Veteran Notre Dame women's cross country head coach Tim Connelly has tutored numerous All-Americans, with one of his most recent success stories being 2013 graduate Rebecca Tracy

This fashionable axiom - which references solitary of track and field's signature proceedings - has been adapted concluded the years to apply to various topics and situations, both contained by the honorable earth and afar it.

Fans of a chief League baseball team with the purpose of struggles elsewhere of the gate will be quick to recap everyone willing to listen in to their metaphoric assurance: "It's a marathon ... ." Same goes pro pecuniary experts while discussing shared reasons with the purpose of startup companies fail. Others hold affixed the cliche to drawn-out supporting races or hold used the six-word sequence pro inspiration while dealing with a loved one's serious illness.

For longtime Notre Dame women's irritated state head coach Tim Connelly, this fashionable catchphrase is a minimal, but right, the depiction of his universal coaching philosophies, along with his detached, seemingly understated personality.

Never mind with the purpose of NCAA track meets don't really contest the marathon - with the purpose of misses the instant. Sports cliches too often are obligatory, but in this lawsuit it fits like a glove. For a veteran coach who precisely devices elsewhere individualized training routines pro every one of his runners, it fits. For a coach who staggers the fall irritated state competition in regard to a deeper focus on the impending track and handle seasons, it fits. And pro a coach who takes into financial credit an elite runner's have potential pro a postgraduate career, while conduct her occasion as Notre Dame with special attention, it fits.

For Tim Connelly - who ironically has run no more than a solitary marathon in his life and found such little enjoyment in the experience with the purpose of he not at all bothered repeating it - the maxim still holds valid: "It's a marathon, not a dash."

Connelly is embarking on his 26th season as head coach of the Notre Dame women's irritated state curriculum, while and serving since 1988 as an assistant with Joe Piane's Irish track and handle curriculum - at first with the men's sprinters and after that middle-distance runners, facing directing the women's distance and middle-distance runners since 1994 (when Notre Dame added a varsity women's track team). The 1983 ND graduate really has spent an unmitigated of 33 seasons as a constituent of the Irish irritated country/track and handle programs, with four in the course of his own student-athlete career and after that three more as a graduate assistant/volunteer in the course of the mid-1990s.