Marathon mindset drives Griffins track

Running down the famous Boylston Street in Boston, Mass., fifth-grade English teacher Megan Sughroue took in the hundreds of thousands of fans in attendance as they crossed the line. Loud speakers announced every one of the 30 thousand runners who finished. A rush of runner’s high oozed from Sughroue as she crossed the line, and the 26.2-mile run was over.
Originally in 2023, Sughroue qualified for the Boston Marathon and planned to run in it. However, an IT band injury caused her to withdraw from it and push her attempt back to 2025. In the months before the race, she got back to the form she needed and prepared immensely.
“Three to four months I’ve been training specifically for the marathon,” Sughroue said. “I get up and run in the mornings before school, but my long runs I do on the weekends. So, usually Saturdays, you set aside three to four hours to do a long run.”
After two years of recovery and training, she got to the starting line in Boston.. When the gun sounded, the horde of runners was off.
“You just see people, you can’t even see the street, the sidewalk, just people,” Sughroue said. “The first six miles is just go with the flow of traffic kind of thing. Then everyone’s fast, so everyone’s going at a good pace, but you’re just hoping not to trip.”
Twenty eight other runners from Nebraska ran in the race, however, Sughroue didn’t know any of them. The one person who went with her was the person she had been running with since day one: her mother.
Growing up, Sughroue was engulfed in running, with her mom participating in numerous marathons throughout her childhood. Although she would later run in marathons, Sughroue says she was labeled the “laziest distance runner” because she did not want to do longer distance runs.
“I had told her [her mom], ‘I’m never running that far,’” Sughroue said. “I never am even gonna do a half marathon, so here we are.”
Back at Gretna East, she returns to the track team near the end of their season. As the head coach of long-distance runners, she leads the 400, 800, 1600 and 3200-meter races. During the season, Sughroue prepared them for the long stretch.
“One of Sughroue’s strongest aspects as a coach is her way to talk to us mentally,” junior Evynn Graver said. “It’s really hard as a distance runner or a runner in general to mentally be in the right space to race and race so many times a meet. That’s one of her strongest suits is the her ability to get us locked in and really focus on what we need to work on when we race.”
The 2025 NSAA State Track & Field Championship takes place on May 21 and 22 at Omaha Burke, and Sughroue hopes to see the team’s accomplishments redeemed, similar to what she went through.
“They’ve put in all the hard work,” Sughroue said. “Kind of like I did before my marathon, to just see that start paying off, see them hit those times and hopefully get the goals that they have set for the year.”