When you make it to the finish line of your first marathon, you’re forever changed. Andrea Kooiman knows that—she experienced it for herself in 2006. It took her a little over five hours—5:07 to be exact—to finish the Orange County Marathon in Costa Mesa, California. She loved every minute of it.
Since then, she has run 92 additional marathons and 33 ultras, including some of the world’s toughest. On her race résumé is Badwater, the 135-mile California race from Death Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney, which she has finished three times.
Yes, Kooiman, 42, of Mission Viejo, California, has put a lot of miles on her legs while training for and completing 126 races at the marathon distance or longer. But her more impressive achievement? That’s been getting young people running—and to their first finish lines.
“There’s a moment when you’re training for a marathon that the lightbulb goes on and you realize how powerful you are,” Kooiman says. “It’s that knowing, that process of learning how strong you are that I wish everyone would experience in their lifetime.”
Kooiman makes that feeling possible for middle and high school kids in Orange County, and she hopes that they’ll carry it with them no matter what they face in life.
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Her involvement stems back to her second marathon, when her son, Braden, then a fifth-grader, ran the final mile of the L.A. Marathon with her. He was so inspired, he joined a training program and ran the entire race the following year as an 11-year-old sixth grader. Kooiman became one of the volunteer coaches.
“I was officially hooked, not only on sharing the marathon experience with others, but on watching that progress and transformation of the kids,” she says.
In 2009, she and another parent decided to start their own version of that program closer to their homes south of Los Angeles. Their nonprofit organization is called We ROCK, which stands for We Run Orange County’s Kids. And since the first group of about 80 completed We ROCK in 2010, a program that culminates with the Orange County Marathon in May, hundreds of kids—between sixth grade and 12th grade—have finished the 26.2-mile distance.
They take the preparation seriously. Kooiman and her coaches work at five schools in the county. They practice four days a week for seven months of the year, with runs up to four miles on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school and long runs every Saturday morning. They also have talks on topics ranging from nutrition to stretching to hydration.
We ROCK prepares kids for the psychological part of the marathon, too. “We’re training them mentally, what it looks like to face those moments when you don’t want to take one more step, but you do,” Kooiman said. “We’re constantly making the correlation with them as to why running a marathon is like life, to overcome obstacles. They learn, ‘If I can run a marathon, I can do anything.’ That lesson is so vital to their success.”
Kooiman, throughout the seven months, is the zealous evangelist to doubting parents and sometimes skeptical kids. “We tell everybody, just be open-minded to the idea that you can run a full marathon. As crazy as that might sound at your age, thousands of kids have done it before you,” she tells them. “We know it can be done.”
Participants complete shorter races each month, starting with 5Ks, moving up to a 10K, then half marathons. The program also hosts a 20-mile qualifying event. “They have to prove they can maintain a 16:00 per mile pace over the course of the 20 miles for us to even consider them to run the marathon,” she says.
For those kids who aren’t ready, the Orange County Marathon also has a half marathon and a 5K distance. “That is also a good lesson,” she says. “Sometimes we have a goal, and we realize it’s not going to happen for us right now. But that doesn’t mean forever.”
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While she runs with the kids four days a week, she’s also doing her own training for ultras at odd hours. (One race on her bucket list is the notoriously tough Barkley Marathons in Tennessee.) She often leaves her home at 11 p.m. or midnight and runs through the night, returning home to get her daughter off to school before catching a nap.
In training and her races she’s always in a pair of HOKA shoes, either the SpeedGoat 2 or the Bondi. “The shape totally delivers, whether you want to run speed on road or feel confident on the trail,” she says. “I have been able to take them on any terrain, on any distance, in any type of workout scenario. I love my HOKA shoes.”
When she’s talking to kids, she’ll tell them about her experiences running ultras, and when they learn their program leader has run, say, 135 miles through the desert, it helps expand their ideas about their own capabilities.
Come race day in May, Kooiman holds an official position with the Orange County Marathon, as the race sweeper. For that one day, she doesn’t run a step. Instead, she walks the course in 7 hours at that 16-minute-per-mile pace. She’s wearing balloons and carrying a walkie talkie, and the kids know they can’t fall behind her.
It’s not usually a problem; if they’ve started the race, Kooiman knows they’re capable of running the distance in time. And while she’s out there, she can picture them, one after another, experiencing the unique joy that crossing a finish line brings.
