Maggie Montoya won the women’s division in the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon 2023 today. On Saturday, amid a bright sky and ideal warm temperatures, the competitor completed the challenging route in Duluth, breaking the women’s record. Maggie Montoya finished in 1:09:26, beating Kara Goucher’s 1:09:46 course record from 2012. This race marked Montoya’s first in Duluth.
Who is Maggie Montoya?
A 25-year-old professional distance runner named Maggie Montoya. In the eighth grade, she started running. At Rogers High School in Rogers, Arkansas, she won a total of 17 state championships in the cross-country and the track.
At Baylor University, Maggie continued to compete, and as a senior in 2017, she took first place in the 3,000-meter race at the Big 12 Indoor Track & Field Championships, assisting the Bears in winning their first-ever conference title. In June 2018, she promptly set two new 1500-meter personal records: 4:15.77 at the Music City Distance Carnival and 4:15.71 at the Portland Track Festival. In the late summer, she relocated to Boulder. Since then, she has broken other such records.
On March 22, 2021, Maggie was working in the pharmacy department of a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder. She had just returned from the U.S. 15K Championships in Jacksonville, Florida, where she had finished in seventh place. Unfortunately, a deranged shooter started shooting inside the store, killing 10 people, including the first police officer to arrive.
Despite being unscathed physically, Montoya was visibly disturbed by the experience. Even if the incident isn’t entirely behind her—and perhaps never will be—Montoya has moved on and is in a strong position at the moment because to her network of family, friends, and teammates, a close friend of hers asserts.
