After falling just short of a top-three finish in Sunday s 5,000-meter final at the U.S. Outdoor Track & Field Championships, Rachel Schneider finds herself headed for the world championships after all.

The 28-year-old Sanford native will be one of the three runners to represent Team USA at the IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar, later this year as U.S. women s 5,000-meter winner Shelby Houlihan will pass on that event to focus on the 1,500.

Houlihan also won the women s 1,500-meter title at last weekend s U.S. championships in Des Moines, Iowa.

Ticket punched to Doha!,” Schneider wrote in a Twitter post. After coming down with a crazy cold the week prior to USAs and still fighting with a bit of it through the race, feeling a dose of relief (along with a lot of excitement and gratitude) ”

Schneider, who now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, finished fourth in the women s 5,000 final at the U.S. championships in 15 minutes, 17.91 seconds, just 45 hundredths of a second behind third-place Elinor Purrier (15:17.46).

The former track standout at Georgetown University held the lead late in the race before being overtaken by the top three finishers, a trio led by Houlihan (15:15.50) and runner-up Karissa Schweizer (15:17.03).

But with preliminary heats at the world championships in both the 1,500 and 5,000 scheduled to start just 50 minutes apart on Oct. 2 and the finals of both events set to run back-to-back on Oct. 5, Houlihan will focus on the 1,500, leaving Schneider a spot in the 5,000.

The qualifying standard for the world championships in the women s 5,000 is 15:22.00.