They might have dreamed it, but neither Adam MacDowell nor Jackie Pirtle-Hall talked of standing on the podium at the Olympic marathon trials on Saturday in Houston.

That goal belongs to more recognizable names of distance running, such as Ryan Hall, Meb Keflezighi, Dathan Ritzenhein, Desiree Davila, Shalane Flanagan, Kara Goucher and Serena Burla, hoping to earn a spot on the U.S. team in London. Instead, the area's representatives enter with relatively modest ambitions. MacDowell hopes to set a personal best, Pirtle-Hall to meet her heroes and reconnect with a mentor, while competing with the cream of U.S. distance running.

"I'm enjoying the whole process," said Pirtle-Hall, 29. "You train hard for a chance to run with the best. Now, I've got my chance to run with all the top women, the ones that I idolized. And it will be great to see Serena."

Burla is Pirtle-Hall's former teammate, fellow running mommy and two-time runner-up in the U.S. half-marathon championships. The two met during Pirtle-Hall's two-year running stint at Missouri after a stellar career at Francis Howell North.

"I wasn't having a good time anymore," she said of her time at Missouri. "It wasn't a good fit."

She put away her spikes for good, she thought, until Burla moved to the area after graduation and improved on her All-American status at Mizzou. Pirtle-Hall decided to ease back into running, just for fitness. Then the two started running together. Pirtle-Hall lagged behind.

"She sort of got the spark back in me and believed in me. I fell back in love with it," Pirtle-Hall said. "After a while I started to be able to do workouts with her, and I got to the level where I could help her, too."

They "ran together with our big bellies" Pirtle-Hall said, through their pregnancies, then pushed strollers together once or twice a week after Pirtle-Hall's daughter, Samantha, and Burla's son, Boyd, were born a month apart in 2008.

Pirtle-Hall valued Burla's counsel to the point that she considers Burla a second coach, along with Sheldon Webster. When Burla announced that she was leaving St. Louis in October to move to Falls Church, Va., Pirtle-Hall's family was "devastated," she said. "We were in tears when they left. I'm hoping she comes back."

An ACT prep and grammar teacher at McCluer North, Pirtle-Hall missed the qualifying mark of 2 hours, 46 minutes at the Chicago Marathon but took one last chance at the California International Marathon on Dec. 4 in Sacramento, where she finished in 2:44:32.

Her body has had little time to recover, though. She said she took a week off, devoting the training time to massage and ice therapy, "everything I could do to get my body back to normal." She then endured 20 days of hard training and backed off in the hope of "running a smart race Saturday."

A math teacher, track and cross country coach at Parkway South, MacDowell has been a regular at area races, finishing second in the 2010 GO! Halloween 10K and third in last year's St. Patrick's Day Parade Run. He qualified for the Olympic trials by finishing the Chicago Marathon in 2:18:47 and gave much of the credit to his coach, Ben Rosario of Big River Running. Rosario, who competed in the trials in 2004 and 2008, paced MacDowell through the first 13 miles in Chicago.

"To have your coach and training partner help through the first half really takes the pressure off," said MacDowell, 31. "He's got it down. All I had to do was stay with him. He put in all the effort at pacing. I didn't have to think, which took all the mental pressure off. I was fresh for the last part of the race."

The trials will be just his third marathon, but he approaches it with confidence because his training has been ideal.

"Most of the time when you do a long segment, you have runs that go well and a few that don't. I haven't gotten into that situation," MacDowell said. "I haven't had any aches or pains or injury scares. I've a done a good job knowing what my body can handle and taking care of myself."

Though he hasn't thought of being one of the three runners who will represent the United States this summer in London, he'd like to set a pace of 5:15 per mile, which would give him a finishing time of 2:17:33.

"You really don't control the race, or anybody else," he said. "So much can happen around you, but you can still control your own pace."