High Point University alumnus Jesse Cherry placed 29th in a time of 2:16:31 in the Olympic Trials marathon last Saturday in Houston, Texas. Cherry ran for High Point from 2005-10 and now runs professionally for ZAP Fitness in Blowing Rock, N.C.
It was Cherry's first full marathon after qualifying for the Olympic Trials with his time of 1:04:52 in the San Jose Half Marathon in October. He began training for the full marathon in November, running up to 125 miles per week. He did long runs over 20 miles once every 10 days along with shorter interval workouts. His longest training run before the marathon was 28 miles.
"I was excited to join ZAP Fitness last year after taking some time off but things didn't go smoothly before I got the qualifying time," said Cherry. "Once I qualified for the Trials and started training for the marathon I finally felt like my old self. I was really excited to run a marathon and, other than the Olympics, that was one of the biggest stages I could do it on."
Cherry went out steady, aiming to finish each mile around 5:10 on pace to finish around 2:15. At some points during the race, Cherry was in over 100th place before moving up to 29th in the field of 85 finishers (several runners dropped out). The course consisted of several loops around Houston.
"I started a couple of seconds [per mile] slow, which was OK, and was going through the loops of the course easily through most of the race," said Cherry. "With five miles to go I started to feel really tired and tighten up. I could talk fine but my legs were so tired. I ran one mile in the high 5:20s but most of them were around 5:18 in the end. I wish I could have closed better."
Cherry's inexperience racing the full marathon was a disadvantage, but he's looking forward to his upcoming training and running another marathon later this year.
"I haven't been this excited about running and racing in a long time," said Cherry. "I can't wait to run another marathon, even though it will be a while. Now that I know what it feels like to run one I want to run another and crush that time."
In the upcoming months, Cherry will focus on qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the 10,000-meter in track & field. Cherry will be training with the ZAP Fitness team in Blowing Rock and Greenville, S.C. After running in several track & field races this spring and, hopefully, the Olympic Trials in late June, Cherry will likely run his second marathon in the fall.
While running for HPU, Cherry won five Big South titles in track & field and finished in the top 10 in the Big South Cross Country Championship in 2006, 2007 and 2008. He owns High Point University records in the indoor 5,000-meter (14:02.86) and outdoor 10,000-meter (28:44.05), which he set as a fifth-year senior in 2010.
