Marathoner Aaron Church Leads Series

Aaron Church began running as a Freshman in Roanoke, VA, but set aside the sport to play tennis for James Madison University. He picked up running after graduating in 1997, and ran the GW Birthday 10K in 31:41, but was soon sidelined with a stress facture, and withdrew from the Boston Marathon as a result. Church then trained for the 1999 DisneyWorld Marathon. His 3:43 got him hooked on running.

Aaron’s next big running goal was the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials, but he has faced repeated injuries. Along the way he finished fifth overall in the 2002 RacePacket Grand Prix. Aaron qualified for the 2004 Marathon Trials at the 2003 GrandMa’s Marathon in 2:21:47. Aaron was leading in the first half of the 2003 Marine Corps Marathon in 1:09, but got serious blisters and a stress fracture leading to a 3rd place finish in 2:28:24. He then could not run until a month before the trials, but still ran an impressive 1:10 for the first half, but had to drop out at 21 miles.

Having been injured for 18 of the past 24 months, Aaron turned to cross-training including aquarunning. However, by cutting his training back from 110-115 miles per week to 85-95 miles, and dropping his cross-training in favor of rest, Aaron has managed to stay healthy this year. His current running goals are to win the 2005 RacePacket Grand Prix and to qualify this October at the Twin Cities Marathon. Aaron missed the first three series races due to injuries, but started collected Grand Prix points at the Azalea Classic. He took the overall male lead with a win at the Sunrise 5K, and expects to run more of the races in the fall.

Aaron is an Engineer studying for a Masters of Science at Virginia Tech. He is married to Alicia has a three year old daughter Abby with a second child expected in December and lives in South Riding.