AUDACIOUS GOAL
Jorgensen reaching for marathon gold in Tokyo Games
The idea was percolating months before she won the women’s triathlon at the 2016 Olympic Games and cemented her status as the greatest American triathlete in history.
She had been the sport’s dominant star for three years; nobody was going to beat her in Rio. But what few knew was that Gwen Jorgensen had tired of triathlon. She dreaded getting into the pool to train. She needed a new challenge.
So, long before she lowered her head and had the gold medal placed around her neck on famed Copacabana Beach, Jorgensen was concocting a plan.
The Waukesha native vowed to reach the top of the podium again in Tokyo in 2020.
This time, in the marathon.
“I set out to achieve a goal to win gold and I did that,” she said. “To come back and do the same thing didn’t excite me. I love running. That’s my passion.”
She’d run in college at the University of Wisconsin and, of course, had trained for the running leg of the triathlon. But this was something altogether different. Unlike elite marathoners, Jorgensen didn’t have thousands of miles in her legs. She’d never trained for a marathon, had never run more than 40 miles in a week. After giving birth to a son, Stanley, in August 2017, she would have less than three years to make up all that ground.
Audacious? That’s putting it mildly. To follow triathlon gold with marathon gold would be one of the great feats in Olympic history. Let’s just say there are non-believers. Robert Johnson, co-founder of letsrun.com, wrote in April that Jorgensen had “zero chance” to win the marathon in Tokyo.
I don’t know Robert Johnson, but I’m betting he doesn’t know Gwen Jorgensen. I do, and I would never say she has “zero chance” to do anything. Everything about her says champion, from her work ethic to her
determination to her mental toughness.
But why put it out there? Just making the 2020 U.S. Olympic team in the marathon would be an incredible achievement. Why say you’re shooting for gold in a race you’ll have run only a couple times?
“For me, it definitely holds me accountable,” Jorgensen said from Mammoth Lakes, Calif., where she is training. “I think it’s good to put your goals out there. When I say a big goal, it’s out in the universe, it holds me accountable, it holds the people around me accountable as well.
“I know if I was in the Olympic marathon tomorrow there is no way I would win. I’m not naive in that sense. I have all these people supporting me and I have a year and a half to get ready (for the U.S. marathon team trials, scheduled for Feb. 29, 2020).”
Some would say that’s not nearly enough time for Jorgensen, 32, to completely recondition her body for the 26.2-mile distance, especially so soon after a difficult childbirth. Stanley arrived two weeks late and weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces.
“It was a little more traumatic than I expected,” Jorgensen said. “I think I’m still getting my body back. I had to do a lot of pelvic floor work. My transverse abdominal had shut down. It’s such a little muscle that nobody even thinks of but if that’s not firing you’re not going to be able to run well.”
She’s in a different kind of race now – a race against time. She must ramp up her miles but do it in a way that minimizes injury risk. Any significant setback would be disastrous, so she is hyper-focused on every aspect of her training and admits she would have no chance to reach her goal without the support of her husband, former professional cyclist Patrick Lemieux.
A year before the Rio Games, Jorgensen called her old college coach, Jerry Schumacher, and told him she had a “crazy idea” to pursue running. Later, she confided in him that her goal was to win marathon gold in Tokyo. Intrigued by her potential, Schumacher agreed to coach her but made no promises that he could get her to the top of the podium.
Jorgensen joined the Bowerman Track Club, which includes 2017 New York City Marathon winner Shalane Flanagan and former world championship bronze medalist Amy HastingsCragg.
“I wanted to be surrounded by the best marathoners in the world,” she said.
“Actually, there’s eight or 10 of us. They have been incredibly open and welcoming and willing to help me on this journey. They’re some of the most selfless women in that regard.”
Jorgensen has so far run exactly one marathon. Weeks after winning gold in Rio she ran in the 2016 New York City Marathon and finished 14th among elite women, despite having done no marathon-specific training.
Earlier this year, she won the 10,000 meters at the Stanford Invitational in 31 minutes 55.68 seconds, shaving nearly two minutes off her personal best, set nearly a decade earlier at UW. Afterward, she was taken aback somewhat by people who weren’t wowed by her time.
“I raced for the win,” she said. “I thought it was interesting because in triathlon nobody cared about times but in the running world everybody cares about your time.”
Last month, Jorgensen made her half-marathon debut and finished fourth at the USATF Half-Marathon Championships in Pittsburgh.
“I thought I was going to be able to perform better than that,” she said. “But I realized that I’m competing against a lot of women who have been running 70 to 100-plus miles a week for years. I just don’t have those miles in my legs. At the time I was up to 80, 85 miles a week.”
She doesn’t yet have a marathon penciled in on her 2018 schedule. Schumacher wants her running 120 miles a week and sustaining that mileage before she tries another one, perhaps in the fall.
There are plenty who doubt Jorgensen can become the first American woman to win the Olympic marathon since Joan Benoit Samuelson in 1984.
But those who sell her short fail to take one thing into account: Her whole career has been about getting to the finish line first.