Stephanie Bruce could tell that Aliphine Tuliamuk’s energy was dipping. With a little more than a month to go before the New York City Marathon, the two professional racers were on a long run on an autumn day in Flagstaff, Ariz., where they both live and train with HOKA NAZ Elite. Their plan for the day had been to push into a fast kick for a stretch of 1,000 meters after a high-mileage day. Both of the women were feeling it in their legs and lungs when they hit the kick, and they were running into the wind, side by side. So Bruce offered Tuliamuk a little protection against the wind.
“I think Stephanie sensed that I was really, really struggling, and she’s like ‘You can tuck in behind me; you’re good,” Tuliamuk remembers.
But Bruce saw the offer as mutually beneficial—when it comes to the kind of grueling training required by the marathon, the better your training partner, the better you’ll be. “No reason for both of us to suffer in the headwind,” Bruce laughs when explaining her offer to Tuliamuk to tuck in.
