Newfound love of running takes Pinckney grad to U.S. Olympic marathon trials

Running a marathon was the furthest thing from Jennifer Pope’s mind in early 2020, let alone qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.

She was approaching her mid-30s at the time, 16 years removed from her senior year at Pinckney High School where she was a solid runner, but by no means a star.

Pope was still running, dabbling in some occasional races, but wasn’t seriously committed to the sport. Her favorite means of staying in shape was continuing to play soccer.

“I’ve always been a runner my whole life, but I actually played more soccer,” said Pope, 37, who now lives near Dallas.

But a lot of things changed in March 2020, including Pope’s trajectory as an athlete.

“I didn’t actually fall in love with running or running competitively until the pandemic,” said Pope, who graduated from Pinckney in 2004. “The only reason was, they shut down indoor soccer arenas, so I couldn’t play. I needed some exercise. I needed to get out and do something. I started running and started doing it more and more.”

Pope’s soccer fitness translated nicely to distance running. She began to wonder if she could run a sub-three-hour marathon, an ambitious goal for most recreational runners.

Less than two years later, after blowing away that goal by running 2 hours, 43 minutes, 39 seconds at the 2022 Houston Marathon, Pope started to harbor more audacious dreams.

As a novice racing the 26.2-mile distance, she was on track for the 2-hour, 37-minute standard needed to qualify for the Olympic Team Trials, which determine the marathoners who will run for the United States in the Summer Olympics.

“I started to realize, ‘Gosh, I’m actually pretty good at this,’” Pope said.

She came agonizingly close during her next attempt, missing by 15 seconds on a windy and humid day — but even in that “failed” attempt she finished first out of 1,813 women in the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on Nov. 5, 2022.

Pope targeted a return to Houston nearly two months later. She punched her ticket to the Trials by running 2:36:38.

“I was on top of the world at that point,” she said. “It’s amazing. I hit the time.”

The Trials were held Feb. 3 in Orlando, but arriving healthy became Pope's biggest challenge.

She battled injuries throughout her three-month training cycle, beginning with plantar fasciitis. Once that injury was under control, she developed tendonitis in her hamstring.

A month before the Trials, while doing a 24-mile training run in the dark, she stumbled on a curb and bloodied both knees.

“At that moment, I said, ‘I think I’m hobby-jogging this marathon. I don’t think it’s meant to be a race for me,’” she said. “I battled so many things from day one to get there.”

She got closer to hitting her prescribed paces in training about three weeks out, but now it was time to back off the distance and intensity and taper for the marathon.

“It was incredible, the hospitality during the event,” she said. “It made me kind of feel like a celebrity from the moment they meet you at sign-up off the plane, from all the meals and goodies and gift bags. It was really incredible, just unforgettable, how much work they put into it."

Pope decided to start the race running her normal pace, in hopes she could ride the momentum of race-day magic. She was averaging 5 minutes, 56 seconds per mile through nine miles before slowing down a bit and placing 89 out of 117 finishers with a time of 2:43:55. She averaged 6:16 per mile. Another 32 runners who started the race didn’t finish.

“I hit the wall around mile 18, which is where a lot of people hit the wall with a lack of fitness,” she said. “Looking at my watch, you feel like you’re working harder and harder, yet your paces are getting slower and slower. You’re giving so much effort. I was still passing people. That kept me mentally in it. I started to realize everyone was falling off. So, at that point, I figured maybe it’s not so much my fitness; it’s happening to everyone in the heat.”

In high school, Pope seemed an unlikely candidate for such a major event.

She qualified for one state meet in Pinckney with an 11th-place finish at regionals with a time of 20:15 as a sophomore in 2001. Pope was 185 out of 229 finishers in the state meet at 21:32.3.

“It was social,” Pope said. “I enjoyed it. I loved doing it. But I think I loved doing it more because of the people. We had a good group of girls I enjoyed hanging out with. We helped motivate each other. A lot of times, it was more about the social aspect than the actual running.

“It’s one of those things where I look back and did I run at my full potential in high school or did I not take it seriously? You never know what my full potential was."

— Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on X @BillKhan.

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Newfound love of running takes Pinckney grad to U.S. Olympic marathon trials