If you’ve run around the Austin run club circuit long enough, you’ll probably recognize Michael Morris, better known as “Slim.” A regular at the East Side Beer Runners and Morning Jo’s run clubs, Slim trains competitively for marathons with Bat City Track Club. He set his personal best of 2:17:06 this past fall at the Indianapolis Marathon and after several agonizingly close attempts to qualify for the Olympic Trials in 2020 and 2024, he still has aspirations of making that elite start line in 2028. We talked to Slim after his fourth place finish at the Austin Marathon, where he was the top local finisher in 2:20:36. 

"Up until this year, I have not had good races at the Austin Marathon. 

I’ve started it five times in total, and I’ve actually DNFed it three of those times. The first time I ever ran it was 2014 and I’d never trained for a marathon. I had no clue what I was doing. 

I got to mile 15 or 16, up in Hyde Park, and I remember getting to a police officer that was telling us what direction to turn. I was like, ‘What’s the fastest way back?’ and he goes, ‘Well, you’re the furthest point you can be [from the finish].’ Some random stranger gave me a ride back to downtown Austin. 

2019 is the second time I went to go run it. I won 3M Half Marathon [ed. note: now called the Austin International Half]. I was training and running in Austin and getting to know everybody and was really starting to become part of the community, but it was still really new to me. I thought, ‘I can go run the Austin Marathon 10-15 seconds slower per mile [than 3M] and qualify for the [Olympic] Trials.’ 

I was way overconfident. We took off and ran 5:20, 5:25 pace all the way to like Mile 20 and then I hit a wall. My buddy Cam was riding his bike alongside me. I got to Mile 23, where Lustre Pearl is on the east side, and I just remember it was a really nice day — it was sunny, and the grass was really green and looked really, really soft. I looked at him and said, ‘I think I need to lay down for a little bit.’ And so I just walked off the course and lay down on my back on a patch of clovers for one or two minutes before he finally came over to me, and he’s like, ‘alright buddy, you gotta get up.’ I walk-jogged all the way to the finish around 2:40. I got completely crushed. 

The next few times I tried to run, I DNFed. 

This year, I felt very confident going into the race. It’s not an easy race by any means. And I did it probably the hardest and dumbest way possible, but I’m really proud of how I ran and how the race went overall. 

In years past, there's always been a breakaway group really early in the race going up Congress and then coming down 1st Street the first 10K. And then they slow down in the middle and the back half of the race, and so I originally thought, ‘I'll go out pretty cautious.’

This year, it caught me off guard that nobody took off. Once I realized nobody really wanted to take the lead, I wanted to have a hard race. I wanted it to be honest. So I took over and said, ‘you know what, I'll do this from the front for as long as I can.’ And just hope that my strength and my fitness carries me all the way through the race. And it pretty much did. I got to the finish line, I didn't have to walk. 

Around mile 22, mile 21, one of the guys made a pretty good move. They ran like 4:55 and I ran 5 flat — and that's where the race broke away from me. In your head, you're constantly talking to yourself. I was like, ‘you know what, just slowly work on it. It's one bad mile, comparatively. Keep working on it and see what happens at the end of the race.’ 

That's how it went for the last 3 or 4 miles. 

‘Let's just see what happens in the next mile. Let's see what happens in the next mile.’ And then finally, ‘just please, dear Lord, don't fall when you're running down these hills.’ My legs were so gone, they were jello at that point.

I never hid behind the fact that I wanted to be first place and I wanted to win the race. But you know how hard it is to do that. To have a good race, that was such a good feeling."

What keeps you coming back to the Austin Marathon?

"I’ve seen Will Nation run and get his Olympic Trials qualifier on this course, and that to me is gold star result of running. To be part of this group, to run here in Austin, to train here in Austin — winning the Austin Marathon as a local runner would be such an awesome thing. To me, that’s the most I can do to give back to the community is to run and race as best I can, right? To win the Austin Marathon would be one thing, or if I were to get my Olympic Trials qualifier running here in Austin. That would be the gold star, the best thing I could do." 

Is Austin your favorite marathon?

"I actually love it because it is such a big challenge. You can go to a lot of courses and a lot of places to run fast, and I will do that and I will keep doing that. But I also want something that challenges me. When I finished on Sunday, I had to earn every step of that race and I had to earn every bit of that medal and that felt really good. 

It’s also a matter of being part of the community. Out on the course, I saw people from Purple Dragons and Bat City and RAW and East Side Beer Runners and Morning Jo’s and literally every single running group that I know of in Austin — whether I participate in them a lot or not — I saw them somewhere on the course and everybody was cheering me on, screaming, ‘let’s go Slim!’ and pushing me. That’s what keeps bringing me back — there’s so much love and community that you feel when you’re running through Austin."

Want to run with Slim and make some new friends? You can join East Side Beer Runners on Wednesday nights at 6:30 p.m. from Central Machine Works and Morning Jo’s at 6 a.m. on Tuesdays from Jo’s Coffee on South Congress.

This interview is condensed for brevity and clarity.