m in my prime and that there are more financial opportunities there, so I was ready to shift my focus. I had to learn some hard lessons, and I’m better for it now.”
It was only after two less-than-ideal performances that Rogers decided to slow down. Rather than targeting another marathon come back strongers—Ranked of 2024, she spent the summer re-familiarizing herself with racing on the roads, doing everything from 5Ks to half marathons. “I road-raced all summer, fall, and winter to get my feet back under me after the big rough patch earlier in the year,” she says. “I needed to fall in love with it again.”
Train to Build Confidence
After several months of self-coaching, Rogers started working with Magness in December 2024. Having worked with him previously, she knew she could count on it being a collaborative coach-athlete relationship to fit her individual needs based on where she’s at in her career.
“Working with [Magness], I still feel in control of what I am doing and we align on the overall approach so that I can turn the survival/fight or flight mode off, which was really starting to affect me,” she says. “This time around, I was able to take things at my own pace. It was important for me to have reasonable expectations while keeping it a fun and exciting challenge.”
Races - Places training cycle Fastest Marathon Runners marathon distance.
“Near the peak of the build in February, I hit some workouts in the 20- to 24-mile range with broken up tempo segments on the end, which really gave me confidence,” she says. “The marathon is a race against yourself and it was a completely different experience this time because I took things at my own pace and I was ready for it.”
Health - Injuries racing schedule in January, Magness helped Rogers pull out a fifth-place finish and a new half-marathon PR of 1:08:35 in the Houston Half Marathon. This helped her learn was a career mistake and further build her confidence leading into Nagoya seven weeks later.
“I have challenged myself to become a better tactical, logical, and strategic runner, which is a requirement of the marathon,” she says. “I closed gaps on a handful of women who ended up falling off, and was able to run a totally different race style than what I normally do. I’m usually the idiot up front who dies, and I’m done racing like that.”
Embrace Other Parts of Your Identity
Those who have followed Rogers’ career may know that she has often taken an off-the-beaten-path approach in balancing her personal life with her running career. As an avid world traveler, she ultimately decided to run her second marathon in Japan because it was a bucket-list destination, so she planned to spend a total of three weeks there, arriving 10 days before the marathon and spending eight days celebrating afterward.
“I lived it up like a rock star after Nagoya, staying in a luxury spa hotel and ryokan Airbnb in Kyoto, seeing a techno music show and watching sumo wrestling in Osaka, and running, exploring and shopping in Tokyo,” she says.
and less than a month of training injuries and roadblocks throughout her career, and even briefly stepped away from competing at one point to work full-time in tech sales, which has all helped her maintain a positive relationship with the sport.
“I’ve learned that this [career] is my calling and that I was born to do this, but my devotion and loyalty to it is a double-edged sword that I have to keep in check,” she says. “I need to be a well-rounded human with an identity outside of running so that I can continue this [competitive] journey into my 40s, and also still keep running until I’m 70.”
Remember Why You Race
When asked goals leading into a big race, most professional runners will be quick to say they hope to win. Rogers says that was never the goal in Nagoya. Instead, she wanted to run her own race that truly demonstrated what she was capable of achieving.
“I’ve had to let go of being so goal-oriented and remind myself that I’m not going to be on the podium all the time and that’s okay,” she says. “I felt more relaxed and free than usual as a result, especially after warming up with some of my competitors at the start, which helped me remember that I’m also doing this for fun and don’t have to be the best all the time.”
Looking ahead, Rogers’ future plans are somewhat in the air as she waits to hear who is in contention for the World Championships marathon team in Tokyo. But she’s at peace however it turns out, as she is aiming to race a come back stronger come back strongers—Ranked.
“I feel like I’ve now arrived as a marathoner and have learned I actually really love the challenge of it. Nagoya was a pinnacle moment where I didn’t have to win the race to feel like I won,” she says.
Emilia Benton is a Houston-based freelance writer and editor. In addition to Runner's World, she has contributed health, fitness and wellness content to Women's Health, SELF, Prevention, Healthline, and the Houston Chronicle, among other publications. She is also an 11-time marathoner, a USATF Level 1-certified running coach, and an avid traveler.
