by Stuart Weir
Jess Warner Judd – 800 to marathon
When Jess Warner Judd completed the New York Marathon earlier this month, someone posed the question on social media: How many athletes have run 800m sub 2 minutes and a marathon sub 2 hrs 25?
Jess has had a long and varied build-up to her first marathon. The Power of 10 website records her running a 5K just before her 11th birthday and running a 1500, eleven times the following year. In 2011 she won IAAF World Youth Championships 800m bronze. In 2013 was ran 800 at the Moscow World Champs. By 2017 she represented GB at 1500 in the London World Champs. By the 2019 Worlds, she was running 5K. Her Olympic debut was at 5K. In 2022 she ran 5k at the World Champs and 10K at Commonwealth Games and European Champs – as well as the Euro Cross and a Half-marathon that year.
Half-marathons were becoming more common and she told me in early 2024 that her plan was to run a first marathon in 2025 and that she had been experimented a bit with the higher mileage over the previous winter to see how her body responded to it and that everything looked positive,
Jess had finished 8th in the 10K at the 2023 Budapest World Champs. She said afterwards: “I just couldn’t believe it. I am just absolutely shocked to be honest. I couldn’t have ever imagined it going that well”. 2024 was to bring a shock.
Running in the European Championship 10K in June 2024, she dropped out with 600m to go in Rome. She spent the night in hospital and was found to have suffered a focal epileptic seizure. She was able to run a few cross-country races in the autumn.
Reflection on the experience a year on, she told me: “It was so unexpected. I think that was the bit for me because I had been so happy with Budapest which was probably the best race of my career. I felt great in 2024 and training had been going really well so I was ready to spring off that and then for that to happen in Rome was just really scary and then to hear how serious it was afterwards because obviously I wasn’t conscious. To come back was really hard as you worry it could be life-threatening. You kind of think, is it worth it? I love running, but health comes first. So there have been a lot of different things going on in the background like having counselling and trying to get over the trauma of that happening and just trying to race on the track again. That was the hardest bit. And I found that I couldn’t do that.
“So I thought, well, should I try and go to the roads and see if that helps and it really has and now I can’t even remember the tough times. I think you kind of forget it. I’d say in the summer I was really contemplating stopping running just because it was so frustrating and quite scary as well you know to put yourself back in that environment and be thinking ‘I don’t want this to happen again’. I want to be healthy and happy but I love running but I don’t want it to come at that cost. So to actually now run a marathon with epilepsy as well is that’s been a big thing for me to show ‘I can do it’ I’m really happy that I did it. I’d like to go back to the track, but I think it’s one of those where I’m just going to see where it goes and not put any pressure on anything. It’s been a rubbish couple of years, but I think it was worth it for to run that marathon”.
In parts 2 and 3 Jess shares the process of her decision to take on the New York Marathon and the experience of that first Marathon.
