Benefield: Olympian Kim Conley turns attention to marathon, coaching

It’s not every day one gets a chance to go for a run with a two-time Olympian.

But Kim Conley, who made the U.S. Olympic team in 2012 and again in 2016, both in the 5,000-meter race, is back in her hometown of Santa Rosa and plans to lace up her shoes and go for a run with all-comers Wednesday, with a special invitation to her childhood coaches and kids just entering the sport.

For Conley, who in recent years has shifted her competitive sights from the track to the marathon and has just launched a coaching business, the run and talk Wednesday at Fleet Feet Santa Rosa is part homecoming, part fun run, part thank you.

“It feels like it’s coming full circle,” Conley, 37, said. “My foundation and love for this sport was laid with these coaches and the Empire Runners, having all of these role models, people that love to go out and run these local races.

Conley showed up at the last installment of the Empire Runners Summer Track Series at Montgomery High School last Tuesday evening.

“It feels right to go home and reconnect with all of these people who kind of created that for me.”

On Wednesday there will be a meet and greet reception from 5-6 p.m. for which an RSVP is requested. A 3-5 mile fun run will follow at 6 p.m. All abilities are welcome. Following the run there will be Q&A session. All events are based at Fleet Feet, 720 Third St.

“She really wanted cross country kids to be invited,” said Rhonda Roman, owner of Fleet Feet Santa Rosa. “What an opportunity for them, to meet someone who has taken her running career to that next level, and what an amazing person.”

And the run comes just as Conley is balancing her focus between training for the Olympic Marathon Trials in Florida next February and the new coaching business, Next Best Run, she launched this spring with her husband and coach, Drew Wartenburg.

It was an injury, of all things, that pushed Conley into coaching as much as she is right now.

She’s been dealing with osteitis pubis — inflammation in the joint between the left and right pubic bones — for months and it’s limited how much she can train. She dropped out of a half marathon in February and had to nix plans to race in the Netherlands this spring.

But she’s used that unwelcome down time to explore her love of running in a different way.

“It was a long-term goal, maybe post-Olympic Trials, to launch an online coaching business,” she said. “But when I pulled out of the Rotterdam Marathon it gave me something to put all my energy into.”

And the joy of coaching has buoyed her spirits, even as she’s left unable to train as she’d like.

“This is the least depressed I have ever felt during an injury,” she said. “I have another goal that I’m working on and the real relationships I have with all the people that I’m working with — I’ve been really happy.”

The coaching business has given Conley another outlet to express her love of running. And she’s pulling from lessons taught by all of the coaches she’s had, including those she grew up with locally.

“They are who shaped me,” she said. “I think back to when I was starting with Larry Meredith freshman year and I would do my long runs with Empire Runners every Sunday through my high school years. They were role models who really loved the sport.”

Meredith, and his wife Tori, coached the Montgomery Vikings for 18 and 12 years respectively. They led Conley and a team that included a senior named Sara Bei (now Hall) to the Division II CIF State Cross Country title in 2000.

Both said Conley was special from the start. A grinder who never shied away from the hardest parts of the sport.

“One thing I really love about Kimmy is she has always loved competing,” Larry Meredith said. “Even when things would go wrong or she has a bad race, she always looks forward to the next one. That is why I think she has been able to reach the heights that she has done.”

And her love for the difficulty and challenge of the sport and the people in it were apparent from the beginning, Tori Meredith said.

She remembers some early, introductory workouts when Conley was just a freshman.

“I had the kids running up (Trione-Annadel State Park’s) Cobblestone (trail) one morning and I was like, ‘Oh, you can run a little, just slowly, but you don’t have to really push it really hard, you can walk. And she was like ‘Nope, I’m going to conquer this hill,’” she said. “She was tough. She had fun, she enjoyed what she was doing, but you’d tell her what you wanted her to do and she’d do it.”

That toughness is leading the transition from track to a race Conley considers much trickier — the marathon.

“It’s a puzzle,” she said.

And she’s still finding her way in it.

She clocked a 2:35:43 at the Twin Cities Marathon in Minnesota last fall, enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials in February, but not enough to leave her satisfied.

“On paper I have no business trying to compete with Keira (D’Amato) and Emily Sisson but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to go to the Olympic Trials,” she said. “I believe I have a better marathon in me than I have done.”

D’Amato, 38, on July 1 broke Sisson’s American record for the half marathon (a title briefly held by Conley’s former Montgomery teammate Sara Hall). It was Sisson, 31, of course, who dethroned D’Amato as the fastest female American marathoner ever when she ran a 2:18:29 in Chicago last fall.

Everyone just keeps getting faster.

“It’s amazing,” Conley said. “The sport is in a very different place today than 10 years ago. It’s exciting to watch and I have fun seeing what Keira or Emily Sisson might do six months from now or maybe even six weeks from now.”

So aside from the shakeout run she’ll do on the streets of Santa Rosa on Wednesday, Conley has her sights set on a 5K in San Francisco in September.

After so many months of not competing, launching into a short, super fast race, is, well, going to hurt, she said.

“It’s going to be like ripping a Band-Aid off,” she said. “I think it will hurt a lot but sometimes that is really good for you to put yourself into the pain.”

And it’s all with an eye toward building toward the marathon trials in February.

“I just have to try to be the best version of me and see what that leads to. That is the intriguing part of the marathon, anything can happen.”

And meantime, she’ll continue to grow her coaching business and guide folks of all speeds — the marathoners trying to qualify for Boston and those trying to break four hours.

Or some who want to rip off a fast 5K.

Experiencing the highs and lows of the sport she loves so has helped her translate that into coaching, Conley said.

And it’s helped her see a future in running that she didn’t always expect.

“It used to feel much more binary — I’m either an elite athlete and one day I’ll retire and that will be that. Now I don’t know what it means to retire,” she said. “I work with people who love what they are doing and race and continue to race.

“It’s broadened by sight lines on what it means to be a runner and part of the running community.”

And that feeling of community, a deep love of running, was born on the streets and trails of Santa Rosa.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.