{"id":61886,"date":"2011-09-09T20:20:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T20:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/community\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2011-09-09T20:20:55","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T20:20:55","slug":"marathoning-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2011\/09\/09\/marathoning-match\/","title":{"rendered":"Marathoning Match"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo<\/a>

Becki & Josh Ordway are training for a shot at the 2012 Olympics.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI was terrified of it. I called it the M-word,\u201d says Becki, laughing. \u201cOne of my goals in life was to never run a marathon. I thought there was no way I could race that far.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the collegiate miler and steeplechaser met an exercise physiologist after college who told her she was biomechanically suited to the 26.2-mile race.<\/p>\n

Not entirely convinced, Becki ran her first competitive distance race at the Parkersburg Half-Marathon in West Virginia in 2007, a race that would change her life.<\/p>\n

On the shuttle to the starting line, she met fellow American distance runner (and future husband) Josh Ordway, a medical student at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could tell she was nervous,\u201d Josh said. \u201cI had run this race before, so I told her about the course, how to attack it\u2014like don\u2019t try anything for the first three miles\u2014and when to take fluids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The pep talk calmed Becki\u2019s nerves, and Josh\u2019s strategy worked. Both won the race for the Americans. Two weeks later, Becki drove from Akron to Dayton for their first date.<\/p>\n

By 2008, Josh had proposed\u2014on a running track, of course\u2014and the couple\u2019s racing careers were taking off.<\/p>\n

Josh won the 2008 Columbus Marathon. Both competed in the 2008 Austin Marathon, where Becki placed second\u2014her first marathon\u2014with a time of 2:43:42, qualifying her for the 2008 Olympic Marathon trials. Josh had also qualified for the 2008 trials, having notched a 2:15:39 PR, or personal record, in the Chicago Marathon in 2006.<\/p>\n

Now married, the Ordways are once again Olympic hopefuls, headed to the 2012 U.S. Olympic Marathon team trials in January in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n

The couple lives and trains in the Dayton suburb of Bellbrook, threading long miles around their neighborhood, through the Greene County countryside, on local bike paths, and over the hilly trails of Sugarcreek Metropark.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love living and running here in Dayton,\u201d Becki says. \u201cWe\u2019re really blessed here to have the trail systems and the Five Rivers MetroParks system, and you can get hills anywhere you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the top marathon runners in the country, the Ordways maintain intense training schedules despite the demands of their work.<\/p>\n

Becki, 28, worked as assistant coach for Wright State University\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s distance runners and cross country teams. She coached Wright State runners to personal bests and several school records during her tenure.<\/p>\n

Josh, 31, is in his second year in Boonshoft\u2019s family medicine residency program at Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton and runs more than 100 miles per week. During medical school, he often ran twice a day, starting as early as 4 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is pretty much all running, all the time, and work,\u201d says Becki. \u201cBut we\u2019re content that running takes up the majority of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It helps to have the support of a spouse who is a runner, the Ordways say.<\/p>\n

Both started running as pre-teens and come from running families from opposite ends of Ohio (Becki is from Alliance in the northeast, Josh from Holgate in the northwest).<\/p>\n

Both specialized in the same event in college: the steeplechase, a 3,000-meter event that involves jumping barriers and a pit of water (Josh at Princeton, \u201903; Becki at University if Akron, \u201906).<\/p>\n

Josh moved naturally into the marathon. He had an affinity for cross-country in high school and is an Ohio cross-country state champion. With a 5K road PR of 14:34, Josh was the 2006 Road Runners Club of America (RRCA) national 5K Champion. He also has multiple RRCA National Half-Marathon championships.<\/p>\n

While doing his pre-med stint at The Ohio State University and training with the OSU track team, he started running road races and decided to give the marathon a shot. He upped his mileage, and won in his first attempt at a half-marathon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018there may be something to this\u2019,\u201d he said. Josh ran his first marathon in Columbus in 2005 and won it.<\/p>\n

Becki, however, always considered herself a sprinter. She ran a 4:54 mile in college, and in 2006 was All-Ohio steeplechase champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I was putting in the mileage, I still fought it tooth and nail,\u201d she said. But before the 2008 Olympic Trials, she was running hundreds of miles per month, and the marathon made her feel \u201cinvincible.\u201d In 2009, she placed 13th in the USA Women\u2019s Championship Marathon, with a time of 2:40:16.<\/p>\n

Now with their sights set on the \u201crace of races,\u201d the Ordways are looking forward to racing together at the trials in January.<\/p>\n

And there will be at least three running bibs at the Olympic trials bearing the name \u201cOrdway,\u201d and possibly a fourth. Josh\u2019s brother, Jason, is also running the trials, and their sister, Jen, is hoping to win a qualifier this fall to get her there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a much different league, and you feel like a celebrity,\u201d Josh says. \u201cYou look around and go \u2018that person was on the cover of Runner\u2019s World; that person has an Olympic medal\u2026\u2019 You just can\u2019t believe you made it there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe love living and running here in Dayton,\u201d Becki says. \u201cWe\u2019re really blessed here to have the trail systems and the Five Rivers MetroParks system, and you can get hills anywhere you want.\u201d Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":59886,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4827,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}