Oct. 17, 2011

OREM, Utah -- Former Utah Valley All-conference cross country and track performer Jacob Buhler can understand the saying, "The more things change the more they stay the same."

Since his graduation from UVU in 2009 Buhler has started dental school at the University of Oklahoma and in 2010 he married fellow UVU middle distance runner Katie Rowe.

Plenty of changes that would cause most of people to change their priorities, but Buhler has kept "things the same" by continuing his drive to make it to the Olympic Trials in the marathon.

On Oct. 9, Buhler showed that his running talent has maintained an equal footing with schooling and family time by winning the Prairie Fire Marathon in Wichita, Kan. His winning time was 2 hours, 29 minutes, 43 seconds, and he beat the second-place finisher, and last year's winner, Tim Marshall, by over six minutes.

Jacob is aiming to run under the 2:19 time benchmark to secure his spot on the line at the 2012 U.S. Marathon Trials in Houston, Texas, on Jan. 14, 2012.

The window to cut the necessary time is brief, but Buhler hopes with a deeper field of competition he can reach the standard. He may choose to skip the full marathon distance and drop to the half marathon distance where he just needs to run 1 hour, 5 minutes. This time is well within his range since he came through the first half of the Prairie Fire Marathon in 1:11.

His time at the halfway mark was faster than the winner of the half marathon by just over a minute.

To read about Buhler's run Click Here.