University of Miami senior Cormac O’Brien is setting personal and team records and enjoying the camaraderie and connection that come from distance running—the sport he’s grown to love.

By Michael R. Malone
2-4-2025
This story originally appeared at News@TheU.

It’s taken four years and several thousand training miles, but Cormac O’Brien feels he’s finally hitting his stride. His grades are up—O’Brien has earned Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) All-Academic Team honors—and he’s looking ahead to graduation this spring.

But the stride O’Brien refers to is literal: He’s setting new records as a distance runner on the University of Miami track and field team.

“Running at the college level is a whole new game. If you’re not running a sub-four-minute mile, there’s no point,” said O’Brien. The captain of his conference champion San Diego high school cross-country team, O’Brien excelled at half mile and mile runs (800 and 1600m). As a preferred walk-on with the University squad, he soon switched to running longer distances.

“I started to bump up my distance each year, from 70 miles a week as a sophomore to 80 as a junior and then 90- and 100-mile weeks over the past summer,” he said. “And the more I ran, the more fit I felt and the more I enjoyed running. Especially this past cross-country season, I really started to find my niche and find what I’m good at. It’s taken these four years to finally show something.”

O’Brien, a media management major in the School of Communication, returned to campus this semester earlier than most to begin training with the team and readying for the start of the indoor track season in mid-January. He’s looking to build on his success from the past season.

In preparation, he’s running 15 or so miles daily or over a hundred miles a week. Up early and along with eight or nine other runners on the team, the pack runs loops up and around the Grenada Golf Course or into Coconut Grove on some days.

While his routine used to include significant stretching and close watch of his diet, as a senior he’s taking a different approach.

“This year I’m running so much, I’m just focused on eating as much as I can to get the calories in—there’s pretty much nothing that I’m avoiding,” he laughed. “And I used to live by doing lots of stretching, but I’ve eased off of that and am just letting my body recover on its own from the running.”

As a senior, he clocked a 15:34.9 in the 5K for a third-place finish at the Florida Atlantic University Cross Country Invitational and posted a new personal best of 24:07.7 in the 8K at the ACC Cross Country championships—the second fastest time in school history. At indoors, he earned a personal best time of 8:33.74 in the 3000m at the Rod McCravy Memorial Invitational.

O’Brien credits his father, Steven, and his brothers—he has a fraternal twin, Conan, and another set of twin brothers, Seamus and Sully, who are three years older—for his competitive nature and love for sports.

“I’ve played sports all throughout my life and got my athletic background from my dad, who was an all-around athlete who played safety for the University of Southern California in the mid-1970s,” O’Brien explained. “I always knew I was fast but never really thought I’d be good at long distance. Then, when I started running cross-country as a sophomore in high school, I soon realized that it was the sport that I was probably best at.”

His father’s early death of a heart attack when O’Brien was in the 7th grade and his mother’s support continue to be his biggest motivators.

“There have been so many times when I thought, ‘Wow, this is really tough.’ But my mom loves seeing me run. Though she lives and works in San Diego, she travels to my races when she can. Just hearing her cheer has always been a huge pusher for me,” O’Brien said.

This past year his mom and brothers traveled to pre-nationals in Wisconsin to cheer him on. And even when she can’t attend in person, O’Brien appreciates that she’s up hours in advance on the days of his races and texts or calls to urge him on.

While he’s excited by the progress he’s made on the track, O’Brien is just as elated that his rigorous training commitment has translated into academic improvement and even career opportunities.

“Running has definitely made me a more determined, driven, and entrepreneurial person,” he said. “It’s made me realize that if I want to be good at something, it’s going to take a lot of time.”

Influenced by one of his older brothers, O’Brien recently shifted his career focus from media management to the field of commercial real estate. Last summer he secured an internship with a firm in the San Diego area.

“The running has been a great stepping-stone and way to get my foot in the door,” he said. “I’ve been networking with people in the real estate field, especially in San Diego, and a lot of them stay active and run before work. They like hearing about my times in Miami, and it’s blossomed to help me connect with all types of people.

“Running is fun, but runners know how hard it is—and so they appreciate and have respect for others who make the commitment,” he added.

After graduation, O’Brien plans to head back to California—for work and to continue to expand his running regime. He expects to eventually get into Ironman (triathlons with swimming, cycling, and running), but will start by doing marathons.

“When I start my career in real estate, I’m just going to live by that ‘be the first one in the office or the training room and the last one out’ and just put in those extra reps,” O’Brien said. “Whether it’s running or making extra cold calls, I’ve learned you really just got to put in the time to succeed.”