After Reducing Long Runs, Lindsey Scherf Sets 2:32 Marathon PR

Published by Runner's World on July 2, 2015

Lindsey Scherf has an unconventional approach to recovery. After placing second in the Grandma's Marathon on June 20 in a five-minute personal best of 2:32:19, she hopped a redeye flight to Alaska. 

“All smiles after lowering the women’s Thorofare Trail ascent and decent record from 37 minutes to 20:22,” Scherf wrote to caption a picture of the trail in Denali National Park. 

The 28-year-old Harvard graduate can add the feat to a busy first half of the year, during which she also won the national 25K title on May 9 and came within four seconds of her half marathon best on May 31. Her PR at Grandma's was a marked improvement over her debut in Chicago last October, when she placed 12th in 2:37:26. Scherf is based in New York and is a member of the Westchester Track Club.   

Runner's World: To what do you contribute to taking five minutes off your marathon time? 

Lindsey Scherf: Patience! I’m an aggressive trainer. When I ran the Chicago Marathon, my first competitive marathon, I was very, very overtrained when I toed the line. I’d been running weekly 2½-hour long runs, hammering the last 75 minutes, without allowing myself nearly enough time to recover. I did 14 of those runs. I may have gone sub-2:30 in July, but I was overcooked by October.