University of Illinois Springfield cross country and track and field head coach Tyler Pence will compete in the USA Olympic Team Trials this Saturday in the marathon event. The competition will start at 11 a.m. (central) in Atlanta, GA., and can be seen on NBC.

The men’s marathon race is expected to have 238 runners in it. The top three runners to finish will earn a spot on the USA Olympic Team, which will compete in Tokyo this summer.

The race will feature an eight-mile loop that the runners will do two times. After doing most of that loop a third time, the event will then have a three-mile final loop that runs under the Rings and Torches structure from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and passes by several of the professional athletics facilities in downtown Atlanta. The race will then conclude at Centennial Olympic Park.

Pence qualified for the event in 2018 at the California International Marathon in Sacramento, Calif. At that event, he ran a time of two hours, 15 minutes, 36 seconds, a pace of 5:11 per mile. He finished 17th overall at that competition.

Pence was named the UIS head coach last summer, after serving as the assistant coach for the previous three seasons. Pence, a Springfield, Ill. native and a Springfield High School alumni, was a two-time NCAA Division II national champion at Southern Indiana, and won nine All-American awards in college.