After she placed tenth in her marquee event, the 1500 meters, in June at the 2021 Olympic Track & Field Trials, Jenny Simpson wasn’t sure what would come next. Up until this year, she had never failed to make a U.S. team, in 14 years of competing.
by Women’s Running, Erin Strout, www.womensrunning.com
The last time Simpson had watched the Olympics on television, it was 2004, she was a 17-year-old high school student, unaware that in 2016 she’d bring home the bronze in the 1500 meters, becoming the first U.S. woman to medal in the event. Along the way, she won the gold at the 2011 world championships, and a couple of silvers in 2013 and 2017.
While she was undeniably sad to not make the trip to Tokyo, Simpson, 35, was surprised that she enjoyed watching the Games from home in Boulder, Colorado.
“I wondered if I was going to be weird about it, but I loved it,” Simpson said during a phone interview on Tuesday. “I don’t remember the last time I was able to really just sit down and enjoy a track meet…the Olympics in 2021 will always be a memory for me of a time where I stood down and I watched Team USA and just got to be a total fan.”
She toyed around with a lot of ideas of what to do with herself this summer. Maybe compete on the Diamond League circuit? Or pick a couple of other track meets to race? But nothing sounded particularly fun to Simpson until her coaches Mark Wetmore and Heather Burroughs suggested something completely out of her element: the 10-mile U.S.road championships, held on September 12 at the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler (rescheduled from it’s usual April date because of COVID-19), in Washington, D.C.
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