Indiana University graduate Student Olivia Ballew is nearing the finish line of her Ph.D. candidate studies; and pretty soon, she will reach another finish line—at the 2020 Olympic marathon trials.

Ballew qualified for the trials this past November at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.  Runners raced to hit a qualifying time of 2:45:00.  Olivia crossed the finish line with time to spare, coming in at 2:43:13.

This feat comes after a nine-year hiatus from competitive running. She began running in middle school and continued her passion into high school, but decided to focus on her biology studies while pursuing her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“I started training again on a whim only two and a half years ago,” Ballew said.

Her first official race after picking her passion back up was just one-mile long, but that one mile was enough to “reignite the competitiveness” in her. It was not until she exceeded her expectations at an Indianapolis half marathon, however, that she realized the Olympic trials were within reach. Ballew decided to buckle down and train for the trials specifically, but she kept this “a secret.” She told only close friends and family about her new Olympic goal.

“It was kind of a big goal. It’s hard, so it’s easy to fail at something like that,” Ballew said.

But she certainly did not fail. Now, she is focused on daily training, clocking miles both morning and night as she trains for the upcoming trials. Ballew balances intense training hours with long hours of extensive lab research.  She is the fifth year Ph.D. candidate in genome, cell, and developmental biology here at IU.

“I love the science that I do. It keeps me motivated to wake up every day and answer the questions that I need to answer,” Ballew explained.

She says that although balancing both research and running does get hard at times, it is definitely “doable.” In fact, her long runs give her the “clarity, time, and space” that she needs to think through difficulties in her lab research.

Ballew has exactly one year to gear up and continue training for her big race.  The Olympic marathon trials will be in Atlanta, Georgia in February 2020.