Alicia Monson: The Training Behind the American 5K & 10K Records
Amery, Wisconsin has a population of roughly 2,900 people. It sits in northwestern Wisconsin near the Minnesota border where cross country is part of the fall fabric because that’s what schools in northwestern Wisconsin do. There are no altitude training centers in Amery. There is no history of producing professional distance runners.
Alicia Monson is from Amery.
She started running in sixth grade not because she had identified distance running as her calling, but because it was the only school sport available to sixth graders and she wanted to be in something. She had older siblings who competed, and she wanted to compete too.
By the time she finished her first competitive year, it was clear she was not just a participant. She was something different.
The path from that sixth-grade start to North American records in the 5,000m, 10,000m, and to the podium at multiple global championships runs through a torn ACL, a coach she had to trust, and a training environment built entirely from scratch in Boulder, Colorado.
What it teaches every coach who works with female distance runners is worth examining carefully.
Amery: The Origin and the First Adversity
Monson competed for Amery High School under coaches Paul Enslin and Kelsey Faschingbauer. She was a genuine talent. A Wisconsin state champion in cross country and the 3,200m as a senior, and a state runner-up in the 1,600m. But the journey to those championships was not easy.
In her senior year, while playing basketball, she tore her ACL.
I want to dwell on that for a moment, because the ACL injury is often treated as background noise in Monson’s story when it is actually a formative event. A torn ACL in your senior year of high school, before you have signed with a college, is a genuine threat to a running career. Many athletes have walked away from sports at that point. The recovery is long, and the uncertainty sits in your head. Will I ever return to the same level again? Can I trust my body?
Monson came back. Five months after surgery, she won the Wisconsin state 3,200m championship.
That comeback is illustrative. It is the first evidence of the characteristic that makes her a great competitor. She does not quit when the path gets difficult. She adjusts and moves forward.
Wisconsin: Developing Under Jill Miller
Monson enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 2016 and competed for the Badgers under coach Jill Miller. Her development was steady and patient. Monson improved reliably, year after year, building toward something that revealed itself in her senior year.
As a junior, she was training 25–30 miles per week. By her senior year, she had pushed that to roughly 50. That progression tells you something about how Wisconsin managed her development: they were not forcing volume. They were letting the athlete grow into it.
In 2019, Monson won the NCAA Indoor 5,000m championship. She followed that with a runner-up finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championships. By the end of her collegiate career, she had proven she could compete with the best in the country.
When COVID disrupted the 2020 season and the University of Wisconsin announced it would not grant athletes an extra year of eligibility, Monson faced a decision: return for a senior season, or turn professional. She turned professional.
What she did next revealed the same quality that had returned her to the state meet five months after an ACL surgery. She chose risk.
The On Athletics Club Decision: Betting on Dathan Ritzenhein
The On Athletics Club did not exist in 2019. It was founded by Dathan Ritzenhein in 2020, sponsored by the Swiss running shoe company On, and based in Boulder, Colorado.
Ritzenhein is a three-time Olympian, a former American record holder in the 5,000m and the marathon, and one of the most complete distance runners the US has produced in the modern era. He retired in 2019 and almost immediately began building the program he wished had existed for him during his own career.
Alicia Monson was one of his first recruits.
There was no track record to evaluate. There were no alumni performances to research. There were no testimonials from athletes who had come through OAC and succeeded. There was one man with a clear vision and a specific philosophy, and Monson had to decide whether she believed in him.
She said yes. Her reason was partly practical, COVID’s uncertainty made the professional path more attractive than another ambiguous year of school, but it was also about chemistry. “Being Midwesterners, Dathan and I understand each other,” she said. Ritzenhein grew up in Rockford, Michigan. Monson grew up in Amery, Wisconsin. There was a shared cultural language, an orientation toward hard work and practicality that made the relationship feel right.
That cultural fit is not trivial in a coaching relationship. The athletes who perform best under a coach are almost always the athletes who trust the coach completely. Athletes who believe that the work being asked of them has a reason even when they cannot see it. Monson trusted Ritzenhein. That trust, over the next four years, was fully earned.
The Science of Altitude Training: Why Boulder Works for OAC
Monson moved to Boulder, Colorado, at roughly 5,100 feet above sea level. She trains twice a day. She runs at altitude. She lifts weights multiple times per week. The environment is demanding and consistent.
The altitude matters in a way that is worth explaining clearly. At 5,100 feet, every run is a physiological stimulus that a comparable run at sea level cannot replicate. The reduced oxygen pressure forces the body to produce more red blood cells, to elevate hemoglobin concentration, to become more efficient at oxygen delivery. These adaptations translate directly into performance when racing at sea level. It take weeks to develop and are most powerful when they are built continuously over years.
Monson has been in Boulder since 2020. The cumulative altitude adaptation she has built over that period is a meaningful competitive advantage.
Ritzenhein advocates for doubles training, two runs per day to achieve a specific goal: high total aerobic volume without extreme single-session intensity. A 12-mile morning run and a 6-mile evening run at altitude accomplish more physiological work than an 18-mile single run at the same effort at sea level. The training load is distributed, the recovery is built in, and the accumulation is continuous.
