Kirsten Kasper’s track workout in Boulder, Colorado, on July 12 would look recognizable to any top runner: 2 x 2K, 2 x 1 mile, 2 x 800, with her paces getting faster as the intervals got shorter. In all, it was about 5.5 miles of hard running.
Her aim? Running a fast 10K at the Olympics in Paris on July 31.
Kasper won’t be running on a track, however. She’ll be on the streets. And she’ll go into that 10K race having already completed a 1500-meter swim and a 40K (24.8 miles) bike ride.
Her PR for the run segment during a triathlon is 34:04—5:29 per mile pace—and she hopes she can better that at the Games.
A busy high school sports career
Growing up in North Andover, Massachusetts, Kasper was a top swimmer, specializing in sprint freestyle and winning state titles in high school. She also started running as a freshman in high school because her sister, a senior, was the captain of the cross-country team. Kasper had immediate success, winning a state title her first year.
Mostly, she enjoyed the friends she made. “Ohmigosh, it’s actually social,” she said of those early days of running, “instead of being in your own thoughts swimming.”
Kasper went on to make the Foot Locker national cross-country meet as a senior. Jordan Hasay won that 2008 race; Kasper finished 31st, close behind two eventual Olympians, Shalaya Kipp (28th) and Emily Sisson (29th).
College coaches were calling her for both swimming and running. Kasper, who was burned out on swimming, elected to run in college. She went to Georgetown University and was the fourth runner on the team that won the 2011 NCAA cross-country title. Two other Olympians-to-be were on that team: Emily Infeld and Rachel Schneider (now Smith), as well as current New Balance pro Katrina Coogan. “That’s an all-time highlight of my career for sure,” Kasper said, and she still follows elite running closely.
An invitation to try triathlon
When Kasper reached the final semester of her fifth year at Georgetown, where she completed a master’s degree in sports industry management as well as her undergraduate degree in business, USA Triathlon officials, aware of her high school success in the pool, reached out and invited her for a three-week tryout. Kasper was unsure. She had run PRs of 4:44 in the mile and 34:21 in the 10,000, and she felt like she had unfinished business in running.
But she talked to her coach at the time, Mike Smith, and she decided she’d give it a shot. It was a fully-funded tryout, and if it didn’t work out, she could always go back to running. Kasper ran the 10,000 meters at the 2013 NCAA regional meet, did not qualify for nationals, and immediately flew to California for the camp.
She was grateful for her swimming background, even though she hadn’t been working out in a pool for five years. “It is one of the hardest disciplines to pick up, because it’s so technique-based,” she said. “It took me time to get my swimming arms back and my endurance. But when they recruited me to do triathlon, they saw right away from my stroke I had the potential to do well.”
She knew how to ride a bike. But racing one was a different matter. “Riding in a pack, drafting, bike skills—I got thrown into that very quickly and had a steep learning curve, for sure,” she said. “If you’re athletic it comes naturally, just competing like that. But definitely there are skills in riding I had to learn.”
At the end of the three weeks, the triathlon coaches wanted her to stay on. She went to Spain to train with the rest of the U.S. national team.
Kasper progressed quickly through the sport. By 2016, she was the Olympic alternate for Rio. Five years later, when qualifying for Tokyo came around, she had experienced a number of injuries. She was the alternate a second time.
For those Olympics, she went to Tokyo and stayed quarantined nearby for 10 days, available to compete in case one of the other American women got sick. She wasn’t needed.
Last month, on June 5, Kasper was coming home from a workout at the pool when she got a text asking her if she could do a Zoom call. She pulled off into a church parking lot and got the news: She was going to her first Olympics at age 32.
“When I received the call from our high performance director, I cried,” she said. “As much as I wished it or thought I was in a good position, you just never know. It was definitely still a surprise to me.”
Finishing strong
Over the years, Kasper has become strong again in the swim and developed her skill at the bike, while her run has slid to third on the list. “It’s my area of weakness now, which is crazy to think,” she said. She’s hoping that will be different in Paris. “I’ve been able to do the work now to maybe be able to showcase something else.”
In college, she ran 60–70 miles per week, but these days, her mileage is closer to 35–40. Swimming and cycling, however, help her endurance and have made her faster than she was at Georgetown. Most days she does multiple workouts—sometimes all three disciplines and, if she has a gym session, it can be four workouts in a 24-hour period. “I do feel like I’m a better athlete now that I do have the swimming and the biking,” she said. “That’s almost like cross training, right? I have a bigger aerobic engine.”
Through the years, several runners have successfully made the transition to triathlon. Gwen Jorgensen, who swam and ran at the University of Wisconsin, won the U.S.’s first gold medal in triathlon in 2016 in Rio, thanks to a great run leg. Morgan Pearson, 30, who ran for Colorado, was an Olympian in 2021 (he finished 42nd in Tokyo) and will be making his second trip to the Games. He has run 13:36 for 5,000 meters on the track and has a personal best of 1:01:47 in the half marathon. The men’s triathlon takes place in Paris on July 30.
When the women’s triathlon goes off the next day, Kasper said a good day for her would be swimming with the front pack, riding well, and coming off the bike with the leaders. “Essentially putting myself in the race to win a medal,” she said. “My goal is to bring home a medal for Team USA.”
Sarah Lorge Butler 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 since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
