Mia Brahe-Pedersen

Lake Oswego, OR, c/o 2024
AthleticNET Bio

As a sophomore, Mia Brahe-Pedersen showed a hint of what was to be as she raced to a windy second place finishes in the 100m, 11.09(+2.7) and  200m, 22.98(-0.6) personal bests at the ‘22 USATF U20 meet. So it didn’t come as a surprise that this past year she would build on that. The year could not have possibly gone any better  Yet, it did bring with it unexpected challenges and opportunities.

Initially, she was a soccer player and a very decent one at that. She played forward and left mid as her team took advantage of her speed.

“ I played  forward and left mid, so I had a lot of running to do,” she says of those soccer years. “ And my coaches and all my teammates that I had over the years adapted different plays for us surrounding my speed. This was before we even started track or thought of even doing track. They realized that I was really fast and we developed a lot of plays around that.”

She picked up track in the sixth grade looking to improve that speed and for fun. In soccer, her speed was one that brought double, triple and quadruple team coverage. She balanced the two sports and on weekends she would sometimes have a track meet and games.

She was a “sturdy” build, but the attention she drew from other teams always made her nervous.

“ The part that really made me nervous was I realized how often I was targeted because if you can't beat someone fairly often people resort to being unfair and playing dirty, so I was fouled quite often.  I have been a very solid kid ever since I was little, so the fact that I was getting pushed around like that was not a good sign. And like you said I would be quadruple teamed, and people would just resort to being dirty and it was just a matter of time until I got hurt.”

A couple of factors steered her to running track solely; (1) she just fell in love with track at the end of the season; and (2) her father, Chris, came home from refereeing a game with news that one of her friends had torn her ACL.

“ He came home from refereeing a soccer game and told me about how one of my friends who was playing in that soccer game had torn her ACL in a completely legal way. There was no foul involved. She played the same position as me. In that moment, that scared the life out of me. I could not imagine getting hurt playing soccer and then having to just give up track and soccer but little me was concerned about track mostly. So I decided that would be my last season. So in seventh grade, I finished off with my club team. We made it to the state finals. We got second place, unfortunately. After that last game I was like ‘I'm gonna focus on track’ and I never looked back. Sometimes I do miss it, but I can't say that I regret it.”

Her early years were marred by a tragedy outside of track that she commemorates with a Gecko tattoo inside her left forearm. It is something she cherishes and feels has provided closure to a  childhood friend who lost his life at a very early age.

She was a “happy kid” growing up in Lake Oswego. One day when she was six years old, she noticed a new student, Thomas Graham, on her bus. He was older and had just arrived from Holland. She and her classmates asked him if he wanted to sit with them. She continues the story:

“ And he was like,’Yeah.’ So he sat with us and everything just kind of went on from there. I think I probably invited him to my birthday party or something. I don't even know how it went down. But our families got in touch through one of our hangouts and  our friendship just blossomed from there. His parents are now my godparents. He was my best friend in a brother way. I looked up to him a lot and he really looked after me and kind of cared for me. He never made me feel like I was like a stupid little girl just trying to be friends with him. It was definitely like a brother sister relationship because he was always caring for me. And he would invite me to do things. We were just always around each other doing everything together. It was really a special bond.”

Thomas and his mother were driving home one night when a tree limb fell on their vehicle. He died at the scene. He was 11 at the time and it fell hard on Mia. The tattoo was her idea. Thomas was a reptile enthusiast and each day would arrive to class with a new fact about a reptile to tell his teacher. He had a snake and she asked if she could have a snake for her tattoo, but her mother didn’t like that idea and she settled for the Gecko tattoo, “ the next best thing”.

“ I got this tattoo in January of 2022 right after my 16th birthday. My parents were there with me the whole time. They were on board with it just because of the whole meaning behind it. I'm super appreciative because they've known that I wanted to do that for quite a few years. It was a really special moment and honestly it was kind of surreal. For the first time in a really long time, I felt like he was really with me. Because coping with something like that when you're so young is very difficult and I feel like I never really did that properly. When I finally got the tattoo, I felt like I was able to finally cope with that and kind of heal. Now I know that he's with me through everything. And part of me just kind of wanted to get it because I'm really close with his family still. And I think it was really sad that they never really got to see him grow up and do all the great things that he inevitably would have done. I think having him with me and a part of his energy on me at all times while I'm doing these amazing things and traveling the world, it's special. I know it's something that he would have wanted to watch and to witness and arguably he could have done better things.”

This past season the opportunities came a knockin sooner than she expected. She had learned that the NIL deals were legal in October or November in Oregon, but she didn’t let that influence her. She was preparing for the upcoming season. Interest started to grow when she won the 100 m in 11.08(+0.1) at the Secure Summit Invitational on May 6 against a field that included boys.

