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Grace Won: Welcome to Forum. I’m Grace Won, in for Alexis Madrigal. Our culture likes to valorize youth and prodigies, and this is particularly true in sports. Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, and Michael Phelps were all teenagers when they broke onto the world stage, and all were celebrated for their talent and their youth. How could someone so young be so good at a sport that people spend their whole lives trying to get better at?
Mary Cain knows something about being a prodigy, in this case as a runner. In seventh grade, she was competing at states. As an eighth grader, she received a recruiting letter from Brown University. And at 17, she was breaking national high school records. She went pro that same year, primarily because Nike and its coach—the then-legendary Alberto Salazar—promised to help nurture her talent. On the track, she was flourishing. Off the track, it was a different story—one that she tells in her new memoir, This Is Not About Running. Mary Cain joins us in studio. Welcome to Forum, Mary.
Mary Cain: Thank you so much for having me.
Grace Won: And before we begin, listeners, we should let you know that we will be talking about abuse and suicide in a conversation that is appropriate, but one you should be aware of. Mary, your book does a good job of evoking the feelings and memories of yourself as a teenager. Admittedly, that was not so long ago—you’re only 30—but tell us about you in seventh grade, running around the track. What did that feel like for you?
Mary Cain: Yeah, I mean, I always loved running growing up. I was someone who, in elementary school, was that kid who was really into the idea of doing the gym class lap. Everyone else was bemoaning it or walking, but I was trying to get faster each and every day. And when you’re five, that’s pretty easy to do—you quite literally do get faster. I think people recognized, like, “Oh, she’s kind of weirdly fast.” In fifth grade, I did an after-school mile and ran 6:10.
Grace Won: Wow.
Mary Cain: And then as a sixth grader, I ran 5:40 for the mile. And Google then is not what it is today, but after a quick search, my dad was like, “I think you’re really fast.” So in seventh grade, when I tried out for the track team, I wasn’t that surprised by how well I was doing. But I also was just running so freely—kind of lost and confused in some ways, because I didn’t really know what I was doing. Pretty quickly, though, I was gaining attention for it.
Grace Won: Did you love it because you loved the feeling of it, or because you were good at it—or both?
Mary Cain: I don’t know—can you ever fully separate success from the joy and the love of it? But the truth is, I really just enjoy the feeling of running. Even if I go for a run alone and no one sees me, I’m just running around a grass field—I like that feeling. So for me, it’s always been much more of a process-oriented relationship versus an outcome-oriented one.
Grace Won: You were talking about how your dad realized you were fast, but at what point did you realize, “I’m actually better than my peers”? Not just fast, but faster than anyone your age?
Mary Cain: I think I was always kind of aware of that, but initially it was a naïve awareness. There are probably hundreds of kids who are the fastest in their school in fifth or sixth grade, and they don’t necessarily go on to have the success I did. So I probably had a confidence that was totally unwarranted quite early. But in seventh grade, when I was on the varsity team and qualified for the state meet—I was the only seventh grader there, though there were some eighth graders—I started to feel like, “Okay, this is a little different.” Still, it didn’t feel super weird. It felt like there were other girls in similar positions, so I didn’t feel completely out of place.
Grace Won: Your events were middle distance and longer distances. Tell our listeners what you were good at.
Mary Cain: Yeah, I was kind of unusual in running. A lot of kids who start as 3,000-meter runners just keep moving up in distance and eventually become marathoners. But I was actually quite fast from a natural speed perspective, so I ended up going down in distance as I got older. My freshman year of high school, I ran a 55-second 400 with basically no training—no blocks.
Grace Won: Wow.
Mary Cain: And if there are 400-meter runners listening, they’ll be like, “Calm down,” but for a distance runner, that’s fast. So I had a lot of range as an athlete.
Grace Won: One thing I learned from your book is that, while track and field looks like a team sport from the outside, it’s actually a very individual experience. That really came through in your high school experience. What was your team like?
Mary Cain: It was really tough when I was younger. I grew up in a very wealthy town, and I think a lot of parents were used to, quite bluntly, buying their kids’ success. Then I showed up in seventh grade as this kind of freak of nature—really excited to be there and unexpectedly fast. That created tension with teammates, mostly because parents were uncomfortable that their kids might lose spots on relays. Even though there’s a team component, it’s still based on individual merit—the fastest runners make the team. So there’s this internal competition that doesn’t exist in the same way in sports like soccer. I ended up in the crosshairs of that, especially as I got older.
Grace Won: You grew up in Bronxville, New York, a suburb of New York City—not unlike some Bay Area suburbs. One thing you write about is the competition not just from peers, but from their parents. What was it like dealing with that?
Mary Cain: It was really uncomfortable. As a kid, I joked that I watched Disney Channel villains, and some of these parents felt like caricatures of that. One example I share in the book is “Chloe’s mom”—I don’t name minors, because I hope they’ve grown into different people. After we won a national championship, she was on the infield telling everyone about her own records and achievements. Meanwhile, her daughter had just won a national title. I remember thinking, “I feel bad for Chloe.” My parents, by contrast, were just happy to be there. But I realized many parents were either former runners themselves or just very invested socially in the sport.
Grace Won: You say that parents living vicariously through their kids is “not a good look.” This ties into our cultural obsession with prodigies—stage moms and dads in sports.
Mary Cain: Absolutely. And it’s not just sports. You see it in academics too—kids being pushed into labs, internships, all to get into a certain college. I’m curious how this will evolve, given how competitive college admissions have become. Maybe there will be less pressure in some ways, but also more helicopter parenting in others.
Grace Won: Another part of your experience was that your coach was not supportive and even contributed to the tension. By 17, after breaking records, you started thinking about going pro. What was your mindset at that moment?
Mary Cain: I left the girls’ team because I was being bullied every day. When I confronted the coach, he started encouraging it. I joined the boys’ team, but there was pressure to return. I just didn’t feel safe—parents had yelled at me at meets and showed up at practices. I didn’t think I should have to endure that. So I started drafting emails to NCAA coaches, saying, “I’m Mary Cain, I’m a national record holder, I want to swim for you”—I mean, run for you—and asking for opportunities. And then Alberto called me that week.
Grace Won: And who is Alberto Salazar?
Mary Cain: At the time, he felt like the greatest coach in the world. He had just coached Mo Farah to two Olympic gold medals and Galen Rupp to a silver. He was seen as the great American hope in distance running. As an athlete, he was also incredibly accomplished—a three-time New York City Marathon champion and a Boston Marathon winner. His name carried enormous weight in the sport.
Grace Won: We’re talking with Mary Cain about her new memoir, This Is Not About Running. Cain was a running prodigy who later ran professionally with a Nike team. In 2019, she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times detailing the abusive culture of that program. She’s here today to share more of that story and what’s in her book.
We’d love to hear from you. Were you an elite athlete as a young person? What were the positives and negatives of that experience? Or are you a parent or coach of a talented young athlete—how are you nurturing and protecting them?
You can call us at 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. You can email us at forum@kqed.org or find us on social media—we’re on BlueSky and Instagram at KQED Forum. You can also join our Discord community.
There’s more Forum after the break. I’m Grace Won, in for Alexis Madrigal.
