Kara Goucher set to run first marathon in nearly three years

Kara Goucher posted on Instagram today that she’s lacing up for her first marathon in nearly three years. Goucher said, “The last time I ran a marathon was the Olympic Marathon Trials back in 2016. That day I finished 4th – only the top three went to Rio. That race completely broke me emotionally.”

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Goucher suffered several years of running injuries, and thought she might never run a marathon again. But in her post this morning, she said this morning that she’s got the urge to run again. “I have no racing requirements in my four sponsorship/partnership contacts, I no longer feel like I need to prove anything to anyone, this is just for me. For my joy of running, training hard and running the marathon.”

RELATED: Kara Goucher receives silver medal from 2007 worlds one decade later

She will run the Houston Marathon on January 20th, seven years after making her second Olympic team there. Goucher is an World Championship silver medallist in the 10,000m and has a personal best time of 2:25:53 in the marathon. She represented the USA at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic games. 

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At a medal ceremony in London during the 2017 World Championships, Goucher was handed silver from the 2007 IAAF World Championships in what the IAAF called “medal reallocations.” She finished third and moves up a spot as the second-place finisher at the time, Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegesse, was stripped of 2007-2009 results for using a banned substance, discovered in a retest.