Along the Monon Trail, she gets the kind of stares Caitlin Clark might get shooting hoops at the local playground.
Emma Grace Hurley runs down the pavement at 4:30 mile pace. At that speed, she looks out of place among the joggers and baby strollers.
“I get the funny looks,” she said.
For now, the Broad Ripple resident can train around Indianapolis in anonymity. That is, unless you’re into running.
She is the “It Girl.” It would be hard to identify any runner whose profile has risen as far or as fast.
The 5-foot-1 Hurley, at 28 years old, is perhaps the “Next Big Thing” in the marathon. And, yes, possibly in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“She’s making a difference now,” said Ray Flynn, her agent, whose clients include Olympic 1,500-meter gold medalist Cole Hocker of Indianapolis. “And people are taking notice of it.”
Five years ago, after an undistinguished college career, Hurley essentially quit running. She once dreamed of becoming a concert violinist, and she worked for an information technology company.
That was then. This is 2026.
This year Hurley has set three American records, won two national titles, led Team USA to a world silver medal and ran the fastest marathon debut ever by an American woman. The latter was a time of 2 hours, 20 minutes, 7 seconds at Chicago, where she finished seventh Oct. 11.
She is in demand from sponsors: ASICS footwear, Suunto watches, Neversecond nutrition. She spoke on podcasts and made other appearances ahead of the New York Marathon last week, and she is promoting Saturday’s CNO Financial Indianapolis Monumental Marathon this week.
“I’m excited about the next few years,” Hurley said. “Because we’ve really been planning for them for a long time.”
Hurley traded the violin for running
Hurley did not consider herself a runner in elementary school. She did try track in middle school.
Her grandfather owned a violin shop, and she was serious about violin. That required relentless practice.
“I remember looking outside and thinking, ‘I wish I was outside right now,’” she said.
As a freshman at Fellowship Christian High School in Roswell, Georgia, she was asked to run cross-country for a couple of meets … and discovered she loved it. Unlike other team sports, she felt in control of outcomes.
“I’m so glad I didn’t find it until later,” she said. “It allowed my body to grow in a way I was really healthy when I started running. I never overdid it in high school.”
On as few as 15 miles a week, Hurley thrived.
She won three state titles in Georgia in the 1A private-school division. Twice she qualified for cross-country national championships.
As a senior, she ran 1,600 meters in 4:46.00 and a two-mile in 10:22.58, fast enough to rank among the nation’s top 25.
College was more of a struggle
For college, Hurley chose Furman, a small university (enrollment: 2,500) in South Carolina that has done big things in running under the husband-and-wife team of coaches Robert and Rita Gary.
Worst parts of Hurley’s college experience were injuries and the pandemic that eliminated the 2020 outdoor track season.
“It was always almost there,” she said, “and then something would happen.”
Was she doomed to failure? Sometimes she thought so.
“How many girls were good in high school and never did anything again?” she said. “And I didn’t have the typical high school girl eating disorders, overtraining that caused the success.
“I just assumed it was the path that I had taken, too.”
It wasn’t.
She won one Southern Conference championship, and her best finish in NCAA cross-country was 51st. She never made it to an NCAA track championship.
Rita Gary acknowledged she made coaching mistakes along the way, but she said Hurley’s talent and work ethic were unquestioned. Indeed, at age 20, Hurley ran a fast steeplechase — a race requiring her to jump over hurdles and water barriers — to underscore how “gritty” she was, the Furman coach said.
“She was never afraid to dream big. I love that about her.
“I think her work ethic has caught up to her dreams. She has been so much more intentional in the decisions that she made. It just sounds like the stars have finally aligned.”
After that 2020 spring season was canceled, Hurley thought she was done with running. For 16 months, she ran perhaps once a week, if at all.
Coaching and a comeback
Hurley’s mother sensed it wasn’t over. While watching track’s Olympic Trials on TV in June 2021, she told her daughter, “You’re telling me you can’t do that?”
Gateway back to running was coaching. In August 2021, Hurley began running with the girls she was coaching at Marist School in Atlanta. Marist’s head coach, Matt McMurray, agreed with Hurley’s mother. No way should she quit.
She was steered toward Atlanta Track Club Elite, coached by Andrew Begley, a former Indiana state champion and husband of Olympic runner Amy Yoder Begley. There was no guarantee Hurley would be accepted by the pro running club. However, Andrew Begley reasoned that as good a program as Furman featured, it might not have been right for Hurley.
“I knew within three or four weeks that Emma Grace could be really, really good,” he said. “Something just didn’t add up from what I saw in college and what I saw there.”
Hurley’s sole goal was to better her 5-kilometer best, which was 15:57. Then she would be “at peace with it,” she said.
