By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
(30-May) — When she was a student at Churchville-Chili Central High School in Upstate New York, Anna Kostarellis didn’t want to be a runner. Drawn to the soccer pitch instead, running held little attraction for her.
“The running for itself was actually looked down upon, I’d say,” Kostarellis told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview yesterday from O’Hare Airport in Chicago where she was changing planes. “I had a pretty negative idea of cross country runners. It was sort of like those were the only people who couldn’t make another sport. That was the attitude around running in my high school.”
Little did she know that a missed soccer team tryout would lead to a surprising, six-year collegiate running career and eventually a pro contract with Asics. The now 25 year-old will be taking on a classic road running double for women, competing in tomorrow’s Delightful Run for Women 5-K in Albany, N.Y. (formerly called the Freihofer’s Run for Women), then the Mastercard New York Mini 10-K in New York City a week later.
“I just accidentally happened to miss tryouts for soccer that year and the only sport that took applicants any time of year was cross country,” Kostarellis continued. “I had just basically done a few local 5-K’s, and was given the opportunity to join the team for the rest of the season.”
While she discovered her talent for running, she didn’t love it.
“This is not the most fun I’ve had in sports,” Kostarellis said.
As a senior in 2017, she took third in the mile at the New Balance Nationals Indoors in a personal best 4:50.95, and began her collegiate career at Xavier University of Ohio in Cincinnati in the fall. She competed well, finishing second at the Big East Cross Country Championships, 11th at the Great Lakes Regionals, and 66th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships.
But like thousands of other student-athletes, Kostarellis’s collegiate career was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. That took her on a journey from Xavier to both the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque then eventually Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The NCAA allowed student-athletes affected by the pandemic to actively compete over a stretch of six years.
“COVID happened, then the opportunity to get another year of eligibility prompted me to think that now I could… potentially get a masters degree,” she said. “That was part of my reasoning to move to New Mexico and get another degree.”
As a Lobo she finished 10th in the Mountain West Cross Country Championships and 144th in the special March, 2021 edition of the 2020 NCAA Cross Country Championships. Kostarellis loved the trails and mountains of New Mexico (she resides in Albuquerque now), but overall things were not going well for her at UNM.
“UNM was definitely the most adversity I’ve faced in running and culture behind running,” Kostarellis explained. She continued: “I don’t think that any of the results (of her training) showed in New Mexico.” She continued: “I think a lot of lessons were learned.”
In Albuquerque Kostarellis ran much higher mileage than she had before and, of course, she was doing all of her training at altitude. Her body pushed back.
“I was running about 30 miles a week more than I ever had before, and I was doing longer workouts than I had ever done before, and I wasn’t given much of a grace period to adapt to that,” she said. “I found myself pretty over-trained. She continued: “I basically walked away injured and pretty burned out.”
Kostarellis took a step back from running and left collegiate athletics in 2022 after getting her MBA from New Mexico. “I went back to New York and basically started running for fun,” she said. “For that whole spring and fall I was just training myself.”
But she had one year of NCAA eligibility left, and decided to go back to college so she could compete again. She wanted to go to a Christian school and narrowed it down to Liberty University in Virginia and Baylor. She decided on Baylor (“I fell in love with the place,” she said), a school better known for developing long sprinters, and everything clicked. She ran personal bests and school records of 15:39.16 for 5000m and 32:10.96 for 10,000m. Her mark in the longer race qualified her for the 2024 USA Olympic Team Trials, but she was unable to compete after falling on a training run and banging her knee.
“That was really unfortunate,” Kostarellis said. She continued: “I tripped on a root and hit my knee on a rock. It was not a really long injury at all, maybe a week and a half. But the timing when it happened was, unfortunately, at the wrong place and the wrong time.”
But better times were ahead for Kostarellis, who was learning to love longer distances. She got her first pro win at the 2024 Buffalo Subaru 4-Mile Chase, took seventh at the Boilermaker 15-K in Utica, N.Y., finished 11th at the Falmouth Road Race, and ninth at the USATF 10-K Championships at the Great Cow Harbor 10-K in Northport, N.Y.
Now coached by Ryan Bolton (who coached Ryan Hall), Kostarellis has developed much greater strength and endurance. She ran two solid half-marathons this year, a 1:11:22 personal best at the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon in January and a 1:11:58 at the hilly USATF Half-Marathon Championships in Atlanta in March. With that new-found strength, she’s excited to race “over-speed” at the Delightful Run on Saturday. She’ll need to run in the 15:30 to 15:45 range to be competitive for the win.
“I’m passionate about the long distances, and I really do love getting to race the halfs,” she said. She continued: “I feel like I’m in a good place with my fitness, so it’s more like learning to shift gears for the 5-K and 10-K distances which I have raced before. I’m looking forward to testing myself.”
In Albany, Kostarellis’s key rivals should be Jess McGorty and Molly Born of the North Carolina-based Puma Elite Running team coached by Alistair and Amy Cragg, and Amy Davis-Green of the Hansons Brooks Original Distance Project in Michigan coached by Keith and Kevin Hanson (Davis-Green finished second last year). Kostarellis is very familiar with McGorty who, as Jess Lawson, competed against her in high school.
“It’s great to see that even at such a young age we had each other to push each other,” she said of McGorty. She added: “This shows the depth of the girls in New York which is pretty amazing.”
But running well at the Delightful Run is only half of Kostarellis’s upcoming challenge. The Mastercard Mini 10-K has a world-class field where she is only ranked 28th based on personal best. She’s excited for that kind of competition, she said, and has visualized the race venues to help her get ready. She also knows she has to compete against the best women in order to improve.
“They both go through beautiful parks,” Kostarellis said of Washington Park in Albany and Central Park in New York City. She continued: “In New York City there are high stakes and the field is very, very competitive. When you turn pro you learn how to try to realize that you still belong in the field, even if some of them are way ahead of you, and just learn how to take things to the next level.”
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The Delightful Run for Women will be held for the 46th time as an in-person race (there was also a virtual version in 2020), and last year’s race had 2090 finishers. The event record is 15:11.1 by Emily Chebet of Kenya in 2010 (on a different, but similar course). Open prize money will be paid 10-deep from $3000 for the winner down to $350 for 10th place. The masters winner will receive $1000.
VIDEO STILL: Anna Kostarellis modeling her Asics kit on her Instagram page @annakostarellis
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