Let’s not forget her collegiate accomplishments, listed here:
Collegiate achievements
5000 meters indoor – 14:52.79 (Boston, MA 2024) NCAA record (broke record by 16 seconds; set record twice)
5000 meters: 14:52.18 (Eugene, OR 2024) NCAA record (broke record by 11 seconds)
10000 meters: 30:50.43 (Azusa, CA 2024) NCAA Record (broke record by 28 seconds)
Cross Country: 18:55.2 (Charlotteville, VA 2023) NCAA Record for 6K
6 NCAA National Titles to her name, and 5 NCAA Records at the time she was in college. She won 6 consecutive national championship finals, all within the span of only one calendar year. Her margins of victory were astounding:
2023 NCAA Outdoor 5000m - 9.0 seconds
2024 NCAA Cross Country - 10 seconds
2024 NCAA Indoor 5000m - 22.2 seconds
2024 NCAA Indoor 3000m - 5.2 seconds
2024 Outdoor 10000m - 5.8 seconds
2024 Outdoor 5000m - 17.9 seconds
The best that has even been in her events she competed in. That’s quite historic (literally).
She followed up the greatest collegiate career ever by placing 4th at the Olympic Trials in the 5000m (beating a certain someone by a ridiculous 42 seconds) and placed 2nd in the 10000m to make the 2024 Olympic Team. In Paris, she took the lead with 1500m to go and ultimately placed 11th.
Now, since going pro and signing with New Balance, she’s been re-building, training, preparing and planning. Now it’s 2025 and she’s making her debut at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix and is set to run the 3000m in just about seven hours from now (to be televised on NBC and Peacock).
Valby is not going to show up after this hiatus and re-build if she isn’t ready to run very, very fast.
Jessica Hull has the meet record in the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix 3000m of 8:24.93 (set in 2024). Could it go down in Valby’s professional debut? What about Elle St. Pierre's 8:20.87 American Record? Maybe even Genzebe Dibaba's 8:16.60 World Record set way back in 2014?
The last time Parker Valby was at The Track @ New Balance and that gutsy move to the front in Paris