5280 Distance Project is a elite and sub-elite running team dedicated to pushing the limits located in Denver, CO. Their team brings together athletes who want to set big goals and push themselves across a wide range of distances from the mile to the marathon and even ultra-distance events. They compete on the roads, track and the trails, and are committed to fostering a supportive, high performing community that thrives on passion, grit, hard work, and a shared love for the sport.

Today we chat with team founders, Ryder and Kezzie Searle.

About Ryder: While attending Colorado Christian University on a tennis scholarship, Ryder didn’t discover his love for competitive running until his junior year of college. The tennis program had just been cut and the head Cross Country and Track coach, Jon Poag, suggested Ryder join the team. After earning All-American honors during his time at CCU in the cross country and track, Ryder wanted to continue training and running competitively post collegiately. He set his sights on the marathon and after 3 attempts Ryder posted a time of 2:17! He qualified and competed in the 2024 USA Olympic Marathon Trials. Ryder loves getting to compete at a high level and after his experience at the trials in 2024, he already has his eyes set on lowering his time and going for it again at the 2028 trials.

About Kezzie: Kezzie also found competitive running in an unconventional way. When she met Ryder, she was an avid rock climber and loved any type of outdoor recreation. One day, Jon Poag saw Kezzie running with a former CCU runner and asked Ryder about her. Fast forward, and Kezzie was running at CCU. She competed for the cougars from 2020 to the fall of 2021 and stayed with the team as a volunteer for another semester. Post collegiately Kezzie’s first taste of road racing was 2022 CIM. She initially was not planning on racing the full marathon but since Ryder and a group of their friends were racing, she made the decision the Sunday before the race that she’d run the full. With 14 miles being the longest she had run that fall leading up to the race, she surprised herself by clocking a finishing time of 2:54. While she has always loved pushing herself and seeing what she is capable of, that marathon experience made her want to continue to pursue competitive running, experiment with training, and try racing different distances.

We hope you are enjoying hearing about all the different teams, their visions, hopes and dreams.

Today's guest is Carmen Pelar Graves. She is a three-time Olympic Trials qualifier in track and field, specializing in the 3000-meter steeplechase, where she holds an impressive personal record of 9:32. Recruited to Roanoke College for soccer, she discovered a talent for track and field, competing as a sprinter and jumper before gradually transitioning to longer distances. Her dedication paid off when she qualified for the 2016 Olympic Trials in the steeplechase.

After her professional running career was interrupted by injury, Carmen took a break from the sport, only to rediscover her passion during the pandemic. Coaching herself, she returned to elite competition, earning a spot in the 2021 Olympic Trials and representing Team USA in the steeplechase at the 2022 World Championships.

As a co-founder of Denver Athletics, with her husband Sean, Carmen is deeply committed to fostering community through running. She organizes all-comers track meets to unite Denver’s running community and inspire athletes of all levels. Running professionally for Oiselle, Carmen continues to compete at the highest levels while giving back to the sport she loves.

Learn more more about Denver Athletics here: https://denverathletics.org/

Dani is an elite runner and high school cross country coach in Fort Collins, Colorado. Originally from Bloomington, Indiana, Dani ran collegiately at Indiana State University where she was a 2-time conference champion and then trained with Team Indiana Elite for three years. During this time, she coached at a high school in Indiana then collegiately at Western Michigan and Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.

Since 2016, Dani has been the head cross country coach and assistant track coach at Fossil Ridge High School. Thoughtout this time, she has grown the cross country program into the best in Fossil Ridge history, with both boys and girls teams finishing near the top of the state in the 5A division. This year, the boys had a top 10 finish at the state championship and the girls team finished top 3 for the second year in a row. Additionally, the girls team qualified for Nike Cross Nationals in December, where they finished 8th through some muddy, rainy conditions in Portland, Oregon.

Dani also has an impressive running resume herself, running in the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials after qualifying with a 2:43:16 at Grandma’s Marathon. Her husband, Mr. Coach Cook, and 2 kids are an integral part of the Fossil Ridge team, fostering a family-like environment with the more the 100 high schoolers on the team. We are so excited to sit down and chat with Dani Cook!

We're thrilled to kick off 2025 with big plans and exciting adventures! Join Sophie and AnnMarie as they dive into what's ahead, including coaching athletes of all levels, exciting new additions to the 5280 One Mile, and a look at their personal goals for the year.