She reached her goal in April 2022, clocking 15:49. She continued racing, and she continued listening to Begley, who resisted any temptation to increase the runner’s mileage at the expense of speed. He spoke to Hurley not about 2024, but about 2028 and 2032.
Just as her renewed career was on the rise, however, Hurley faced another crossroads. The Begleys were moving from Atlanta to Indianapolis, where Amy was taking a job as USA Track & Field director of long-distance programs.
Hurley had to choose: stay home with a new coach or relocate.
Setting an Indy course record
Hurley settled into her new Hoosier home by January 2024, and she has continued to soar.
It helped that her agent secured a sponsorship deal with ASICS. Those can be worth up to $100,000 a year, plus bonuses.
In cross-country, Hurley was second in the USA Championships and 34th in the World Championships. So she finished higher in the world than she ever did in the NCAA.
After finishing second on the USATF running circuit in 2023, she won it in 2024, worth $30,000.
In a last-minute decision, she entered the Monumental Half-Marathon — and proceeded to set a course record of 1:08:26. She won by nearly two minutes.
In 2025, she was no less prolific, finishing second in national races at half-marathon and 10 miles.
The one thing she declines to do is race on a track. Doesn’t like it, she said. Begley thinks he knows why.
“She does math in her head all the time when she’s running,” the coach said. “When you do math after every 400, that’s too much thinking to run fast.”
Hurley’s resilience was never tested as it was on March 1.
In the USA half-marathon at Atlanta, she and two other women separated from the pack with a mile to go. The lead vehicle guided them off course, and when the error was discovered, they had run an extra kilometer.
Hurley finished 12th, and she was going to be no worse than third. It was an egregious mistake because the top four qualified for the world half-marathon Sept. 20 at Copenhagen, Denmark.
“The first few days after that, it was hard to even sleep. I don’t think I slept for like a week, just because it was very stressful,” Hurley said.
Ultimately, World Athletics agreed to let the United States enter seven in the world half-marathon, rather than four.
In Copenhagen, Hurley chased an individual medal before finishing fifth in 1:06:23, fastest ever by an American in a women’s-only race. And a 5-6-7 finish netted the United States a team silver medal behind champion Kenya.
“To put it together was really exciting,” Hurley said.
Olympic dreams
Hurley is what David Epstein, author of the book “The Sports Gene,” would call a high responder. High responders make large gains from training, compared to others. Hurley’s coach must, if anything, restrain her.
Begley also coached another unheralded Atlanta Track Club runner, Allie Wilson, who relocated to Broad Ripple. Wilson ended up making the 2024 U.S. Olympic team in the 800 meters.
Begley also credits Scott Hudson, an athletic trainer who formerly worked for USATF, for Hurley’s improvement.
“Emma Grace is demonstrating that having the right coach and the right team behind you is more important than where you live,” Begley said.
Life in Broad Ripple has been idyllic, and simple.
Hurley is steps away from the Monon Trail, where at least once a day someone she doesn’t know says “Hi.” If she is not running, she is resting. Or walking her Foxhound, Ava. Or hanging out at Monon Coffee. Or dining with other runners who belong to the Working Man’s Track Club.
Since Begley began coaching her, he envisioned her as a marathoner. Until about a year and half ago, Hurley thought he was “really silly,” she said.
“Then I started seeing it.”
At Chicago, she was paced by Caleb Kerr, an Eli Lilly engineer from Evansville who ran for Purdue. As momentous as that first marathon was, Hurley said, it “just felt like one more baby step” on her journey.
“Honestly, more than anything, it confirmed what we thought we already knew,” Begley said.
Time is on Hurley’s side
Since Deena Kastor of the United States won bronze at age 31 in 2004, the 15 Olympic marathon medalists have ranged from 26 to 38, with an average age of about 30.
Hurley would be 30 at Los Angeles 2028 and 34 at Brisbane 2032.
“We’re not valuing short-term gains over long-term gains,” Begley said. “I think we still have some fuel left in the tank for some major improvements yet. I think she still has one more jump in her.”
Hurley plans to run one more marathon before the Olympic Trials, set for March 25, 2028, at St. Louis, where she lived until she was 9. Most of her mother’s family lives there.
Yet if she isn’t among the top three in the marathon, there would be another chance to make the Olympic team. Hurley has progressed enough to be in the mix for the 10,000-meter trials on May 20-21, 2028, at Walnut, California.
Her weekly mileage wasn’t extraordinary ahead of the Chicago Marathon. According to her GPS tracking device, she exceeded 100 miles in just four of 17 weeks leading up to that race.
“I do have a lot of room to grow in adding mileage,” Hurley said.
There is plenty of room on the Monon, even if there are joggers and walkers to dodge. And plenty of room in a trophy case for more medals — maybe even one from L.A.
Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com.
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