Building for the Fall: D3 Alumni Marathon Series - Laura Zimmer

“Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and then it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all of its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them.”

-Robert Updegraff

Laura Zimmer (CMS 2024) watches San Francisco wake up with each loop around Crissy Field at the Presidio. Lap by lap, light by light, the fog lifts, and more familiar faces pass her right on cue at this particular time and place in the early morning. She waves to her favorite gold guy right at 6:50AM. The lights on the Golden Gate Bridge still shimmer to the northwest, and when heading for home, more apartment and cubicle lights flutter on: workers logging on early. Laura is quick to join them. “7:05 is when I aim to finish my run. 7:25 get on bike or bus. 7:45 at my desk. I’m pretty much online for 10-12 hours a day.” Often times, the evening is an inverted image of the morning: the laptop is finally shut, the bike home is less brisk, and “I run [Crissy Field] again at sunset with my friends; primarily Bennett Booth-Genthe (Pomona-Pitzer 2024) or Miles Christensen (CMS 2023); we have quite the D3 squad here.”

A leader of the Athenas and the Gundlach™ merchant, Laura appears to have joyfully made the pivot from emphatically mowing down the opposition in the final straightaway of 800s and 1500s (re: “Gundlaching”, a uniquely CMS jargon for destroying people at the last second) to new, longer battles of attrition in the marathon. The Twin Cities Marathon, her third planned marathon, is mere weeks away. It’s a busy-bee life in San Francisco; to train on top of every siren song of San Fran city life is no easy task. (Both times I’ve merely visited, my running has immediately been thrown to the wayside for surfing, hiking, and nightlife.) What makes it easier is that more than a dozen of her friends in the city are also marathoners and/or D3 alumni. If you’ve ever wished for all of your friends to live in the same city and enjoy the same hobbies as you, you may have just missed the boat by not enrolling at a SCIAC school and then moving to San Francisco. (Not that you even have to be an old NCAA dog to find your people there.) A casual running friend of mine recently described the SF running scene as “Reliable. In more ways than one - the weather is always between 55-65, you will always have a pack out there to run with, the city is small enough where you’ll recognize the same faces on the same schedules.”

These days in running, divisions and accolades seem to blur, and there never appears to be more than a few degrees of separation between people. I haven’t met Laura personally but my good friend Xoaquin Baca (CMS 2023) has. Xoaquin, yet another CMS Mid-D to marathon pipeliner, says that his three-year teammate Laura “was not only a dedicated and excellent athlete but also a crucial leader and community builder for the team. Easily remembered during her races was her trademark tongue-in-cheek that signaled her getting ready to Gundlach someone before the finish line. But even more impressive than her competitiveness was (is) her will to bring everyone together. She’d make sure everyone felt included and had a friend to talk to.”

So I’ve heard. Rumor has it, Laura was one of the OG gluten-free runners on the team and was so ardent about it that Adam Cohan (CMS 2024) copied her to try and fit in. In all seriousness, these qualities in someone like Laura are the foundation of a team atmosphere that exudes genuine camaraderie and spirit. A mesh without even trying. Just that kind of teammate. And to be that person today, a Type B in a Type A’s domain, is all the more laudable. What I immediately liked about Laura is that she doesn’t sweat the details too hard:

“For the actual (Twin Cities Marathon) build, I’m just trying not to take it too seriously. I am primarily running Twin Cities because my entire family has run it, including my grandpa, who is my biggest inspiration in running. And I recently bought a road bike, and I also like to rock climb, and I really don’t like stressing myself out with perfect training. My job is very demanding and so I really try to keep running as something I look forward to. I think running Boston taught me that you can still run pretty well without doing the most with training. So here I am, just getting my long runs in on the weekend, enjoying some bikepacking, traveling a lot, and giving it the old college try.”

The old college try. Some of us, myself included, are privileged to know this truth: it’s easier to do the old college try with college friends who still try. And trying is less complicated and serious than it first implies. Goals and varying extents of seriousness fall to the wayside on an easy run with friends: a 2:18 marathoner who’s never taken his foot off the gas and an old pal who’s just getting back into it after a long hiatus reap the same “joie de vivre” out of an easy run together. There is less trying, and simply more doing. In hindsight, perhaps those like Laura are a catalyst for many to continue doing this thing together. (“Happiness only real when shared.”) To tag along on a run is the same liminal essence as sitting down at a table for an hour with friends after work each day. Maybe most enticing for Laura and co., there’s just so many Stags and Athenas out there:

“At Boston last spring, 8 of my CMS distance teammates ran it (!!!!) and 10+ of us live in San Francisco, so it’s hard to feel alone when I have so many people around me also training. I like that I have the freedom to make a long run shorter, run a trail race randomly, or bike for a whole weekend. I think it makes me enjoy and appreciate every activity more. I really miss college racing, and there are a lot of imperfect moments from it, but if you think about that, then you are just sad. And my life and running relationship is pretty perfect right now. Like, I just got to run 12 miles with my brothers who used to play d3 baseball. It’s a lifelong sport regardless of how serious it is to you.”

“For me, running gets me outside, is social, and is an incredibly efficient form of exercise during busy work weeks. At the core of it all, though, I’d say take advantage of running not being your whole life. It really should just be something that enhances your life. Especially half and full marathons - you don’t need perfect training or workouts to have a memorable and meaningful time running it.”

Our tendencies to hyperanalyze numbers and statistics, stamped into us from NCAA running, can sometimes ghoulishly linger around, long after the utility becomes unwelcome.

The plot isn’t lost to Laura: we run because it’s fun. Specifically: because it’s fun together, and because we still can, and when the gang is running together by the water as the sun dims and gulls fly overhead and we’re laughing at silly inside jokes, the warm feeling we feel later after we’ve parted ways and gone home for the night is not from the numbers or any data; it’s from those who were just alongside us.

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Laura Zimmer is running the Twin Cities Marathon on Sunday, October 5th. Her goal is to “Smile, laugh, and run ~2:50 ish. I don’t like to make too many goals because you never know what the day will bring. Also make my grandpa smile; he’s run 26 marathons but hasn’t watched me run since college! Overall, I’m just trying to be brave like a moose.”