Felicia Pasadyn balances medical school and professional running, recently qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials
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She credits time management, sleep and proper nutrition for her ability to juggle training, studies and patient care
Pasadyn tells PEOPLE she plans to adjust her training during her upcoming radiology residency while continuing to compete
Felicia Pasadyn has always been an athlete.
The Cleveland-born runner, 23, was involved in athletics from a young age, following in the footsteps of her three older sisters. After high school, she committed to swimming at Harvard University, where she earned a degree in integrative biology through an accelerated bachelor's and master's program, which she completed at Ohio State University in 2023.
While studying to get her PhD at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, with an anticipated graduation in May 2026, Pasadyn began looking for ways to connect with local running communities, leading her to join theNew York Road Runners, the organizer of the United Airlines NYC Half.
"When I moved to New York City, I began racing New York Road Runners races. I could balance my medical career with running better than I thought I could," Pasadyn tells PEOPLE. "I started training harder and entered more competitive races. By mid-2024, I set two goals: I want to make the Olympic Trials, run professionally and be salaried for it."
In 2025, she was hired by Saucony, a high-performance shoe company, and "then by December 2025, they offered me a salary," officially making her a professional runner.
She originally aimed to run one competitive race every three months while also in medical school. Balance between the two, running and medicine, she shares, "takes a lot of very particular planning and sacrifice."
"I learned from a young age, being a competitive swimmer and runner and juggling classes, that things like sleep and having a routine and schedule were all important in succeeding in time management," she shares. "Swimming was such a large time commitment that I needed ways to be more efficient, whether that be packing lunches or being specific about time slots with friends or sleeping nine hours every night so that I could study them as efficiently as possible and be productive during the day."
Her time management skills were most tested when Pasadyn was training to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in the fall of 2025 while also deep in her intensive medical studies. To get there, she shares, she had to "level up every aspect of my training."
"Putting myself in as much discomfort leading up to the race so that the race feels slightly more prepared and comfortable," Pasadyn says of her mindset at the time.
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While training to break her 1:12:00 half-marathon time and her 2:40:00 marathon time in August 2025, she was also working in the surgical ICU. This meant she planned every single minute of her day to optimize her training, patient care and her own self-care and relationships. It also required some multitasking.
She grew used to doing practice questions while on the treadmill, flipping through flashcards while on the StairMaster and listening to educational videos while cycling.
"When I walk, I listen to a podcast that quizzes me on boards," she says. "I always get nine to 9.5 hours of sleep. I also have super proper fueling. I eat like five meals a day. I have no restrictions. I pretty much just am thinking like I'm a machine and I need to feed this machine."
"I wake up every morning around 4 a.m. and run on the treadmill while studying or in Central Park, usually between 4:15 a.m. and 5 a.m. or so," she shares, noting that she would then add a 40-minute StairMaster session followed by 30 minutes of strength training.
After going home and getting ready, she was usually back out the door by 6:30 a.m., "commuting to my surgical ICU rotation."
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"By 7 a.m., I'd find out what happened to my patient overnight, develop a plan with the PAs and the attending, and see my patient," she shares, explaining that her typical rotation is from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
After work, she would usually "take a walk or grocery break and call my parents in Ohio, and that really fills my cup."
"From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., I would be studying, seeing a friend or checking a patient's vitals if it were a more serious situation," she adds, noting that she would be in bed around 7:30 p.m.
Thankfully, the hard work and long hours paid off. In November 2025, Pasadyn finished 14th overall among women at the 2025 TCS NYC Marathon, completing the race with a time of 2:35:00 and earning a spot in the Olympic Marathon Trials.
While the trials aren't until March 2028,Pasadyn also has other major milestones on the horizon, as Match Day is on March 20, and she will learn her residency training location and where she will be living after graduation.
She explains that she will have "one year of a transitional year" where she tries out all the disciplines before her years-long radiology residency.
"All radiology residents have to do it. It's like a one plus four," she explains. "In the 2026 to 2027 academic year, I'll be doing month-long rotations through all the main aspects of medicine."
"The five years of radiology residency are very intense," she notes. "Even less free time than I had as a medical student, which is hard to believe given how little I have. I have to use these skills and live a similar life to what I've been living to date."
Pasadyn admits that she "doesn't know" of a signed professional runner who is also a medical doctor, which makes her feel like she's "pioneering my own path and taking it as it comes."
"There's a chance I have to adjust my training because I spend about three hours in the gym, and I don't think that will be possible when I'm seeing patients," she says. "Maybe I'll be more of a 5K, 10K and half-marathon runner during residency, then go back to marathons after. I'm just trying to be flexible, and that's hard coming from a person who's usually quite regimented."
Training, preparation and competing look very different for Pasadyn than they do for her contemporaries. Oftentimes, before races, some runners implement high-altitude training, going to places with higher altitudes to prepare physically, as it can help oxygen delivery to the muscles.
"The reality is I'm in a transition to residency bootcamp, learning how to do a diagnostic paracentesis here in New York, not at altitude," she says. "It's absolutely nothing against the professional runners because, as humans, they're wonderful, [but] life is very different."
While her running career has really "taken off here in the city against professional runners who do this as a full-time job," she's had to accept the fact that her priorities sometimes differ.
"Don't get me wrong, they're very sweet and incredibly supportive and offer mentorship and advice. It's a great group of women, but their lives are extremely unrelatable to mine," she says. "Some of them live in camps at altitude, away from their husbands and children, and every day they have people prepare their food and help them with mobility. It looks so different from the life of someone providing for patients and making all their decisions around medicine."
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