elicia Pasadyn ’22 is one of the greatest swimmers in Harvard’s program history. During her time in Cambridge, the Hinckley, Ohio, native won 10 Ivy League titles, was named to 12 All-Ivy League teams, set five of the school’s all-time records, and qualified for five events in the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials.

In 2028, Pasadyn will return to the Olympic Trials… for the marathon.

She qualified while in the midst of getting her MD at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine.

Pasadyn’s situation is certainly unique as she continues to strive for a future in both medicine and professional athletics.

“I don’t know of a salaried, signed professional runner who is also a medical doctor,” Pasadyn noted.

“But there was also a time when I didn’t think I could train for the Boston Marathon and do clinical rotations at the same time, and I did that,” she added. “So I think I’ll just have to take it as it comes.”

Pasadyn was a top athlete at Brunswick High School, where she was also the valedictorian of the class of 2019. She was recruited for both swimming and cross country by top programs throughout the country.

After suffering an injury during cross-country season, Pasadyn felt that swimming would be the best sport to pursue in her collegiate career.

“I loved the sport,” she said. “I felt like I was on a very positive upward trajectory and felt like I had a lot more potential to see through.”

Ultimately, it was the combination of athletic and academic opportunities that drew her toward Cambridge.

“I just felt at home,” Pasadyn said. “I felt that the women on the team had a great balance of caring about the whole person, having fun, and really putting friendship first, but also driving each other to be better at our academics and swim goals.”

Pasadyn committed to Harvard during her junior year of high school and arrived on campus in the fall of 2019. The decision to don a Crimson jersey, she says, made both her athletic and medical careers achievable.

“I don’t think I can thank Harvard enough for making me the strongest version of Felicia that I could possibly be,” she said. “There was only one way to complete double swim practices, break school records, and get the most out of the academic rigors of the university. And that way was to be efficient, and to do everything with intention and purpose.”

“I don’t want to say it made medical school plus training as a pro marathon runner easy; by no means has it been easy,” she added. “But it trained me to normalize a day that’s very intentional, busy, and packed, and to also make it fulfilling and sustainable as well.”

Beginning her freshman year, it became apparent that Pasadyn would become one of the all-time greats for Harvard swim.

In her rookie season, she won seven Ivy League titles, qualified for the NCAA Championships, and won the team’s Outstanding First-Year Award, culminating in her qualification for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials in five different events.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and both the NCAA Championships and Olympic Trials were cancelled.

“I’m not gonna lie, it was miserable,” she said. “The pandemic took everything I loved about the sport—teammates, social time, trying to achieve a group goal, preparing for relays, competing at meets against other Ivy League schools—and just left the black line and the social isolation that is putting your face in the water. And that was hard.”

“But it made the hunger to come back senior year and lead my team to an Ivy League title even stronger,” she added. “We gave it our all, and we ended up walking away with a team title, and I got to actually represent Harvard at NCAAs, finally. So, it did ruin some of my sophomore year swim goals, but it made us much more thankful, grounded, humble, and united.”

The pandemic ultimately swayed the two-time First Team Scholar All-American to take a huge leap towards her medical career.

“When we were doing Harvard from home, I had a really hard time wrapping my mind around paying for a university when I was basically self-teaching,” Pasadyn said. “I treasured every moment there, but I had missed so many wonderful parts of Harvard, and it just didn’t feel right.”

Pasadyn chose to graduate in 2022, a year early, and enroll at the Ohio State University.

“I began looking for a potential opportunity to get a master’s degree before medical school,” she said. “I had been doing some research in bioethics and really fell in love with that area, and Ohio State was willing to pay for my degree. So it was financial, that I really do love bioethics, and I was able to swim for a Big Ten [program].”

“But it absolutely had nothing to do with not liking Harvard because I treasured every moment there,” she added.

Pasadyn proceeded to win the Big Ten title in the 400-meter individual medley for the Buckeyes, while also placing in the top 15 in multiple events at the NCAA Championships.

