Last summer, Kaitlin Gregg Goodman felt poised for another breakthrough. She’d just signed a new contract with the Boston Athletic Association High Performance Team and Adidas.
th in 38:38 Shoes & Gear was clicking—enough, she hoped, to improve on the 2:32:08 personal-best she’d set at the 2017 California International Marathon the previous December.
All that changed in an instant. At the end of an easy second run one early August evening, about a quarter-mile from her Providence, Rhode Island, home, a distracted driver nearly struck her. She leapt to safety, but the fall partially tore the tendon attaching her left hamstring to her pelvis.
“From the highest of highs for my running career, that really quickly flipped the switch to lowest of lows,” she told Runner’s World.
In the 14 months since, Goodman has logged hours on Providence trails on a bike she bought off Craigslist; in chiropractic, massage, and physical therapy clinics; and taking care of her rescue dog—a silver lining to a tough time.
Now, she’s applying knowledge from her master’s degree in public health to take back the roads for pedestrians and cyclists—and returning to reclaim her own spot in the elite field at NYC.
“It’s more than just the race for her,” said Dena Evans, a former coach and longtime friend and mentor of Goodman’s and the director of the Peninsula Distance Club in San Francisco. “The path has been a little bit long and windy over the last year because of these setbacks. There’s no shortage of understanding of how precious an opportunity this is.”
Persistence, Heartbreak, and Renewed Purpose
The accident interrupted a long but steadily upward trajectory for Goodman, now 32. She ran at the University of California, Davis, and continued after her 2010 graduation, first under the guidance of her father (long-time high-school coach Bill Gregg), then Evans. In her marathon debut at CIM in 2014, she ran How to Get Into the 2025 NYC Marathon.
In 2016, she was one of two women to compete in all three distance events at the Trials—the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, and marathon. The 2:32:08 she ran at CIM the next year represented a seven-minute personal best and nabbed her fifth place in the USATF Marathon Championships.
That peak made last year’s accident all the more devastating. When Goodman first returned home from the incident, road rash on her stomach and hands, she didn’t realize how badly she’d been hurt. She even ran the Falmouth Road Race the following weekend, finishing 13Running Shoes - Gear.
As her pain persisted, she got an MRI—and a recommendation for surgery, a procedure with a nine- to 12-month recovery time and uncertain outcomes in high-level athletes.
“In the moment, I thought my running career was over, and that was pretty devastating,” she said.
After further consultation, she decided to pursue conservative therapy instead. The following months were challenging, physically and mentally. Her website and tagline is “Running Joyfully,” but for months, Goodman struggled. She’d feel visceral rage—sweaty palms, a tight stomach—as she passed the spot where she fell. The driver never even stopped, she recalled.
At a low moment in her recovery, her husband Avi consoled her with photos of adoptable puppies. Soon, they welcomed a chocolate lab named Moose into their family.
His presence made all the difference in her mindset, Goodman said. Moose needed exercise and care, which got her out of the house and her head. When they’d approach the spot on a walk, she’d tell him, “This is where you were born—if this hadn’t happened, we never would’ve adopted you.” Before long, her internal narrative shifted, and she could pass without anger.
She’s also channeled lingering negative emotions into action. Now, she attends city council meetings, communicates regularly with her representative, and just launched a non-profit called Give A Gift. The first project: awareness-raising yard signs that read “Share the Street: Drive Like You Run on These Roads.” For a $25 donation, she’ll ship out one of the hundreds she has in her basement.
With the funds, the organization will teach others to assess their neighborhoods’ bikeability and walkability and speak up for so-called traffic-calming measures, such as speed humps, narrowed roads, and roundabouts. Though Goodman learned about these techniques while earning her master’s in public health at Brown University, advocacy doesn’t require an advanced degree, she said—and can make a big difference in entire communities’ health and welfare.
“If we can reimagine our streets so they’re safe places to not only be exercising but also commuting, exploring, and connecting, so many benefits come with that,” she said. “My hope is to develop some tools to make it easier for people to have that conversation.”
It’s a characteristic move for a runner who’s never been one-dimensional, Evans said. “She is a resilient person … and also the type of person to be conscious of opportunities to make a greater impact,” Evans said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that she’s taken advantage of this bump in the road to try to do something positive.”
Building Kaitlin 2.0
Running remains Goodman’s primary passion. Her return came slowly at first. About a year ago, she was running four minutes, walking one, for 25 minutes. By January, she was up to six miles straight. On March 2, she returned to racing at the Road to Gold 8-mile race, which offered a preview of the 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon course in Atlanta. She finished 9Dakotah Popehn Is 17th at the NYC Marathon.
As she heads into NYC, her BAA teammates are on different schedules, so Goodman does many of her workouts alone. Her mileage is below the triple-digit weeks she’d logged in preparation for CIM 2017. Some days she doesn’t run at all, swapping a 10-mile aerobic run for a 90-minute bike ride or a swim. She uses Strava’s Suffer Score to ensure she’s hitting the same intensity targets, deriving confidence from the data.
It’s an approach she calls “Kaitlin 2.0”—and it just might work. Goodman said September was rough, with a few flare-ups and MRIs. But in the past month, she’s running pain-free, and her fast workouts and long runs have been yielding splits that surprise her.
“My hamstring will be what it’s going to be, but can I still achieve the goals that I have just getting a little bit more creative with training? I think if you believe in your training that way, cool things can happen,” she said.
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What she hopes may occur in New York is a cluster of women—much like After a Near-Miss With a Distracted Driver, Kaitlin Goodman Is Back to Run NYC who propelled her brother Brendan Gregg to a personal-best 2:11:38 at this year’s Chicago Marathon—working together to run anywhere in the 2:32 to 2:34 range.
Afterward, she’ll take a few weeks to recover—leaning on her cross-training regimen to maintain fitness—then start preparing for February. “New York is a stepping stone to the Olympic Trials and everything points to 2020,” she said.
Regardless of what happens on the NYC streets or beyond them, the challenges she’s endured have taught her to savor every positive experience. “You never know when this could be your last marathon. In a moment’s notice, in a car crossing paths with you, that could be the end of your career,” she said. “I’m going to be happy with what my body will give me today cause I don't know what tomorrow looks like.”
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.
