Kim Jones

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from October 1996.)

KEEPING UP WITH JONES. Kim Jones is 38 years old and the mother of two. Both daughters were born before she won her first national marathon title, in 1986. As we talked recently, she wanted to talk as much about her younger daughter as about her own running.

“Jamie ran track as a freshman this year,” said Kim. “She ran the 800 in 2:17 and made the final at the state meet. Then she got to go with me to the Track Trials in Atlanta.”

“Yes, I saw you run there,” I told her. “What inspired that?” She was typecast as a marathoner, having run in three World Championships as well as placing second at New York City twice and Boston once.

But she’d also dropped out of the last two Olympic Marathon Trials with injury and illness. Her asthma that attacks unpredictably in long races has become increasingly worrisome.

“After my disappointment in Columbia,” said Kim of the 1996 Marathon Trial, “I wanted to try something entirely different.” She dropped from the marathon on the roads in February to 5000 meters on the track in June.

“I chose this race instead of the 10,000 because I was afraid that my asthma would kick in during the 10,” she said. “The breathing problems don’t usually start for 15 minutes or so, and I could get through the 5000 in that time.”

Kim wasn’t a speedless roadie. She had been nationally ranked in the 800 in high school, but the track 5000 was a new distance to her this spring.

“I was partly doing this for the road runners,” she told me. This was her answer to track people who think that marathoners never had any turnover or had it pounded out of them by the roads.

Her daughter Jamie’s new career on the track influenced Kim’s return as well. This was a sport they could still share.

“She came within one second of what I ran in the 800 at the same age,” said the proud mom. The daughter felt great pride this summer too as she watched Kim place seventh in the Trials 5000. Few other high school athletes have ever seen a parent come this close to  making an Olympic team.

UPDATE. Later Kim Jones relocated from Washington state to Colorado and married Jon Sinclair. Her autobiography, Dandelion Growing Wild, reveals details about her difficult early life that few runners would be willing to share.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]