Even with a rigorous academic and athletic schedule, Pasadyn also continued to pursue her passion for running throughout college.

“It never really went away,” she said. “I’ve loved running since my first 5K at nine years old. All through Harvard and OSU, even on my off days, I would run because I just loved the sport. It was such a great way to explore the Charles River, explore MIT’s campus, just get to know Boston a bit more.”

After graduating from the Ohio State University, Pasadyn enrolled at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine to get her MD. In New York, she began to consider picking up running at a rigorous level again.

“For four years, I brewed the idea of, ‘could I maybe one day achieve a marathon?’” Pasadyn said. “So by the time my collegiate swim career ended, I started half-marathon training that exact same day.”

That training quickly turned into success at her first marathon, the 2024 Revel White Mountains Marathon in New Hampshire.

“I was a first-year medical student at the time,” Pasadyn said. “I completed a very competitive time of 2:49:00, and qualified for Boston by 41 minutes.”

That success drove her to push even harder.

“This training block felt sustainable,” She observed. “Challenging, but sustainable. When the Olympic Trial qualifying standards came out, a little piece of me thought, if I take this even more seriously, I could achieve that sub-2:37:00. I thought I could even ramp it up a bit, and really make something of this whole running thing.”

That meant that Pasadyn intentionally built her schedule to maximize every part of her day.

“Medical school has me waking up about three hours before I have to be in,” Pasadyn said. “If that’s at 7 a.m., I wake up at 4. I get about two and a half hours in the gym, and then I go to either lectures or clinicals all day long. I come home anytime between 4 and 7 p.m., and try to fit in a FaceTime home with my family, something with a friend, and then fueling appropriately and packing for the next day.”

Included in that was prioritizing sleep, which is often an unfamiliar sentiment in Cambridge.

“I try to always rely on nine to nine and a half hours of sleep,” Pasadyn said. “That’s the single thing that is able to recharge my body so that I can compete and academically perform at a high level.”

Her schedule was daunting, to say the least.

“I try to do more normal people things on the weekends,” she added.

The hard work all paid off when Pasadyn finished the 2025 TCS New York City Marathon with a time of 2:35:00, enough to qualify for the 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

“I think about that 16-year-old girl with a stress fracture who was told she couldn’t run,” she said. “When something is taken away, you want it more than ever. So I run with gratitude every day since recovery from that.”

Pasadyn received even more good news this past March, when she learned she had matched with both of her top two programs. Next year, she will be a first-year resident doctor completing a transitional year at UF Gainesville, and from 2027 to 2031, she will complete a four-year radiology residency at the Cleveland Clinic.

That radiology residency will notably overlap with the 2028 Olympic qualifiers, complicating Pasadyn’s training routine.

“My hope is I’ll take advantage of the months during residency that are a bit more relaxed and try to do heavier training blocks then,” she said. “During the months when I’m working six twelve-hour shifts, and maybe the ICU, each week, it’s very intense. I might do something a bit more relaxed.”

“But I will be absolutely training,” she added.

When it comes down to it, however, Pasadyn will always put medicine and the lives of others first.

“I think a lot about my original inspiration to go into medicine,” she said. “I had an uncle who passed away from ALS, and I think my family and I were faced with the cruelty of incurable diseases.”

“We all know people in our lives who, unfortunately, have been diagnosed with something, and even medicine isn’t enough, but you remember the physicians who were part of the care team that diagnosed that thing on that chest x-ray, or said that this was going to be the treatment plan for chemo, or helped when palliative care and hospice services were involved. To provide that comfort in the most vulnerable part of a patient’s life, I think, is a continual reminder of how fulfilling medicine is for me.”

“At the end of the day, medicine is the most important to me,” Pasadyn concluded. “Running isn’t forever; there are injuries. But medicine is. As long as my brain is intact, I think that’s going to be the most fulfilling part of my life. So I want to make sure that’s always at the forefront.”

—Staff writer Maxwell P. Friedman can be reached at [email protected].