Links to what we discuss:

Coaching request

5280 One Mile Registration

Andy ran for University of Colorado and was a Four-time All-Big 12 Performer and a two-time cross country All-American.
Post collegiately Andy has represented Team USA 17 times, placing 2nd in 2015 and 3rd in 2014 in the Mountain Running Long Distance World Championships. He is a four-time trail national champion.

Andy is the founder of The Trail Team, a Boulder, CO based team who strives to increase support for US-based trail runners by sponsoring six under-supported sub-ultra runners, uniting the best unsponsored trail runners in the country, and promoting the trail community in Boulder with in-person training to compete at a world-class level.
He and his wife Karley have a dog named Fig who often goes on adventures with them.

Andy is also a huge proponent of trail running within more structured avenues, like USATF where he
was just elected as one of the athlete commision event leaders for mountain, ultra, trail division.

Andy recently published an article on ATRA. You can read it here: https://trailrunner.com/trail-news/usatf-what-is-its-role-in-mountain-ultra-trail-mut/

This week on Conversation Pace with FRE get an inside peek into pre-race preparation and thoughts about Club Cross Country Nationals, along with post-race results and highlights. We had a blast recording this and hope you enjoy listening.

This episode is brought to you by 5280 Mile- stay tuned for registration opening Jan 1, 2025 along with some awesome prizes and changes to train and run the mile with friends!

Ben Randall is a Master's of Science graduate student within the Journalism & Media Department at Colorado State University—currently finishing his Thesis on cis-gendered male endurance athlete’s relationship with communication and nutrition. He completed his B.A. in Journalism & Media Communication--also from CSU--from 2019-2021, specializing in science communication, podcasting, and public relations. He is a recipient of a 2022 Fulbright Scholarship with Queens University Belfast, in Northern Ireland, as well as class valedictorian and commencement speaker in 2021.

Ben's journey with endurance sports began as a 17-year-old junior in high school, in Gretna, Nebraska, where he was born and raised. Looking for an alternative outlet to moving his body than basketball, his sport of choice from ages 8-18 (and still--he WILL cross you up if you get too close), Ben started running track and field. Running was a new, fun outlet that allowed him to spend time with his friends and improve himself, and after two T&F seasons in high school, one XC season, and a fall of unstructured undergraduate classes at CSU in 2019--it was a perfect storm for the endurance sports "bug" to strike.

Ben joined the CSU triathlon team as a freshman in college, competition at multisport events and running races all across the nation, posting impressive running and cycling splits. It wasn't until 2023, when Ben really decided to commit to running at a higher level, that results started to show--Ben placed 7th overall at the Havasu MWC Triathlon in 2023, 22nd overall at Collegiate Triathlon Nationals in Lake Lanier, GA (and the fastest run split off the bike in the nation, 10k in 32:10), and won the Colorado Marathon in 2023, in a course record time of 2:24:06.All of these results combined to a deep love for pushing his body through endurance sports--a mantra that would become heavily tested as Ben was granted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run for Colorado State University during his second year of graduate school. Despite it being an entirely new level of competition in the NCAA, Ben had a solid cross-country season, competition on the Conference and Regional teams, and posted all-time school record times of 14:33 at altitude in the 5k (14:07 converted), and 29:44 in the 10k, as well as built friendships and comradery to last a lifetime. Now, a soon-to-graduate thesis student, Ben is chasing a career with Pro Triathlon, after successfully earning his Liscense last year, and having a great pro debut race at Boulder 70.3, posting the 2nd fastest run split of the day (1:11 half marathon off the bike). He splits time for work between CSU's Colorado Water Center and as an intern with the BIL/IRA Comms department of the National Park Service - science communication is a cornerstone of his deep love for journalistic work. Apart from work, academia, and athletics, Ben is an avid baker, dog-dad, and is a coffee connoisseur.

Taylor is a Soil Science PhD student at Colorado State University studying sustainable land management and renewable energy. She started running in 6th grade when her mom founded her elementary school’s Turkey Trot and she joined the middle school cross country team shortly after. Over adventure filled runs with her cross country team, she fell in love with running (and met her now partner Alex!). After high school, Taylor walked onto the Princeton Cross Country Team where she raced cross country, indoor and outdoor track.
After college, she stepped back from running for a few years until she moved to Fort Collins in May 2022 and discovered the incredible running community here. Since then, she’s been catching the racing bug again with everything from 5k to 50 miles.