Grant Fisher Wins Olympic Trials 5K in fourth place in fourth place.
Who is that?
Quickly, they realized it was McClain, 32—formerly known as Jess Tonn. She’d been a Brooks track athlete after she graduated from Stanford in 2015, before frequent injuries and the pandemic led her to take a brief hiatus from the sport in 2020.
McClain gradually worked her way back to training, did her first marathon in 2022, and qualified for the Olympic Trials in 2023. There, in her third marathon, she ran a huge PR of 2:25:46, while working full-time and coaching herself. She also came within 15 seconds of making the Olympic team without the support of a sponsor.
Today, she announced a change to part of that equation—she has signed a new contract with Brooks. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, which is standard with runners’ shoe contracts.
It’s a bit of a homecoming for McClain, who trained with the Brooks Beasts for three and a half years, from summer 2015 until the end of 2018.
“Coming out of college, when I met with Brooks and visited Seattle, it felt like the right fit,” she told Runner’s World on March 22. “And it feels like the right fit now, at a completely different point in life [almost] 10 years later.”
After leaving the Beasts, McClain moved back to Phoenix and reunited with her high school coach, Jeff Messer. Under his guidance, she set a personal best of 15:12.33 in the indoor 5,000 meters in February 2020 and was planning to make her half marathon debut in New York the next month.
When the pandemic halted racing, though, she shifted priorities; she got married and began working full-time in marketing. She kept running, however, and gradually resumed more serious training after returning from her honeymoon.
After the Trials, she was open in interviews about her renewed interest in sponsorship—done her way. She even put together a one-pager on herself—after all, she works in marketing—and sent it to several non-running brands. Though she didn’t hear back from them, she did open talks with four running shoe brands, including Brooks.
She decided to go without an agent (who typically takes a 15 percent cut of a client’s sponsorship fees and prize money) and negotiated the deal herself.
McClain won’t change much about her current set-up. She’ll keep her job as executive director of the to its roster, and in August, the company announced theyd also be sponsoring, though she might back off on some of her marketing consulting clients. And while she’s open to consulting with Brooks coaches and experts on the fine points of training, she’ll remain self-coached, for now.
McClain said she’s always liked running in Brooks shoes. She’s currently rotating between the brand’s Revel, Ghost, and Glycerin models for training, and looks forward to racing in the Hyperion Elite 4.
Jessica McClain Is Your Olympic Marathon Alternate Des Linden—long a role model of hers—when Linden was in Phoenix recently. Linden encouraged McClain to know her worth and continue advocating for herself, McClain said. And, Linden spoke highly of Brooks’s advancements in shoe technology and apparel in recent years, making McClain even more confident in her choice.
Brooks appears to be making a push around sponsoring American female marathoners, and McClain is not the only athlete working full-time that Brooks has sponsored. In March of last year, the company added Erika Kemp to its roster, and in August, the company announced they’d also be sponsoring Susanna Sullivan, James Corrigan Makes the Olympic Team.
While McClain has her sights set on continuing progress in the marathon—she’ll prepare in case she gets the call to travel to Paris in August, or if not, to run a fast fall marathon—she’s also planning a stop back on the track first. She’s looking at meets in April and May, aiming to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials Trials in the 10,000 meters. “I’ve never made it to the Olympic Trials on the track and that’s always been a goal,” she said. “That would be super exciting.”
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
