USATF Half Marathon Championships – News – Grit, Self-Belief & Good Coaching Have Brought Hurley To Top Ranks Of USA Road Running

GRIT, SELF-BELIEF & GOOD COACHING HAVE BROUGHT HURLEY TO TOP RANKS OF USA ROAD RUNNING
By David Monti, @d9monti.bsky.social
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved – Used with permission.

(26-Feb) — After Emma Grace Hurley finished 89th in her senior year at the 2019 NCAA Cross Country Championships for the ninth-place Furman Paladins, the possibility of a professional running career seemed remote.  Although Hurley had performed well at the conference level, she never made an NCAA national track championships in any discipline.  By the time she graduated she had achieved only a modest 5000m personal best of 15:57.23.  Not a single shoe company tried to sign her.

Fast forward six years and Hurley, who represents Asics, is coming off of a career year where she won the USATF Running Circuit overall title, finished on the podium at five USATF championships, represented Team USATF at the World Athletic Cross Country Championships, and made an excellent half-marathon debut of 1:08:26 which made her the 12th-fastest American of all time.

“I’m so grateful to still be in this sport,” the 27 year-old told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview from Atlanta yesterday.  “No one, no one would have thought in 2019 at cross country that I would still have opportunities like this so I am really grateful.”

It’s been a long road for Hurley, originally from Roswell, Ga., where she competed for the Fellowship Christian School before heading for Furman.  Now based in Indianapolis, she’s back in Atlanta for Sunday’s USATF Half-Marathon Championships, part of the Publix Atlanta Marathon Weekend organized by the Atlanta Track Club. The event is the USA selection race for the 2025 World Athletics Road Running Championships in San Diego in September.  The top three men and women will qualify for the team, and Hurley is the sixth-ranked athlete in the women’s field based on personal best.  She’s approaching the race cautiously, but thinks she has a shot at the podium.

“The thing I always think to myself is to never have my mouth move faster than my legs can run,” Hurley said.  “That’s a big fear of mine, to throw something out there then not live up to it and have it be this pressure.  But in my head, the way I, like, have to go into it is to see myself as a podium finisher or else it’s not going to materialize.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the nation after Hurley finished college, her elite running career got off to a slow start.  She moved back home…