Libby Bigelow, a former star runner at Whitehall and later Central Michigan University, isn’t a professional athlete or a household name in marathoning. What she is, however, is a better marathoner now at age 38 than she was four years ago, which she proved Feb. 3 with an impressive run at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Orlando.
It was the second time Bigelow competed in the trials, having done so in Atlanta in 2020 as well. She posted an impressive time of 2:38:34 this time around, just a few minutes off her personal best, achieved three months prior at the Indianapolis Marathon.
Bigelow is a physical therapist and lives in Twin Falls, Idaho with husband Ryan, a scholarship coordinator at the College of Southern Idaho. When she started running marathons several years ago - Ryan joined her soon after - the idea of becoming an Olympic trials-level runner was little more than a pipe dream. However, once she saw she was running times that were close to qualifying for the trials, she pursued the goal and made it for the 2020 trials.
Bigelow’s journey back to the trials began soon after she raced four years ago. Not even a surprisingly large drop in the trials’ qualifying time - eight minutes, from 2:45:00 to 2:37:00 - would stop her from taking a shot at it.
“I think my big motivation was, what if?” Bigelow said of her decision to take another shot at the trials this year. “What if I can do it again and get to two Olympic trials marathons? A lot of people are lucky to make one; what if I could make two? That motivated me.”
The steep cut in qualifying time led to a notably smaller field at the 2024 trials. Only 117 women finished the Orlando trials, less than a third of the 2020 crew. However, even among this group, Bigelow was strong, finishing 53rd among them in hot weather intense enough that it knocked out defending trials champ and 2020 Olympian Aliphine Tuliamuk.
“I would’ve liked to run a little faster, but since it was such a hot day, I felt like I raced it smart and probably the best I could’ve raced it,” Bigelow said. “I can’t think of any point in the race where I thought I should pick it up more. With four or five miles to go, I thought I could pick it up and pass more people, but my legs started getting crampy. I thought I raced smart and handled the heat as well as I could, considering I live in Idaho.”
Bigelow said the new qualifying standard was released later than usual in this cycle and caught her off guard, but having already been training for it, Bigelow wasn’t going to stop now.
It was a mental and physical grind. Top runners can only compete in a few marathons per year, so ones near the borderline of qualifying for the trials, like Bigelow, are at the mercy of any number of things that can go wrong. Poor race-day weather conditions, injury issues and more can derail a bid for the trials. She said she could tell through keeping up with fellow marathoners via social media that many runners in her situation were battling as hard to qualify as she was.
“I was already signed up for Boston when they opened (qualifying) up,” Bigelow said, referring to the 2022 Boston Marathon. “That’s a well-known tough course, so I knew I probably wouldn’t qualify there. Then I got injured after Boston and I was out for nine months. I pretty much only had 2023 to qualify.”
Obstacles kept popping up on Bigelow’s quest to return to the trials. After recovering from injury and training for a marathon in Houston, she contracted COVID-19 and couldn’t compete. Her standby, the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, was where she qualified for the 2020 trials, but even that race didn’t deliver the needed result; she finished in 2:40:34. That left her with the Indianapolis marathon last November as her final chance.
The stars aligned, and Bigelow impressively finished in second place among women racers with a time of 2:35:33, only 16 seconds behind the winner, Rachel Hannah, who set a course record that day. Late in the race, Bigelow took a calculated risk and slightly upped her pace, believing she had it in her to do it. That led to one of her running career highlights - passing her dad, Thomas Carpenter, around the 24-mile mark in the race and seeing the shocked look on his face as she approached.
“I had closed in on the top lady pretty hard,” Bigelow said. “I could see her maybe 50 meters away. My dad turned his head and he was in complete shock. After the race, he said, ‘I had just seen the first-place lady go by and your mom was able to see you and cheer you.’ Running has been something special to us since I was little, so that was a really neat moment.”
Bigelow hasn’t decided if she’ll try for a third bid to the trials in 2028. By then, she’ll be 42, and while qualifying isn’t impossible at that age - Roberta Groner, 46, finished in the top 25 at the trials - it does get progressively more difficult for athletes to achieve the needed results as Father Time starts kicking in.
“There’s so much you don’t know,” Bigelow said. “I feel satisfied. If that’s what I got, it’s way more than most people ever get. I can’t say I won’t try again, but right now I’m sitting more in my gratefulness than looking ahead.”
Whether she’ll keep pursuing that specific goal or not, Bigelow anticipates continuing to run even if it’s not in pursuit of the trials - or even necessarily at the marathon distance.
“This summer I may do some trail racing on the mountain trails out here,” Bigelow said. “There are some really beautiful trails out west. I might switch it up for a little bit. I always wanted to do the New York City marathon.
“I’ve also toyed with increasing the distance, seeing what I could do in a 50K road ultramarathon. Could I maybe be one of the top Americans in the 50K? Could I be top 10? In the back of my head, I wonder if I was to move up, what I could do. Sometimes I feel the longer the distance, the stronger I am, especially as I’ve gotten older.”
