Fort Collins High grad graces cover of Runners World

Katie Mackey was running 800-meter repeats at a natural area just outside of Palo Alto, California.

She was running behind a bicycle, with a photographer on the back, facing her. More than 4 miles in all, she said, with an assistant touching up her makeup, running a brush through her hair and even applying a little "fake sweat" after each lap or two.

It was too chilly, she said, for real perspiration while wearing just a running bra and shorts on a cool day in early May, with temperatures in the low 50s.

Especially for Mackey, an eight-time All-American in cross country and track at the University of Washington and one of the top middle-distance runners in the nation.

The former Fort Collins High School standout wasn't there for the workout. She was there for a photo session with Runners World magazine, which put her on the cover of its July issue.

"It was definitely a bucket-list item," Mackey said. "I've grown up reading that magazine. You always kind of daydream, 'It would be so cool to be on the cover of Runners World,' and now I am."

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Mackey, 29, had to withdraw from the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships that began Thursday in Sacramento, California, because of a minor back injury. It's the first time since 2010 she's missed the national championships, she said.

Otherwise, it's been a pretty big year for Mackey, whose maiden name is Follett.

She ran a personal-best time in the indoor 3,000 meters in February and won a national championship in the road mile two months ago in Des Moines, Iowa. She set personal-bests in the mile, both indoors and outdoors, as well as the indoor 1,500 and outdoor 3,000, in 2016.

She's in the best shape of her life and eager to head overseas to compete again late this summer. She didn't make the U.S. team for the 2016 London Olympics, missing out by one spot as an alternate in the 5,000, but likes her chances of getting to Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics.

Runners World recently changed editors, so no one at the magazine was able to say why Mackey was chosen for the cover of the July issue. But Erin Strout, a frequent contributor to the magazine, said, "They always look for somebody who's proven themselves over the course of many years as a top athlete in her discipline, and Katie's obviously reached that threshold."

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Although there is no specific story on Mackey inside the July issue, she was one of the leaders of a high-altitude training camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that Strout wrote about after spending a few days there with Mackey and her Brooks Beasts teammates. Adjacent to the story is a workout Mackey shares with readers designed to help them "switch gears between paces" during training runs and races. She also offers some warmup tips in a video on the popular running magazine's website.

Mackey said she got the call from Runners World about setting up the photo shoot just after winning the road mile, her first national championship. She had a few days to spare between competing in a meet at Stanford and traveling to Shanghai, China, for another race, and the magazine wanted to shoot the photos "in a summery place."

So she remained in the San Francisco Bay Area to meet up with the photographer, Jake Stangel, instead of returning home to Seattle, where she and her husband and coach, Danny Mackey, live and train with their Brooks Beasts teammates.

"The shoot itself was really cool," she said. "Normally, you just have a photographer doing a lot of takes and you just run back and forth past the camera. We went out to this trail in a nature preserve park area. There was this guy on a bike, and just ran behind the bike, 800-meter loops. So it ended up being 4 miles of running, if not more. It was really cool, really authentic."

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More authentic than other photo shoots she's done, she said, despite the touchup work on her makeup, hair and the fake sweat. It was the kind of setting she would normally try to find for a workout, running open trails in the peaceful setting of a nature preserve.

"This one definitely felt the most natural," she said. "I was out on a 4-mile run, and this guy was taking pictures. At one point, it was too authentic. I had to stop and say, 'Hey, can you guys wait for a second while I go over here and visit these bushes.' "

The photographer told her there was a good chance she'd wind up on an upcoming cover of the magazine, but there were no guarantees.

She found out she had made it a little less than two weeks ago, when a friend passing through the Portland airport saw the latest issue on a newsstand and texted her a picture. It was another day or two, she said, before the issue made it to her local Barnes & Noble store.

"We grew up with a Runners World subscription, and I would look forward to it and read it every month, so it was really a surreal moment when I walked in to buy the magazine. I felt like I needed to pinch myself. Wow! I'm on the magazine. … I walked up to the register and bought the magazine, and no one realized it was me."

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news

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