BILLINGS — Aidan Reed knew from a relatively young age that he wanted to keep running.
“I wanted to run globally in high school,” Reed said this week. “I was pretty into it pretty early. I knew basically, as a high school freshman that I wanted to be a professional runner.”
The former Helena High Bengal, who now competes for the Roots Running Project in Boulder, Colorado, will compete in his second U.S. Olympic Team Trials by running the men’s 10,000 meters Friday night at 8:27 p.m. (Mountain) at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
“I’m excited and thankful to compete at the Trials this week,” Reed said. “I wasn’t really sure if I’d have the chance to do it, so it’s cool that that has come to this and I’m able to do so.”
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After graduating from Helena High in 2016, Reed went to Southern Utah University where he competed for the Thunderbirds and was a Big Sky Conference champion in the 5,000 and 10,000.
“After college, I knew I wanted to run competitively and hopefully professionally, but I also knew I wasn’t going to get signed out of college so I wanted to join a training group,” Reed said.
Aidan Reed competed collegiately for Southern Utah University.
He looked at groups in Arizona, Michigan and Colorado before moving to Boulder to join Roots Running in September 2021. He joined Roots Running because of the training situation and for non-running related professional opportunities, which was important since he still needed to be able to pay bills in addition to running.
“It took me a while to get good,” Reed said. “I think also that’s the case for a lot of people coming out of college. Like some people come out of college and they just crush it and it’s super impressive. But I think it took me a while too because it’s just a different style of racing, it’s a different style of competition. Professionals, fully developed adult men, race differently, even than young men, so yeah, it took me a while to just do the training and I think now I’ve gotten my legs underneath me.”
He knew his future lay in the longer distances admitting he’s never been known for a “blistering kick” and recognized if he wanted to make U.S. teams, it would most likely be in an event that he could tap into his endurance strength. As he transitioned to Boulder, he started working on half and full marathon distances while also expanding to road racing as well.
He made his marathon debut in 2023 in Ottawa, Canada. Then he ran an Olympics Trials qualifying time in the half-marathon and qualified for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando, Florida.
This past February at the Trials, Reed finished 60th out of 144 runners in 2 hours, 20 minutes and 29 seconds. The results weren’t quite where he wanted them to be as he said it fell apart a bit in the later stages of the race. An injury in the fall of 2023 had also pushed back his marathon build up and impacted the volume he was able to get in beforehand.
“I think in terms of Orlando, it was good,” Reed said. “I’m thankful I experienced it and I can say that I raced at the Trials. And it was it was a special experience, too, because myself and three other athletes, we made the decision that we would raise the Palestinian flags at the finish line. So that was special.”
Both the 10,000 meters and marathons are distance races, but preparing for both are different and presents a unique challenge and Reed knew he wanted to give it a chance.
“I definitely wanted to do a hybrid of both,” Reed said. “I definitely want to be good on the track and I think in order to be good on the road, you have to be good on the track and the best people in the world on the roads are the best on the track.”
So once he finished the marathon Trials, Reed began training for the 10,000 and raced at the Stanford Invitational and Bryan Clay in early spring. Then he went back to a solid training block, before winning the men’s citizens race of Boulder Boulder.
Reed then ran the Portland Track Festival 10,000 in 28 minutes, 15.42 seconds just over a week ago to earn one of the final spots in the 24-person field at the Track Trials.
“We set it up basically like to try and have my key race in June, whether that was a fast half marathon or Trials to just try and like stretch one way or the other,” Reed said.
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