In an episode of “The Burnouts” podcast recorded last summer, Gu, now 22, shared that she was a skiing “weekend warrior” while competing for San Francisco University High School’s cross country and track teams. “The skiing thing happened by accident,” she said. “I always loved skiing growing up. I grew up in San Francisco and did the weekend warrior thing, the four hour drive to Tahoe. I was skiing two days a week. I probably had 45-50 days on the mountain. By no means was I a professional skier or training. I was running cross country and track in high school and that was my big thing. I thought I was going to be recruited.” As a freshman, she was a consistent No. 2 or 3 runner on the cross-country team, placing 40th at the 2017 CIF State Cross-Country Championships in 20:11.70 for three miles and helping the Red Devils to a runner-up team finish in Division 5. As a freshman on the track, she ran 11:55.90 for 3200 meters, 5:31.98 for 1600 meters, and 2:36.07 for 800 meters.
The article goes on to say that maybe the next year she ended up skipping states in xc to do her first World Cup event and the rest is history. She did run the mass participation race at the Paris Olympics and ran 3:24.
RW wrote:
Gu previously told Chinese news outlet INF News that she trained up to 10 miles per day while preparing for the Marathon Pour Tous, the mass participation race in Paris that was held in conjunction with the Olympics in 2024. She ran 3:24:36 in her debut at the distance. She also ran the 2022 San Francisco Half Marathon in 1:41:07, finishing second in her age group.
There are two different ways to interpret "big-time runner". The common usage of "big time" is that the person is into running "big-time", meaning very into running without necessarily saying anything about how good that person is at running. There are plenty of hobby joggers that are "big-time runners". Last week, someone posted something from Gu's instagram that showed that she was reading a paperback copy of "Once a Runner". I'd say that's someone really into running.
thank you, Mr. Pedant, but context matters. Your way of interpreting it in this context is wrong.
Read it again: "Eileen Gu used to be a big-time runner - 40th in California state xc meet as frosh...."
The usage of "big-time" was being supported by her placement at the State meet, and the implication was that that was an impressive result.
Had it been: "Eileen Gu is a big-time runner - she was shown reading 'Once A Runner' in an IG post" you'd have had a point. Now go finish your freshmen English paper.
No, she'd be a big-time runner the way you want to use it if rojo had discovered that she had been more like top 10 at the state meet as a freshman and he wanted to pump that. You conveniently left out that rojo also wrote "3:24 marathon" in the thread title. It's clear from rojo's original post that he knows how fast she ran (20:11 at the state meet, 5:31/11:55 as a freshman). Those times indicated she's into running so much that she clearly did the training of someone really into running and was really competent as a runner. . . a "big-time runner". Rojo is NOT saying that she was a running star.