“ I had picked up a lot of attention after that race. It was very early in the season. My dad was like, Okay, I don't want you going through all this, getting all this attention and stuff and not being able to really benefit other than just having attention and eyes on me. He did a lot of research and got me an agent, Ray Flynn. And within a couple of weeks he got me a meeting with Nike, and I just kind of went on from there. Within about  a month or so of actually talking with Nike, we had a deal.”

The deal was the first of its kind for a high schooler. The attention she was getting before the NIL deal is something she has had to cope with and she has done her best to deal with it. She originally sought to be as fast a runner that she could be and with her progress, the opportunities and scrutiny have come. She welcomes the opportunities, but it is a process that she is still familiarizing herself with and negotiating how she balances her public and private life.

“ Deep down, all I really wanted to be was a fast runner. All of this attention kind of comes along with it whether or not it's good or bad. It kind of depends on where I'm at what I'm trying to do. If I'm tired and stuff, at the end of the meet, or it's just been a long day or long season, the last thing I want is to go on my phone and have to respond to certain DMS or emails about different interviews and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, honestly, it's a good problem to have at the end of the day, because it's opened up so many opportunities for me that I wouldn't have otherwise. I think young me would have been very proud of how I've been handling it. And also would have been very grateful for the people who I've had along the way who have helped me handle it. It's definitely been a learning process, kind of learning how to handle attention and navigate interviews, and have a good face for the public and a face that people would want to sponsor and all that. But I think it's been a lot of fun. And I've really, I've really appreciated all the opportunities that I've gotten.” 

Training wise, she has been working with John Parks and  Olympian Ryan Bailey. The two have been working on her backside mechanics, strength and nutrition and all facets to try and make her faster.

“ I'm not really strong enough to be going as fast as I'm going so I really shouldn't be running as fast as I am or shouldn't be able to run as fast as I am with the weaknesses that I have. But somehow my body finds a way.”

This past year was the first where Parks worked with improving her strength. The goal was to develop her core, quads, and hamstrings to help with her technique, especially her backside mechanics. As she explains it:

“ You're supposed to have a slight forward lean when you're sprinting. I just stay extended and really straight in my back leg which you don't get much power from a straight leg. If you tried jumping your legs completely straight, you're not going to get anything. I'm trying not to have any wasted motion in the back because that will lead me to come up and have my heel almost kicking my butt rather than coming almost like straight up underneath me and just kind of smoothly coming into the cycle. Because if you're coming back and coming up and kicking your butt, it becomes a very choppy cycle and you have a lot of wasted time, motion and power from doing that. So it's just kind of something you have to repetitively work on. It's very, very, very tedious. It all happens within a few 1000ths of a second. Sometimes it gets on my nerves.” 

The weight training has come with some negatives which she has had to combat. She puts on muscle mass very easily with the weight training so she has to be careful what she does in the weight room. To reduce the chances of her increasing her muscle mass, she lifts a heavy amount of weights so she reaches hypertrophy quickly. Her movements are also quick and explosive to mimic what she experiences on the track. She also has troubles with her knees because her hamstrings are so weak causing stress on her knees. “It’s a mess,” she says. 

At 5-10, 150ish, she says she plans to lean up as carrying more weight affects how fast she can run. 

“ Last year, we really focused on trying to get the weight as heavy as possible without having to put on any weight. And that's a very common thing to a lot of track athletes because we want to carry the least amount of mass on the track. And that's something that I've really struggled with, because I put on muscle really, really easily. Part of that is just my eating in general. I've got to work on that a bit. But I think I've struggled a lot with putting on too much muscle and that kind of gets masked because I'm quite tall and quite lanky so it doesn't look like a lot of muscle mass. But I've gained a lot of weight through weightlifting and that's just not been good for me. So his goal for me last season and this coming season even more so is to be able to lift as much weight as possible, just without putting one on the weight.” 

Her arm action is something that has been problematic as well. At the end of the season she  received therapy and had tape on her shoulder. The problem came as a result of the speed sessions she had towards the end of her season and limited her somewhat when she made the finals for the Toyota USATF Championships.

“ Mostly it was just overuse. I was training a lot and was doing a lot of full speed stuff. My shoulder blade was kind of stuck and it was pulling on my bicep muscle which caused a lot of tension. I just had a lot of pain and a lot of weakness in the front of my shoulder, which was obviously the worst time and because it was at USAs.  A lot of people really compliment me on my arm mechanics and how strong my shoulders are and how they helped me get down the track and it's definitely one of my strengths and something I always try to utilize. The fact that I wasn't able to really use one of my biggest strengths and I still made it that far through that weekend I was very proud of myself but I was frustrated at the same time. I was like ‘What could I have done if I was healthy?’”

This upcoming season she plans to work on her strength in the fall and then open up with some meets in January and then the outdoor season. She’s looking forward to the results as she has a lot of room for improvement.

“ My coach John Parks' says that I’ll probably get the majority of my improvement from weight training because I’m at 20% of my strength right now. And that's super exciting for us. I'm going to try and make some big moves this fall. I'm really excited for next year. It should be a very historic season.”