Many athletes have just one pair of socks to wear for each big game. Or it could be the lucky headband they have to wear, or the song they need to hear before they start.
For professional marathoner Keira D’Amato, that lucky token was a particular shirt she wore. had I wear it to sleep every night before the race. But when she packed up for her marathon in Houston earlier this year, she decided not to participate.
“Why do I care about this? It doesn’t matter if I wear this shirt or not. I’m super healthy. That’s what really matters,” she said on Nov. 6. D’Amato, who runs the New York City Marathon, told SELF. “It felt so good because I took all the power out of an inanimate object.”
Turns out she was right: January 16th, D’Amato wins Houston Marathon, break the American record for that distance We ran 2:19:12, updating the last time set by Deena Kastor 16 years ago.
“I didn’t need a shirt to run fast, and I’ve proven it,” she says. “Don’t take anything away from how hard you worked to get there.”
The past few years have shown the fruits of that hard work, with a record in Houston that lasted until Emily Sison broke it at the Chicago Marathon in October, but many more in the four-time American’s emotional comeback journey. became one of the breakthroughs in All-American athletes in college, as SELF previously reported.
After a string of injuries, the 38-year-old retired from the sport in 2009, taking a seven-year hiatus to pursue other hobbies outside of running. She married, became her mother, and started his real estate career in Virginia. But her love of running brought her back. In 2020, the beginning of an unexpected revival began to take shape.Damato completed 15th in US Olympic Marathon Trials, broke his college personal best in the 5,000 metersand broke her first American record (This is 10 miles away). In February 2021, at the age of 36, he signed his first professional contract.
And D’Amato is trying to ride on that momentum.Just 6 weeks from placement 6th at the Berlin Marathon, D’Amato will line up in NYC this weekend. A short race turnaround had been under discussion for months, but became official after D’Amato failed to lower the American record in Berlin (Sisson broke it two weeks later).
The hills of the New York City Marathon course are not ideal for record attempts. D’Amato says his goal this weekend is just to “compete.” She doesn’t know exactly how it will be in New York, but hopes her performance will improve in Berlin.
“I was too focused on planning for the day and not really reacting to the race itself,” she says. “for [New York]I want to be fully present in the moment, compete, and leave everything there.
