Over the past several years, Park City resident Keira D’Amato has made a name for herself in the running world: she set the American record for the marathon in 2022, and the American record for the half-marathon in 2023.
D’Amato followed an unconventional path to a professional running career. After competing in college, she took eight years off from the sport before gradually returning to running as a new mom.
“I started with a three-minute run, thinking that that would be a low enough goal to get me out the door,” she said in an interview with KPCW. “I made it 90 seconds, and I stopped and I cried.”
But she kept at it and slowly built her mileage. Within a few years, she was running faster than ever.
“It was actually five years and about four months after my 90-second run [that] I broke the American record in the marathon,” she said.
D’Amato moved to Park City last year to join an elite training group in Provo, reaping the aerobic benefits of living at 7,000 feet and training at lower elevation.
Her memoir, “Don’t Call It a Comeback,” which she cowrote with journalist Evelyn Spence, was published in September.
It chronicles her return to running, and how her time away from the sport set her up to succeed. Her career and family put the sport in perspective, and she wasn’t afraid to fail. Even with a different mindset, though, she says it wasn’t easy to line up alongside other elite runners.
“I showed up to all these races, and I felt like an imposter,” she said. “I’d be on the starting line, and I’d look at all these really intimidating women that look so fast and speedy, and I would think, ‘How do I compete with that?’”
In a sport in which many pro athletes sign contracts just out of college, D’Amato – now 41 – said she’s hoping to change the conversation for female athletes. She said her story is proof people can succeed as runners after pregnancy, alongside a full-time job, or as they age.
She got a glimpse of the impact of her story at the U.S. track and field championships in summer 2025.
“I was cooling down with a woman in her 20s, and she was like, ‘Keira, I love when you have a great race,’” she said. “She’s like, ‘Every time you have a good race, my runway gets longer.’ And I think that is such a gift to give to people, to allow people to have patience and just to see that the best is yet to come.”
D’Amato said she sometimes fills a mentor role on her new team, too, where she runs alongside women who are younger or new to the marathon.
After years of training solo in Virginia, she said it’s “magical” to have a training group in Utah, which also includes top marathoners like 2024 Olympian Conner Mantz.
“I think what I like most about this team, they’re family first,” she said. “And I think they are such humble, grounded, hardworking people.”
Park City has proven a good place for her family to land, too. D’Amato said she, along with her husband and two young children, were drawn to the community’s active, friendly culture.
“I’ve never felt so welcome in a community,” she said. “I feel like everyone’s really opened their doors to me and my family and my kids.”
D’Amato will compete in the Valencia, Spain, marathon Dec. 7.
