Jen Bigham earned a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from Ohio State in 2004.
Close to two decades later, Bigham is now chasing after a masters.
Well, sort of. Most of the time, masters are trying to chase her down.
Bigham is a mother of four and an assistant track and cross country coach at Winchester Thurston. She’s also one of the top masters distance runners in the country. The masters division is made up of athletes 40 and older. Bigham turns 41 on July 17.
Already this year, Bigham has won two premier USATF events, capturing top honors in the Masters Half Marathon Championships and the Masters 1 Mile Championships. Bigham will next try to defend her masters title at the annual Fleet Feet Liberty Mile, to be held July 22 in Pittsburgh. The race begins on Penn Avenue in the Cultural District before turning onto 11th Street and then onto Liberty Avenue for the final stretch.
“Any race where they shut down the roads in Pittsburgh and you can run in areas that are usually dominated by cars, it’s just really special,” said Bigham, who took home last year’s masters title in 5 minutes, 13 seconds.
While her age suggests that she’s “over the hill,” Bigham certainly doesn’t act like it. In fact, you could say she’s reaching the prime of her career, one which saw her take an eight-year hiatus from competitive running after college. A native of Holgate, Ohio, who walked on the track and cross country teams at Ohio State, Bigham took a break due to some injuries before returning to competition in 2010 just eight months after she gave birth to her first child. She and her husband, Jeff, now have four children, all of whom have unique names: Currie, 12; Wells, 8; Ryles, 6; and Wynnie, 1.
“I was always ‘Jennifer No. 5,’” Bigham said, laughing. “Jeff and Jennifer are so common. I didn’t want something super common for my kids.”
Jen and Jeff moved to Pittsburgh in 2013 and now reside in Squirrel Hill. Jeff is a research scientist for Apple and an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon. Jen will soon enter her fifth season as a coach at Winchester Thurston, where she assists longtime head coach Bruce Frey. Jen said the Bears had four girls runners her first season, a number that has since risen to 17.
Bigham said she was inspired to return to competitive running by her brothers, Josh and Jason. Each of them ran in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Team Trials, and Jen hoped to one day do the same. Bigham took the biggest step in doing so by winning the Eugene Marathon in Oregon in April of 2019 after running at personal best of 2:41.37. But Bigham grew ill that November after running in the New York City Marathon — like some others, Bigham said she experienced COVID-like symptoms prior to the first case being reported in the United States — and that sickness adversely affected her training leading up the trials, held in February of 2020 in Atlanta. At those trials, she finished in 2:50:21, good for 228th place. The top three finishers advanced to the Olympics.
“I was really sick for a month,” she said. “I didn’t have the build up I wanted for the race. I’m hoping to qualify again so I can run better.”
Bigham, a three-time winner of the Pittsburgh Great Race, made her masters debut at last year’s Liberty Mile. It came just six days after her 40th birthday. Bigham stormed to the title by running a time of 5:13, a mark that topped the rest of the field by 13 seconds. Her husband placed seventh on the men’s side of the masters division courtesy of a time of 4:53.
Jen Bigham’s masters success carried over to 2022 as she has already won a pair of big titles, one of them being the Masters Half Marathon Championships in Syracuse, N.Y., in March.
“It was really cool,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect. It was a fun way to start the masters circuit.”
Bigham is no one-trick pony when it comes to the distances she runs. She’s all about variety, running miles, 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons and full marathons. And she has competed in events across the globe.
Her favorite distance?
“It just depends on my mood,” said Bigham. “I’m really obsessed with the mile. I want to break five minutes. And I love a 5K. That’s probably my favorite distance race.”
While Bigham may now be in her 40s, she is showing no signs of slowing down. She believes she has many miles left in the tank. Before the year is over, she’s hoping to compete in the Steelers 5K, Masters 12K Championships in New Jersey, Great Race and Chicago Marathon. All of those races are in September and October.
“I’m just trying to run faster than ever in any event,” she said. “I’m not having any more kids. The only thing that is against me is time. People age themselves. They say they’re feeling old and then say that they’re getting old. I want to keep running and I want to make the Olympic Trials.”
Brad Everett: beverett@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BREAL412.
First Published: July 12, 2022, 5:00 p.m.