The strength work is also not incidental. Distance women who lift seriously have meaningfully better injury profiles over long careers than those who don’t. Monson’s commitment to the full training package, not just the running, is part of what has kept her competing at the highest level.
Breaking the American 5,000m and 10,000m Records
Monson’s record-breaking career is evidence of a training system that was willing to develop an athlete past her collegiate ceiling.
The 10,000m is perhaps the most striking example. She had virtually no 10,000m experience when she joined OAC. In December 2020, in her first serious attempt at the distance, she ran 31:10.84, good enough to put herself in contention for the Olympic team. She had gone from “has never really run 10K” to “legitimate Olympic qualifier” in a matter of months of structured training under Ritzenhein.
That is not an accident. Ritzenhein correctly assessed what his athlete’s aerobic engine could produce, at a distance she had never been asked to run, and built a training block specifically designed to unlock that capacity.
By 2022, Monson had broken the American record in the 10,000m by 9.35 seconds. A margin that is not a small improvement. It is a massive statement.
In July 2023, at the London Diamond League, she ran 14:19.45 in the 5,000m breaking Shelby Houlihan’s American record of 14:23.92. The London Diamond League is one of the highest-quality distance races in the world. Monson ran the record in a field of world-class Africans, in a meet set up for fast running, and delivered.
She also holds the North American record in the two-mile (9:09.70, set at the Millrose Games), making her the North American record holder at three distances simultaneously.
Ritzenhein’s quote from after one of the record weekends is worth hearing directly. He said he felt like they were “doing stuff we thought we were going to be doing four years from now.” That is a coach who had a longterm vision for his athlete’s development and then watched her arrive at it ahead of schedule.
Paris 2024: The Year She Wasn’t There
In April 2024, Monson had surgery on her knee meniscus and missed the entire season.
She missed the Olympic Trials. She missed Paris. She missed the opportunity to run the 10,000m or 5,000m at the most important competition in the world, in the year that her training had been building toward.
Every distance coach has had athletes who worked harder and longer than the results reflected, who put in seasons of preparation that disappeared behind an injury. That frustration is a specific kind of grief in this sport. Monson’s situation in 2024 is the highest-stakes version of that experience.
But it is not the final chapter. She is in her mid-twenties. The North American records stand. The return from the knee surgery will be as measured and methodical as every other challenge she has navigated. Ritzenhein is not going anywhere. The training environment that produced her best performances has not changed.
The ACL in high school. The COVID disruption in college. The knee surgery in 2024. Three significant interruptions, and the career continues. The pattern is consistent: Monson responds to adversity with exactly the same quality she showed as a high school senior coming back to win a state title five months after surgery.
For Coaches: What the Monson Model Teaches
There are several things that Alicia Monson’s development offers to coaches who are working with distance women right now.
The small-town athlete with limited infrastructure is not at a disadvantage. Monson grew up in Amery, Wisconsin, without access to altitude training, without professional coaching resources, without any of the structural advantages that attract top recruits to high-profile programs. She was developed through patient, progressive, well-executed coaching at the high school and collegiate levels.
Volume builds over years, not seasons. Monson ran 25–30 miles per week as a college junior, 50 as a senior, and has trained at OAC under a doubles regimen at altitude since 2020. The 10,000m American record she set in 2022 was not built in a single training cycle. It was built over the cumulative progression from a 6th-grade cross country start through six years of carefully managed mileage increases.
New programs can be the right choice. Monson’s story is evidence that a new program with a great coach is worth more than an established program with a good one. Ritzenhein was an unproven professional coach in 2020. He is now, arguably, the most successful American distance coach of the current era.
Athletic resilience is a coaching variable. The ACL recovery, the COVID disruption, and the knee surgery are all events where the athlete’s response was shaped by the coaching environment. Athletes who have coaches they trust deeply, who understand the longterm vision for their development, respond differently to adversity than athletes who feel like each missed season is a permanent loss.
The Path to Beijing and Beyond
Alicia Monson is in her mid-twenties, holding the North American records in the 5,000m, 10,000m, and the two-mile. She has already built one of the most impressive resumes in the history of American distance running, yet her story feels unfinished.
The infrastructure for her return is rock-solid. To ensure her longevity, Coach Dathan Ritzenhein and the OAC have evolved her high-volume regimen, shifting a significant portion of her training to the underwater treadmill. This methodology preserves her elite aerobic capacity while mitigating ground-impact stress, a calculated move to protect her knee while maintaining the “aerobic engine” that set those records.
The Redemption Roadmap
Monson’s eyes are firmly set on the 2027 World Championships in Beijing. For her, this isn’t just another competition; it’s a “redemption meet.” The goal is twofold: reclaim a spot on the global podium and lower her own continental marks in the 5,000m and 10,000m.
The build-back is already in motion:
- Late May / Early June 2026: Expected debut of her 2026 fitness in a controlled racing environment.
The mental character that allowed a high school senior to win a state title five months after an ACL tear remains her greatest competitive advantage. The coaching relationship is stable, the training system has adapted, and the drive is higher than ever. Watch for her return this summer.
