A Trials Story Fit for an Editor
By Kelly Vanegas
Runners have to beat times. Editors have to beat deadlines. As editor of the Literary Review of Canada and competitor in this year's U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Marathon, Kyle Wyatt does both.
Wyatt has been running since he was 13 years old, when his parents back home in the small town of Albion, Nebraska told him that they would only get internet in their home if he chose a sport. He chose cross-country. Now, at 38, he is not only following his passion for running and working in the literary world, he is going to participate in the Olympic Trials.
Wyatt has to know when to prioritize running.
“I try to be very mindful of scheduling meetings or calls,” Wyatt said. “I try to avoid them on days I have big workouts, for example. I also try to compartmentalize: so I get running out of the way before I turn my attention to work. That’s more challenging when I am doubling (running in the morning and evening) and when I am in the middle of production on the magazine.”
After graduating from Nebraska in 2003, Wyatt ran his first marathon, the Twin Cities Marathon in 2003, and placed first in his age group with a time of 2:38:24. Two years later, he ran Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minn.
Wyatt went to Toronto, Canada for graduate school. Because of all the obligations and commitments he had, it was hard for him to make running a priority. He needed that time to get to know his new home and city. The man that now runs 100 miles a week now ran a hundred miles a year then. However, in 2013 he realized how much he missed marathons.
In 2015 he began working with Jeffery Boele through the online coaching service Training Peaks. Wyatt says that Boele knows what he enjoys and what he doesn’t in terms of workouts and racing strategies.
“Having somebody to be accountable to—the way he structures my weeks, long- runs and the way that he throws things at me,” Wyatt said. “It would have been very different to be doing this on my own.”
The help that Wyatt has received from his coach has made all the difference in his running career.
“It has been a great experience working with Kyle,” Boele said. “He understands what he is doing and doesn't just fit running in. He makes it a priority and maintains a dynamic balance between being a high-level runner and a high level professional. I am impressed by his commitment to his endeavors.”
As his running career went through its highs and lows, Wyatt also was embarking on a more intellectual path for his career. He earned a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Toronto and worked as an editorial assistant for an academic journal. After finishing his doctorate, he became a managing editor of a magazine.
Currently, he is an editor-in-chief for the Literary Review of Canada, a print magazine based in Toronto that publishes ten times per year. “We're Canada's answer to the London Review of Books or The New York Review of Books,” Wyatt said. “Smart, accessible, and engaged with important matters.”
Wyatt qualified for the Olympic Trials at the Chicago Marathon in 2018, when he ran 2:18:55 despite high humidity, rain and strong winds.
A year later, Wyatt redesigned the Literary Review of Canada and published a new edition in December 2019. The redesign began in April 2019. The March 2020 issue will hit the stands around Valentine's Day, just before the trials.
With a redesign finished and the trials coming up, Wyatt seems prepared to execute his race day plan.
“I'd like to show up focused, healthy, and fit and then run as competitively as possible,” Wyatt said. “I'd like to start that third and final lap in a good position and in a good frame of mind.”
Leading up to the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Marathon, Atlanta Track Club partnered with the Grady Sports Media program at the University of Georgia to profile some of the competitors in the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. The authors of these stories are undergraduate students enrolled in the program and have been lightly edited by the Club. See all of the stories at https://www.atlanta2020trials.com/news/uga-trials-project.