NAZ Elite this week: Team hopes to carry 2018 success into crucial 2019

For instance, Taylor posted a PR of 2:24:28 at the Grandma's Marathon in June, Stephanie Bruce won her first-ever national title at the USATF 10K Championships in July and Aliphine Tuliamuk competed for two first-place finishes at national championships, with both coming within the span of a week.

“It’s been a great year," said NAZ Elite head coach Ben Rosario, who is closing in on the end of his fifth year at the helm of the team.

Rosario said he's not ever sure if Scott Fauble's impressive New York City Marathon seventh-place finish in 2:12:28, a PR, will get many nods for the annual honor considering the amount of success the rest of the team had in 2018.

NAZ Elite had a long list of accomplishments and standout moments throughout the year, and the team hopes to carry the momentum into a crucial 2019. Much of what the team does in 2019 will be geared toward the overcoming the challenge of earning a place at the 2020 Olympics in the marathon event.

Long distance in 2018 was a strong point for NAZ Elite, which had six of its runners finish at least one marathon in 2018.

Stephanie Bruce, whose 2018 was a standout year for her career, provided two of NAZ Elite's five total top 10 finishes in a marathon, and she ended up with three total marathons completed for a team high. Meanwhile, Taylor provided her Grandma's gold, Fauble added his seventh-place result in NYC and Scott Smith was sixth in Boston in 2:21:47 before taking 17th in NYC.

While a few of the seasoned runners will be training with the Olympics in mind, Rosario will be busy keeping his 2018 rookies ready for big races in 2019.

And Rosario said he's hoping to add two to three new males to the roster soon.

One big race for the young runners recently removed from their college careers will be the USA track and field championships in July. Moreover, rookie Alice Wright, an England native, will be putting in the miles with the goal of making an appearance as part of the UK team for the world championships in late September.

“There are some things we know we want to accomplish in the first part of 2019 in the spring," Rosario said of the team's training and schedule.

In the summer, Wright, Erin Clark, Grayson Murphy and Danielle Shanahan joined the roster. They spent much of 2018 adjusting to a new level of running, from the training to the competition.

On Sunday at the USATF National Club Cross Country Championships in Spokane, Washington, Clark ended her year with a 12th-place finish in 20:04 on a 5:23 pace while Shanahan wrapped up with a 16th-place time of 20:12 at the 6K race.

They came up short of the goal of registering top-10 results. 

“We would be very naive to think that every single time out we are going to accomplish what we set out to accomplish. And overall, when you look at the entire fall those two did a great job," Rosario said. "They got used to Flagstaff, they trained very well and they are fitter than they’ve ever been.”

Shanahan and Clark ran two races together since coming aboard. In addition to the December championships, they were in the USATF 5K championships, where Clark was ninth in 16:07 and Shanahan was 13th at 16:20.

“That college atmosphere is really ingrained in them because they've had it for four of five years, and they are used to competing for a team, so you don’t want to just pull that rug from underneath them," Rosario said.

For now, the team is on break, other than Fauble's upcoming Beaverton 5K in Oregon on Saturday. Until NAZ Elite is out in full force around mid-January, Rosario will be getting into clearer focus the goals for next year.

“We definitely have goals and plans, but the biggest overall thing is just to get better, keep improving. If we can do that, a lot of the fast times will happen naturally," he said.