New Kids on the Block Had a Bunch of Hits

Photo by Matt Flynn Parker

New Kids on the Block Have a Bunch of Hits

Words: Steve Keaton

Around the turn of the century, Sue Infeld entered into an agreement with her three daughters, Maggie, Emily and Lucy. The girls would participate in AAU, and if they did, they would be rewarded with a trip to Disney. ‘Disney,’ for residents of Ohio and everywhere east of the Rockies, refers to Disney World in Florida, and not Disneyland, in a magical place far from Cleveland called California.

Maggie, the eldest, chose to do the 1500m, and Emily 9, and Lucy, 7 “did the racewalk instead of running a lot lol”. A loophole in the system snuffed out by the preteens that no doubt dogs dedicated hip swivel-ers. Theirs is a serious game too, and not just some fast pass to Fantasyland.

That year, as luck would have it, LFO, the Lyte Funkie Ones played a concert at the AAU meet- a fate as serendipitous as a bargain trip to the happiest place on earth, and from then on, it was off to the races. “I love the Abercrombie and Fitch song.” The very next year, she did the racewalk and ran the 1500m, beginning what has become a - so far - 25 year relaysh with the sport of running since that summer… since that summer.

It feels like Emily Infeld has been the young one for much of her career. She followed in her sister Maggie’s footsteps to Georgetown. The Maggie Infeld who won 3 Ohio Track and Field state titles, and went on to claim All American honors as a Hoya. Emily too won 3 titles on the track and a team title in cross country.

When Emily finished her college career, she joined the newly formed Bowerman Track Club Pro team as the team’s second female athlete, behind the great Shalane Flanagan, 9 years her senior and at the time of Emily’s arrival, a 17-time national champion and Olympic silver medalist. Prior to her arrival at BTC, Emily had claimed a single NCAA title while at Georgetown, in the indoor 3,000m. She had been runner-up on 3 different occasions. Eagle-eyed fans of the sport could point out that coming out of college, Infeld had better PRs than teen phenom Jordan Hasay, but Hasay, having won a pair of NCAA titles and been prominent on the national stage all the way back to middle school, was a much bigger name.

It can be said that Emily, despite a career where she has amassed 13 top ten finishes at US Championships, 5 podium finishes, and a bronze medal in the 10,000m at the World Championships has been somewhat in the shadow of her contemporaries.

In 2015, when she won her World Championship bronze, she did it quite literally emerging from the shadow of USA teammate and champion, Molly Huddle, to nip her at the line.

Though she has made World and Olympic teams, she had never won a US Title on the track up until she made her way around former BTC teammate, Elise Cranny off the Bowerman curve in the USA Championship 10,000m this year.

She did this coming back from a nagging achilles injury that dogged her throughout 2023 and 2024, a theme that has stitched a thread through her 12 year professional career.

In 2013 and 2014, she dealt with sacral stress fractures, one on each side. In 2019, she had reconstructive hip surgery. Following each of these occasions, she has come back stronger, and battled with whomever sat atop the US rankings at the given moment to make a US team- in 2015 for the World Championships in Beijing, and in 2016 for the Olympics in Rio. In 2017 for the World Championships in London, where she placed 6th in the 10,000m, and in 2022 for the World Championships on home soil in Eugene.

What the injuries displayed, and likely helped cultivate, as setbacks so often do, is a rare resilience. When Emily stepped to the line in Hayward Field for the 10,000m final on a late July night this year, she did it wearing the uniform of a new sponsor (Brooks). The stadium she where she ran her first US Championships in 2009 had been torn down and rebuilt. The team that she joined coming out of Georgetown had moved from Portland to Eugene a few years before, and then ultimately disbanded. In-between then and now, she found new coaching with Team Boss in Colorado, moved to train on the sidewalks of Los Angeles following her husband’s job, and then back to Portland, the ‘land of her adult years, to receive coaching again albeit remotely from her college coach, Chris Miltenberg. What is old is new again, but different.

Emily does much of the workouts that Coach Milt prescribes with her husband Max who races local Portland road and track events. You can gauge Emily’s fitness level by looking at Max’s results. Before Emily ran her 10,000m PR of 30:59 on the track this year, Max ran the Shamrock Run 8k in Portland in 24:28, which converts to roughly… 30:59 for 10k. Two weeks prior to USA’s, Max blasted a PR in the 1500m of 3:57.48. Following his race, Emily lamented likely not being able to claw back the household 1500m record (her 1500m best is 4:05 from 2021), but after she surged past 3:57 1500m runner, Cranny in the final 100m, she let on that her speed has been better than ever- we could have guessed that. Max wonders now what he can do for the metric mile with 1500m-specific training, but I suspect he has marathon training in his future. When reached for comment, he said that he thinks he’s currently in 15:15 5k shape, but also said that Emily has been blowing him away in workouts for the last 3 weeks.

In Tokyo, on September 13th, Emily will enter the stadium as a 35 year old, 12 year veteran of the pro sport, who 25 years ago fell in love with it at an AAU meet turned LFO concert that she bargained for a trip to Disney World. The rewards reaped for young athletes in this sport are often double, because a top notch performance also comes with the promise of something greater down the road. They’re less and less as the guessers guess that the road gets shorter, but just because the odds are against you doesn’t mean you can’t walk into the lion’s den and win it all. To walk in with history and be able to execute takes experience. It’s doubly impressive to win a title for the first time at 35- a compliment one has to learn to take gracefully. The frontman of LFO is now 50, and his 3 bandmates are no longer with us. Summer Girls was written much closer to when Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton than to now.

The new kids on the block have a bunch of hits, but they’ve still got a lot of road to travel.

Emily doesn’t have plans to go to Tokyo Disney, but her best friend Nat is bringing her 3 kids to Tokyo and they’re going, after they watch they’re mom’s bff take on the world.