Background

If Carrie Tollefson looks familiar, it’s no wonder. A celebrity in the Midwest, she won her first Minnesota cross country high school championship in the 8th grade, then won four more to set a state record. All together, she won 13 state high school championships before heading for Villanova, where her 3K and 5K outdoor NCAA victories in 1999 made her the first female collegian ever to score that double. This, after surgery in 1997 to remove a benign tumor in her left heel and having a cadaver bone implanted to replace her own.

In 2004, Carrie came into the Trials as a 5000-meter favorite, having set a whopping personal best of 15:04.07 at the Cardinal Invitational on May 1. She was devastated when she didn’t make the 5000m team, but rebounded spectacularly to win her “backup plan” at 1500m and punch her ticket for Athens. Soon after returning, she had the chance to cheer for her husband, Charlie Peterson, as he competed in the 2004 Ironman Wisconsin. “I get awfully nervous,” confesses Carrie of the role switch.

The youngest of a sister trio that includes Stacey and Kammie, Carrie grew up in tiny Dawson (pop. 1,539) Minn., and back in high school hoped someday to become the “local TV weather girl,” because “the weather back here is the best job,” and if Villanova had offered courses in meteorology her career might have taken a different turn.