The Fisherman and the Finish Line: How 17-Year-Old Collin Moore's Patience Led to a 2:43:46 Marathon Debut

A fisherman and a marathoner are, in the end, the same person. Both spend most of their day doing nothing dramatic. Both wait. Both trust that the work going on under the surface — the line, the heart rate, the back muscles, the next mile — will hold. The dramatic part is almost always the last few minutes.

Seventeen-year-old Collin Moore of Ocala has been fishing for as long as he's been running, which, by his own first-day-of-practice testimony, was before he could walk. On Saturday, May 31, 2026, at the Carmel Marathon in Carmel, Indiana, he showed what happens when a kid with a fisherman's patience finally gets to throw a marathon line in the water.

His debut at 26.2 miles: 2:43:46. Course record for his age group. Boston Marathon qualifier in hand. First try.



It is the kind of debut that doesn't happen by accident. It happens after years of quiet, disciplined work — and, in Collin's case, after a long stretch when no one was sure he'd be able to race at all.

The Kid Who Could Run Before He Could Walk

Collin has been a member of the Ocala Distance Project for about eight years — most of his life as a runner — under coach Darrin DeTorres. The first thing he ever told his coach, at the very first practice, was that he was able to run before he could walk.

For most kids that's a throwaway line. For Collin, it has held up.

A Junior, About to Be a Senior, With a Full Plate

Collin just wrapped up his junior year of high school. Senior year starts in August. In the meantime — summer break — his calendar is anything but quiet. On any given day he splits his time between:

- Running 50–70 miles a week.
- Helping his dad run an epoxy flooring company — a real, invoice-sending, customer-on-Saturday-morning kind of business.
- Spending time with his girlfriend.
- And, whenever there's daylight left, fishing — usually somewhere on Florida's east coast, near where his grandparents live.

Come fall, school gets added back to the top of that list. For now, the schedule belongs to miles, jobs, and fish.

That last detail — the fishing — is the one that explains everything else.

The Patience That Built the Runner

Fishing teaches a particular kind of discipline. You don't get to control whether the fish bites; you only get to control the things that make a bite more likely — your line, your spot, your patience. The runners who do well at the marathon distance have the same temperament. They cannot make the race faster by trying harder on a Tuesday. They can only put in the right work, day after day, and trust the line.

The discipline mattered, because Collin's body has demanded it for years.

The Middle-School Talent

As a middle-school athlete, Collin was one of the most promising rising distance runners in the state of Florida. As a 7th grader he ran 9:52 for the indoor 3K — a time that ranked him nationally for the season. It was the kind of result that puts a name on recruiting boards years before high school graduation.

That same race, however, caused a back injury that had his family thinking he might never run competitively again.

A Strange, Specific Limit

Through months of trial and frustration — between the Moore family and his coach — they figured out exactly where the line was. Collin could run 10 miles at 5:40 pace without pain. The moment he pushed faster than 5:30 per mile, his back would lock up and he'd be down for days.

That discovery was both bad news and good news. The bad news: 17:40 for 5K — what an honest tempo effort looks like at 5:40 pace — isn't competitive at the high school varsity level. His high school running career, on a 5K-focused track and cross-country calendar, never quite took off.

The good news: that exact same engine, dialed in at a tempo he could repeat for hours, is the engine of a road marathoner.

If you can't sprint, you wait. If you wait long enough, eventually you find the distance the engine was built for.

Where He Started to Excel

Once the family and his coach leaned into longer distances, Collin started stacking results. He has been the top finisher in his age group at Gate River Run every year he's competed — except this year, where he treated the race as a workout and still finished within seven seconds of winning his age group.

As a 16-year-old, Collin finished 6th overall and won his age group at the Boston Distance Medley, a year-long series spanning a 5K, 10K, and half marathon. His splits across the series:



The detail that mattered most: his half-marathon mile average was only three seconds slower than his 10K average. For a 16-year-old, that kind of fade-resistance over longer distances is the fingerprint of a marathoner.

The Plan: Boston Qualifier, Sub-2:50

His father, William Moore, and his coach, Darrin DeTorres, said it was time to find out what Collin could do over 26.2 miles. Collin agreed. The target was big but reasonable: a Boston Marathon qualifier and a sub-2:50 marathon.

Training was built around the same hard-won lesson from middle school — never push the back. Collin ran 50–70 miles per week, most of it solo, with his dad riding a bike alongside on long runs and his coach calibrating the workouts. Roughly 90% of his runs were done alone, almost all of them easy, with a workout going in only once every two to three weeks.

A handful of weekends he got to share miles with Adam Truesdale — a longtime Marion County runner who has gone under three hours in the marathon on multiple occasions, and who has also worked with Collin on the strength training and endurance base that quietly does a lot of the heavy lifting in a marathon build. The kind of training partner you don't replace, and the kind of mentor a 17-year-old marathon debut benefits from in ways that don't show up in the splits sheet.

A Postponement and a 5K Win Along the Way

Race weekend was originally scheduled for April 18. Weather forced the Carmel Marathon to postpone to May 31. The family treated it as a gift of extra training time. In the gap, Collin jumped into the Ocala Cup 5K on April 25 and won it outright in 17:21. The speed cost him a few days off afterward — the back reminded him, again, where the line was — but the engine was clearly ready.

Race Day in Carmel

The result is the headline: 2:43:46 in his first-ever marathon, as a 17-year-old, breaking the Carmel Marathon's course record for his age group and clearing the Boston Marathon qualifying standard with significant room to spare.

For context, the men's BQ standard for the 18-and-under age group is 3:00:00. Collin took more than sixteen minutes off that line on his first try at the distance.

What This Says About What's Next

Marathon debuts at 17 are rare. Marathon debuts at 17 that come in under 2:45 — without an injury history, let alone with one — are rarer still. The math of Collin's training (50–70 mile weeks, mostly easy, mostly solo) and his racing history (a half-marathon pace barely off his 10K pace) point at a runner whose ceiling at the marathon is much higher than this debut.

Today's race answered the question that's been hanging over the Moore household since 7th grade: is he still a runner?

The answer was a resounding yes.

And, in keeping with the rest of his life, Collin's plan for the rest of the weekend was probably the most fitting thing about the whole story: cool down, hydrate, get back to Florida, enjoy the rest of summer break before senior year starts in August, knock out a few epoxy jobs with his dad, see his girlfriend, and — when the schedule allows — drive east, find some water, and throw a line in.

The fisherman went and got his finish line.

Help Us Congratulate Collin

If you see Collin out on the roads around Ocala — usually solo, usually at a pace that looks suspiciously easy — give him a wave. Marion County's running community just gained a marathoner. And, in all likelihood, a Boston starter for next spring.

Frequently Asked Questions

For more on Marion County's running scene, see our guide to the best 5K races in Ocala, the Ocala running guide, and the full Only In Ocala events calendar.