About Jeffrey

Where to begin? My running career has been about as up and down as a roller coaster so I will do my best to try and tell my story…

Running has always been in my family, my father was a runner, my grandfather was a runner, my grandfather’s father was a runner. In honor of my great grandfather we held a Denny Memorial Road Race for over 20 years in his honor. Growing up I was in love with Soccer and never thought of doing Cross Country. I remember going to Brian’s first Cross Country meet when he was in 7th grade and thinking to myself that I would never do this sport. Well, after we did the mile at the end of 6th grade I finished in 8 flat and figured I would give it a shot. I was by no means anything impressive, I was really really short.

Going into high school I figured I would hopefully get better but I had absolutely zero aspirations of running past high school. That all changed when Mark Bierkan became the boys assistant coach, he is a friend I have known my whole life and was my neighbor for the first 15 years of my life. He taught me about being competitive, training at a high level, and getting serious about running post high school. My senior year (2009) in Cross Country I was first team All Conference and Colerain qualified for the Regional Championships for the first time since 2003. I had aspirations of qualifying for State but choked hard and finished 92nd. In track I had more success with a double of 4:25 and 9:46 at the District Championships. Again at the Regional meet I blew up and finished a disappointing 9th in the 1600 meters and a horrifying 15th in the 3200 meters. While my times were considered good, I didn’t have a lot of options but luckily Miami University took a chance on me and I was excited to be a D1 runner at an awesome university.

My freshman year was filled with high hopes, but there was a lot of disappointment. I don’t think I was physically ready for the high intensity of the training program at Miami and my times showed. I lost a lot of the confidence in myself and my training showed. I basically decided in March that I was going to transfer and there was one night after I ran 16:56 in the 5K that I sat there and decided I was going to walk into our coaches office the next morning with my uniform and quit the team. I am forever thankful that I didn’t because I would never want to be considered a quitter, but my times got slower and my freshman year ended in serious disappointment, but I was ready to make a change and see what Ohio Northern University had in store for me.

At Ohio Northern, I thought I was going to show up on campus and be on varsity even though my training that summer was sub par. It was a nice reality check to realize how hard it is to be good, because I think I forgot how much work goes into being competitive. I was improving a lot, but nowhere near where I had envisioned myself to be. I was never All-Conference or All-Region, my highest finish in Cross Country was 25th twice at the Conference meet (my senior and sophomore year), I was 81st in the Region my senior year which was also the only year I ran at Regionals. On the Indoor track I was top 10 in the 3K for almost a full year at 8:56.70, but never scored at the OAC meet. For Outdoor Track, I am still 9th all time in the 10K at 32:24 but still never scored at the OAC meet. I had shown signs of promise, but could never get over the hump to have one of those “WOW” races.

That’s me on the left, my dad in the middle, and Brian on the end

Brian, Dad, Brutus, Josh, Mom, and Me at the ALL Ohio Championships in 2012

That’s me, my grandfather Robert K. Denny, and Brian

During my senior year, I found out I had an iron deficiency which led to me ending my season the week before the OAC Outdoor Track Championships. It was definitely disappointing, but there was no reason to trot me out there to hopefully break 35 in the 10K. Upon graduation, I was finally starting to get healthy and begin training for the Chicago Marathon. I put down an estimated goal finish time of 2:35 for my application and people laughed at me and told me that would be an incredible debut. Aside from a few hiccups in training (vacation, minor injuries, sickness) I was training at the highest level in my life. I was confident that I could potentially go sub 2:30 with Brian (my brother). In the week leading up to Chicago, disaster struck. My grandfather passed away after an 18 month battle with ALS. It was one of the darkest days of my life, but Brian and I used running to get away from the reality that had just struck us. Luckily, my grandmother knew that Brian and I needed to run the Chicago Marathon and the funeral was pushed back to the next weekend. I will never forget getting to the starting line with Brian and knowing we were going to rock it, we had our Grandfather watching over us and we had family and friends supporting us throughout the 26.2. I dropped Brian around 17 miles and managed to negative split the marathon and finish in 76th place at 2:29:27, Brian was shortly behind at 98th with a 2:32:06. The last quarter mile I will never forget because of the overwhelming emotion that I was feeling. All I could do at the finish line was point up to my grandpa with a big smile, saying, “Thank You”. Since Chicago, I have looked at running in a completely different way. While, a 2:29 is not a professional marathon time, it is a great start to what will hopefully be a long running career for myself. The long term goals are 2020 Olympic Trials and from there, we will see what happens.