With every sole strike, Gisela Olalde feels free.
As the warm wind of a spring morning urges her forward, she controls the outcome of each stride. “Running,” she said, “is just you and you and you.”
Recently, though, running has become more of a “we.”
Engaged to a man she met at the finish line of a local race, this 28-year-old single mother from Mexico has found that the 1,660 miles she traveled from her home in Guanajuato to Nashville have proved more important than any logged in her running career.
Here she had her child. Here she has support from her mother. Here her fiancé matches her stride for stride on the race course, always inspiring her to take it one step farther.
With his support, Olalde has become a long-distance champion. In February, she ran an Olympic trials marathon qualifying time with a first-place finish in the Mercedes Marathon in Birmingham. On Saturday, she will look to repeat as Nashville’s St. Jude Country Music Half-Marathon champion.
By her side, Karl Lamke will keep her pace and push her to the finish. Together, their story is one of perseverance, recovery, love and the liberating feeling that comes as they traverse the pavement next to one another.
Quick success
Chicken legs. Scrawny, fowl-like limbs that lacked muscle tone. That is what inspired Olalde to start running.
Then a 20-year-old student at Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya in Mexico, Olalde never had run competitively. Her personal trainer suggested she try for more shapely legs. When a coach at her college saw her stride by, he suggested she try distance.
By age 23, with experience in just one other marathon, she earned a position among the elites in her country with a 2 hour, 42 minute showing at Maratón Lala in 2009.
“Everyone was very impressed,” she said.
But her coach got overzealous, pushing her too hard, and as she prepared to run the Vancouver Marathon she was struck by plantar fasciitis. It took nine months to recover.
She lost her confidence. She struggled to decide whether she should be a professional runner.
“My brain was a mess,” she said.
She needed to get away. So she traveled to Nashville — where her mother had lived for more than a decade — to help clear her head.
New start in Nashville
As her mind emptied, her heart became full.
Not long after Olalde arrived in 2010, she became pregnant. She chose to stay in the United States to raise her child.
“I had a lot of pressure in my country, and I say, ‘No more running,’” she said. “I decided to stay here with mom, get a job, and start again.”
Olalde settled in Nashville. She focused on her new son and found work cleaning hotels. But she couldn’t completely wipe away the memories of the race courses she left behind.
So she stopped trying.
Her first race in the United State was the 2012 Boulevard Bolt on Thanksgiving Day. The competition reminded her of the adrenaline rush she abandoned. She began competing in races across the city.
In East Nashville, she ran straight into her future husband.
Finding direction
There was a time when Lamke ran into nothing but trouble.
He moved out of his parents’ house in Indiana when he was 17. He started using drugs — weed at first, then crack cocaine — and he drifted.
“I made a lot of bad choices,” he said.
After one failed recovery attempt in Indianapolis, Nashville was his second chance. His dad drove five hours to drop him off at the Nashville Rescue Mission. It was the first step in the right direction.
As part of the men’s life recovery program, he would walk or run around the block for 30 minutes each morning. Without a car, he soon was literally running his errands. His legs took him across the city to the bank or the grocery store.
They also took him across the finish line in more than a few races.
“A lot of times in recovery, you have a lot of guilt and shame and ‘I wish I would have done different,’” said Ken Millwood, assistant men’s recovery program director. “It can eat at you, but once the guys get walking and get exercising they get those endorphins going.”
They feel better not just physically but emotionally and mentally, Millwood said.
Lamke is a perfect example.
“He and his fiancee are just beasts when it comes to running,” Millwood said. “It’s amazing.”
Love at the finish line
Lamke did a double take when the dark-haired girl in the orange shirt blew by him at last year’s Tomato 5K.
“I thought I was in descent shape,” he said.
At the finish line — with a final time 47 seconds faster than his — she stretched alone. Feeling good, he went to talk to her.
One month later, they had their first date at Lockeland Table with a $50 gift certificate they won at the race.
In 5Ks and on training runs, Olalde and Lamke often match each other stride for stride. Pace can be an afterthought to togetherness. But he knows her potential.
“She’s a machine,” he said.
And he’s her grease.
Lamke is the one who encouraged Olalde to compete in the Mercedes Marathon in February. As the female champion, she broke the women’s full-marathon course record in 2:35:33.
Her Olympic trials qualifying time set Olalde on a new course.
Changing goals
On Saturday, Olalde will attempt to repeat her title. Lamke will try to keep up.
From there it’s a sprint to their wedding day May 31 in Mt. Juliet. A few weeks later, Olalde will travel to Minnesota to compete in the Grandma’s Marathon and the Olympics will be on her mind.
She is not an American citizen, so if she were to compete internationally it would be for Mexico.
And for herself.
And for her husband-to-be.
“It was not my dream to be an Olympian,” Olalde said. “But when I meet him, he start to believe in me and my talent and I found a lot of support at his side.”
When you have encouragement from the person you love, she said, it inspires new dreams.
“I want it now. I want it.”
Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 or on Twitter @jlbliss.
ST. JUDE COUNTRY MUSIC MARATHON
• When: 7 a.m. Saturday.
• Start: Broadway and Fifth Avenue
• Finish: LP Field
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• Runners like new startling line
• Course map
• Saturday’s road closures
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