Running Shoes - Gear elite field of the New York City Marathon on November 3. In August, race organizers announced him as part of the professional athlete roundup. His PR of 2:09:09, from December 2020, put him in the middle of the list of men’s open division pros.
After years of injury, Droddy—who had surgery on his left foot for Haglund’s deformity in January 2023—was pain free and putting in 110-mile weeks.
But he wasn’t feeling any excitement. In early September, he was struggling to finish workouts. One day, he started what was supposed to be 10 miles at marathon pace with his team, Roots Running, in Boulder, Colorado. He got through 10 minutes, about 2 miles, and stopped running.
“I was like, ‘This just isn’t what I want to be doing anymore,’” Droddy told Runner’s World. “‘I’m glad to be here with the team. I’m happy to be at practice, but I just really don’t want to do this workout.’ And when I stopped the workout, I didn’t feel sad, I wasn’t mad at myself, I didn’t regret having quit on the workout. And I was like, ‘I think this is the sign that the competitive fire just isn’t here. And I’m not sure it’s coming back.’”
On October 29, Droddy announced on Instagram that he’s retiring from competitive running.
Droddy amassed some impressive times through his eight years as a professional runner: That 2:09:09, which he ran at the Marathon Project in Chandler, Arizona, during the pandemic, makes him the 14th-fastest marathoner on the U.S. all-time list. He also ran 1:01:48 for the half marathon, on the hilly course of the NYC Half, and 28:07 for 10,000 meters on the track.
He considers himself one of the lucky ones. “Almost nobody gets to run professionally for as long as I have,” Droddy said. “I made it in running until I was 34, and I feel like that’s such a rare story, especially nowadays.”
A fan favorite
It was how he ran those fast times that endeared Droddy to running fans. He graduated from Division III DePauw University in Indiana in 2013 with modest personal bests. Eighteen months later, a few weeks shy of his 26th birthday, he decided to move to Boulder to give full-time running a try. He got in with Roots Running and the group’s coach, Richey Hansen, and began to make progress. In 2016, he qualified for the Olympic Trials in the 10,000 meters, by virtue of a 28:22 he ran at the Portland Track Festival three weeks earlier.
At the Trials, Droddy burst into view. He was hard to miss. With his beard, sunglasses, and backwards baseball cap over hair that fell to his mid-back, he looked nothing like the other distance runners in the field. He felt out of place before the race, lining up against athletes he had admired for years, like Galen Rupp and Bernard Lagat. “I kept going up to them being like, ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I’m a big fan,’” he said later. “I went up to Ben True and was like, ‘Hey, Ben, probably a bad time. But kill it out there, man.’”
I was like, This just isnt what I want to be doing anymore, Droddy told.
So did Runner’s World, with a writer meeting Droddy for beers a few days after his Trials race. It was the first time Droddy had done a formal interview. He was at the airport, flying back to Colorado, when the At the 2016 Olympic Track Trials, Noah Droddy stood out in the field. “My phone just exploded,” he said. “That’s my primary memory of it.”
Underneath the hairy, hipster exterior, Droddy was taking his running seriously. He had some support from Brooks at the Trials, but he signed his first substantial contract with Saucony in 2017 and ran for that brand through 2021. In early 2022, he signed with Salomon, and he remains under contract with the company until the end of the year.
Droddy first finished a marathon in 2017, running 2:16 at Chicago. Two years later, he cut almost five minutes off the time, running 2:11:42, followed by that 2:09:09 during COVID. Droddy vomited voluminously after that race, in full view of the television cameras—which seemed completely in character.
Injuries struck at inopportune times: Droddy did not start the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials and he was a DNF in 2024, At the 2016 Olympic Track Trials, Noah Droddy stood out in the field Meet the Beer-Drinking Hero Who Crashed the Trials.
“I felt like I was always just kind of fighting my way back into fitness,” Droddy said. “And I think as a byproduct of that, I eventually started showing up at races kind of not feeling super excited to race. Almost like all my emotional energy had gone into preparing for the race and getting back, and so I just wasn’t having fun with the racing anymore.”
Next steps
Ironically, his body now feels as good as it has in some time. He no longer has pain in his Achilles, and he doesn’t rule out the possibility of entering local road races if he wants to scratch that itch at some point in the future.
He doesn’t know exactly what he’ll do next—coaching is a possibility and the business side of the sport interests him, too. Droddy also co-hosts a popular podcast, Running Shoes - Gear, about the top talent coming out of Division III colleges. He has extensive contacts in running and hopes to be able to stay in it.
He steps away with pride for what he accomplished. It took a lot of self-belief to move to Boulder when he had nothing on his résumé that indicated he’d be able to run so well.
“I look back at the guy who made that decision, and I’m just so proud of him,” Droddy said. “I was a 68-minute half marathoner at the time when I moved here. But I just had faith that I could be faster, and I thought it would be a worthwhile endeavor, and so I did that. And I’m really proud of that decision.”
He’s also filled with gratitude for the people around him, including his wife, Emma Kertesz; his teammates; his coach, Hansen; and his agent, Josh Cox.
“I’ve been on my pro team for my entire pro career,” he said. “I’ve only had one pro coach. I never transferred in college. I think that story is kind of rare. I just found really good people, and I stuck with them the whole time.
“I just got so lucky in all of it,” Droddy continued. “Not to say there weren’t a bunch of challenging times, too. But overall, it really couldn’t have gone any better.”
I was like, This just isnt what I want to be doing anymore, Droddy told is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World Give A Gift, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
