‘It’s time to believe’: Alaskan runner ‘Allie-O’ attempts 3rd Olympic bid

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – It’s her third attempt to make the U.S. Olympic Track & Field team, but it feels like her first.

“Not in the way I lack experience or don’t know what to expect, but in the mentality with which I’m approaching it, and the appreciation I have for it,” Soldotna’s Allie Ostrander stated in a YouTube video posted on her page on June 16.

The women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase preliminary race takes place Monday at 4:59 p.m. Alaska time. If she advances into the final on June 27, she will have a shot at qualifying for her first Olympics ever, after missing out in 2016 and 2021.

Her parents, Paul and Teri Ostrander, as well as the family dog Elvis, sat for an interview over Zoom from Soldotna on Wednesday, and said they hope Alaskans will be watching.

“I want all of Alaska to support her with everything they’ve got and help her achieve this dream of hers,” Paul Ostrander said.

“I believe this is probably the year for Allie, but most of all, I just believe in Allie and her journey, and I’m happy to see her happy,” Teri Ostrander said.

For the past three years, Ostrander — known to many as “Allie-O” — has documented her life on her YouTube page, including her struggle with an eating disorder.

“It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,” Ostrander said in a recent video.

Ostrander — who grew up in Soldotna — ran for Kenai Central High School and was an All-American at Boise State University, winning the NCAA Division I women’s steeplechase in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

She has also excelled in the mountains. Ostrander still has a course record of 28:54 in the girl’s division of the Mount Marathon race in 2014, an event she won a record six times.

After she graduated to the adult women’s race, she won there too, this time in 2017 with the third-fastest course time in women’s race history. The nearly 3,000-foot climb for the men and women is a grueling, iconic run up and down Mount Marathon in Seward.

Ostrander says that within the past year, as she’s recovered from the eating disorder, she’s grown stronger.

“It’s felt like a rebirth. I have a new appreciation for my ability to train, compete, and become stronger,” Ostrander said in her preview video on YouTube.

Her parents agree this year is different and that Allie’s confidence has improved.

“Her confidence has clearly been growing over the last three races, as Teri said, and it actually is really pretty exciting and fun to watch that confidence grow because there was a period there where, like Teri said, she never really thought that she would run fast again, and now she’s running faster than she ever has,” Paul Ostrander said. “So it’s an exciting time for sure. Is she in there saying, ‘Yep, I’m going to make the team’? No, but she said it well in her last video, she said, ‘You know, every fiber of my being, I want to make the team, but I’m going to be okay if I don’t.’ So, she’s going to lay it all out there. I can promise you that much.”

To make it to this latest attempt to join the Olympic team, Ostrander outraced more than 30 competitors in a June 8 race at the Portland Track Festival, beating a mixture of NCAA and professional runners mostly from the United States. Ostrander finished the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase race in 9 minutes, 24.7 seconds, dipping under the current U.S. Olympic qualifying standard. Ostrander’s time was just three seconds off the meet record set in 2021.

The women’s steeplechase prelim is Monday, and the final will take place on Thursday, June 27.

In 2016, Ostrander finished her first Olympic trial, placing eighth with a time of 15:24 in the 5K distance category.

In 2021, she finished eighth with a time of 9:26 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

“It’s time to believe,” Ostrander wrote on her YouTube page.

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