Hey everyone, I'm Coach James! At 32 years old I have been running competitively for more than half my life and coaching for about the last 10 years.

As many others, I found running through other sports growing up (soccer being my favorite), and found out that one of the biggest reasons I was successful at any of them was largely due to the fact that I, as my coach put it, “could run forever – you never needed a sub, I just made sure you got some water and Gatorade at halftime.”

As a Kansas native, it was a dream of mine to run for the University of Kansas. The historic KU Relays was as close to the big time as you could get as a high school athlete. From 2010-2015, I was fortunate enough to wear the crimson and blue, bearing KANSAS across my chest; however, my college career didn’t go exactly as I had hoped.

Fortunately, I ended things on a high note and huge upswing my 5th year, setting Personal Bests by more than 30s in both the 5,000m, and 10,000m on the track and qualifying for the opening round of the NCAA Championships for my first time.

One of the beautiful things about running is that your career doesn’t have to come to an end at the same time as your academic time. After KU, I spent time as the Graduate Assistant Coach at the University of Tulsa while training for my first marathon in 2017. I have run 3 marathons including the 2020 Olympic Trials and love competition.

Since then, I have worked in and around the running industry in just about every way possible. I was manager at a small local run shop, Midwest field rep for Saucony (please ask me questions, I’m a big shoe geek), running coach, and currently Marketing at P3R, the Pittsburgh organization behind the Pittsburgh Marathon and many of the other races in the area.

I recently moved from Kansas to Pittsburgh with my partner (who just started her residency here) and step-son.

I love helping people reach their running goals, maybe even push themselves to do things they may not have previously thought possible. I think that the keys to success in running are often quite simple – commitment to consistency will take you a long way!

RUNNING BIO

• 5k: 14:00

• Half Marathon: 1:04

• Marathon: 2:17

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