50 Years: Shalane Flanagan's Excellence In Chapel Hill And Beyond

Shalane Flanagan is no stranger to achieving her goals: NCAA champion, record setter, Olympian, New York City Marathon winner.

But before she won the 2017 New York City Marathon, before earning silver medals at both the 2008 and 2016 Olympic Games and before writing two New York Times best-selling cookbooks, Flanagan was a Tar Heel.

As UNC celebrates 50 Years of Carolina Women's Athletics, Flanagan's time in Chapel Hill—and beyond—is an important vignette on what it means to have competed for, and graduated from, Carolina.

"There are so many threads that have been consistent throughout my professional career that all started and were cultivated at Carolina," the four-time Olympian said in a 2019 interview with Carolina Athletics. "Carolina definitely gave me great mentors and great coaches who always emphasized the commitment to excellence."

Flanagan, originally from Marblehead Mass., holds the distinction of being one of the most decorated Tar Heels of all time, and her resume as a runner in Chapel Hill is impressive:

Four-time NCAA champion—and the first Tar Heel to ever bring home an individual NCAA championship in cross country.
NCAA Female Cross Country Runner of the Year.
Fifteen-time ACC champion.
Fourteen-time All-America.
Program record-holder in both indoor 3,000 meters and outdoor 5,000 meters.
And recipient of the 2004 Patterson Medal, the most prestigious athletic honor given at the University of North Carolina.

"It is impossible to even explain the enormous impact Shalane has had throughout her career," said North Carolina Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Chris Miltenberg, now in his third season in Chapel Hill. "She has changed the face of distance running the United States and inspired an entire generation. Her impact reaches far beyond running and inspires us all to dream big and be relentless. Shalane is truly the inspiration for everything we want our program at Carolina to represent."

While Flanagan was dominating during her college years, she also had the opportunity to compete in the Athens Olympics in 2004, taking a redshirt for the fall season.

"It was very nice that Carolina allowed me the opportunity to focus on trying to become an Olympic athlete as well as be a collegiate student-athlete at the same time," she said. "The fact that they had that foresight to let me try and go for really big goal. I was, and am, really appreciative that they were supportive that goal."

After the 2004 Olympic games, she was offered a professional contract to train with Nike as a professional runner in Oregon before graduating from Carolina in 2005.

During her time at Carolina, she also met a teammate who became a close friend, Elyse Kopecky. While they took different paths after graduation—Flanagan to be a professional runner and Kopecky to the marketing side of Nike—they ended up as collaborative teammates as adults, too. This time, writing a cookbook.

After years of experience in corporate America, Kopecky decided to head to culinary school and learn more about nutrition and fueling the body. She often shared her new passion with Flanagan, who was still in the hunt to compete in upcoming Olympics.

"I started to change my diet to feed and fuel my body based on her recommendations and recipes and it was really helping me," Flanagan said. "I told her that I just felt like we had to share this knowledge because it was too good and could help so many people."

That advice and need to share turned into two New York Times best-selling cookbooks: Run Fast, Eat Slow and Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow, co-authored by the friends and former teammates.

"We're both very driven and passionate about what we do, and it's been a great collaboration with her nutritional background and my knowledge of athletics," said Flanagan. "We literally cooked up two great cookbooks, and the community seems to really appreciate it."

Collaborating on the cookbooks with her best friend only added to Flanagan's goal of building and impacting her community—whether that was in the endurance running world or in other avenues.

"It was a big thing under Coach [Dennis] Craddock that we were a team and a family, and that message was really ingrained in me, so I took that concept and brought it out here to Oregon and created something special called the Bowerman Track Club," noted Flanagan. "Now we help contribute to and cultivate this really great environment where elite women who have Olympic medals and hold records, are here training as a highly competitive group but still are collaborative and uplifting."

Flanagan retired from professional running in 2019 and is now chasing a new goal: completing six marathons in seven weeks, finishing each in less than three hours. The last of these races will occur in New York City in November—a familiar and special event for Flanagan, who, in 2017, was the first American woman to win the New York City Marathon since 1977.

When asked about her life philosophy and what keeps her motivated to succeed in so many ways, her answer is simple.

"No matter what you're doing, always show up and always bring your best every day," she said. "I carry that mentality that I learned at Carolina, and now everything I do is to give my best every day and to enjoy this process."

50 Years: Shalane Flanagan's Excellence In Chapel Hill And Beyond

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