Never Stop Running
Analeise Shact couldn't run for two years but she wouldn't let that stop her. She found her home in MRun and is training harder than ever.
Analeise’s athletic journey didn’t begin with distance running. She first came to the sport as a lacrosse player joining her middle school cross country team in 6th grade to get in shape for the season. It worked, she got faster and it helped her get a lot better at lacrosse. But somewhere along the way she realized that being fast, and the running that got her there, is what she really loved. By the end of her freshman year of high school, she had quit lacrosse entirely and committed herself to cross country and track.
“The running community is nothing like any other sport. I feel like I can immediately click with other runners, and they understand me in a way that non-runners don’t.”
While the thrill of the sport is what brought her to racing, it wasn’t what kept her coming back. That was the people running brought to her life. The upperclassmen role models. The teammates who pushed her and celebrated her. The special warmth that only comes in the running community that feeling when you meet another runner and its like you’ve known them for years. She found all of it freshman year and never looked back.
Pretty soon, her coach, John Monz, became one of the most important people in her life. In Analeise Shact’s sophomore and junior years of high school, she was forced to sit on the sidelines. Health challenges pulled her off the track, leaving her unsure whether she’d ever be able to race again. When the health challenges hit and she couldn’t compete, Monz didn’t let her disappear. He kept her embedded in the team as a captain and manager, making sure she still belonged even when she couldn’t race. As a captain and manager, she was still showing up, still part of the team, still refusing to let go of a sport she wasn’t sure would let her back in.
When her situation nearly took the sport away from her, Analeise stayed close enough to come sprinting back the moment she could. Her coach was still there when she returned for her senior year. He helped her rebuild her training, adjusting her workload, supporting a return that wasn’t easy and required immense patience from everyone involved. Some coaches stay with you long after the season ends. He still checks in on her to this day.
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She returned to racing her senior year, ready to work her way back. With Monz in her corner and a careful new approach to training — heavy on cross training, light on mileage, obsessive about recovery — she pieced together enough fitness to start competing again. Recruitment was off the table. She had missed too much time and the process had moved on without her. So she set her sights on Michigan for its academics and its community, and arrived unsure of what the next chapter had in store.
She found MRun exactly when she needed it. And MRun, as it tends to do, gave her more than she expected.
“I’ve always loved the running community and wanted to connect with other like-minded people at Michigan. I’m so glad I joined the club because MRUN has been an incredible experience, as I’ve met a group of amazing people and also significantly improved my times through my own training.”
Club brought her training partners who grew to become close friends. Base runs after class that were really just an excuse to be around people she liked. Laney Alig and Louise Hackett became her closest training partners, the three of them dubbing themselves, and many NIRCA athletes will think this a fitting nickname, the three-headed beasts. She kept building fitness the slow, unglamorous way, writing many of her own workouts, managing her body carefully, adding miles only when she knew her body could handle them.
Then she did something she didn’t know she was capable of. Breaking five minutes in the mile shifted her view of her running. The ceiling she had assumed was fixed turned out to be moveable. She started thinking seriously about D1 for the first time since before everything stopped.
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Last spring at NIRCA Nationals, Analeise won the 1500m national championship. And the MRun women won the team title, something she found even more rewarding than the individual gold.
“I loved being able to achieve a team-wide goal, as it was amazing to see how everyone’s hard work and determination throughout the year paid off.”
She had wanted it for her teammates, for everyone who had put in the work all season. Every girl on that team gave everything she had. They trained together, woke up early for meets together, spent hours in cars together. It meant everything when they were able to win together too.
We’ll see Analeise again at NIRCA Nationals. She’s lining up in the 800, the 1500, and the 5k, an ambitious schedule for any athlete. The competition in all three will be fierce, and she knows it. But this is a person who has handled immense challenges and continued showing up anyway.
“I know we can win the team title again if everyone comes together and leaves everything out there.”
What’s next for Analeise isn’t certain, but one thing is. She’ll get back on the start line. Her plan is to continue running and racing at the highest level she can. After MRUN, grad school. For her, that will be the summer of 2027. She is already looking forward, mapping out the next chapter of a running career that has survived two years of silence, a careful rebuild, and now this. A D1 door that didn’t open at Michigan is still a D1 door. Just somewhere else, a little later than planned.
