America’s Fastest Teacher Signs a Shoe Deal With Brooks

Susanna Sullivan, who heads to the World Championships at the end of the month, is giving up her private tutoring clients.

The start of the school year for marathoner Susanna Sullivan, who teaches sixth grade math, will look a little different this month.

Classes begin on Monday, August 21, and she’ll teach the first two days of the year.

Then Tuesday night she will hop on an overnight flight to Budapest, Hungary.

On Saturday, August 26, she will run the marathon at the World Championships. She was selected for the U.S. team after she ran 2:24:47 in April at the London Marathon. Keira D’Amato and Lindsay Flanagan are the other two American entrants. (On the men’s side, it’s Elkanah Kibet, Zach Panning, and Nico Montañez.)

Monday, Sullivan will fly home. Then Tuesday, August 29, she’ll be back in the classroom. And it will be an extra long day—that’s also back-to-school night at Haycock Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia.

For Sullivan, the buildup for Budapest has been made easier by the fact that she’s been on summer vacation while preparing. Instead of having to get up at the crack of dawn to log her first of (at least) two daily workouts, she’s been able to sleep in a little bit.

She’s also got additional support, in the form of a shoe sponsor. Sullivan has signed with Brooks, and she has been training in the Ghost and will race in the Hyperion Elite 3.

Her agent, Dan Lilot, said she entertained several serious offers, but because she has a full-time career in teaching, she didn’t need to rush to make a decision. The Brooks deal takes her through at least 2025.

After Budapest, Sullivan will turn her eyes toward the Olympic Trials on February 3, 2024. The race will be held in Orlando, Florida, and Sullivan’s currently ranked sixth on the list of qualifiers.

With the Brooks sponsorship and the continued backing of the company TCS, which has made her an ambassador for the marathon group Team TCS Teachers, Sullivan is giving up the extra tutoring she was doing in the evenings. “That immediately gives me back 20, closer to 25 hours a week,” she said in a call with Runner’s World.

Sullivan is using up all of her personal days to get to the World Championships. But Brooks’s support will give her the financial freedom to take some unpaid leave to do heat training before the Trials in February.

She’ll spend her entire winter break someplace hot, and now she feels like she can take a few extra days as well if she needs more time to prepare for the race in Orlando. USA Track & Field announced this week that the Trials race will start at 12:20 p.m.

Sullivan is still mulling whether she’ll continue teaching full-time after this year or take a pause for a year or two from all the lesson planning, grading, and time on her feet at the front of a classroom.

“She could be a full-time athlete if she wanted to,” Lilot said. “But I don’t think she needs to be a full-time athlete. If you’ve found success in a certain environment, changing things dramatically isn’t the way to go about it.”

She likes the students and enjoys her coworkers—and her busy schedule has worked for her so far. At the same time, Sullivan, 33, knows her window for maximizing her running potential won’t be open forever.

That’s a math problem for her to solve at a future date. Up next: She’ll be wearing the USA uniform in Budapest—with Brooks on her feet.

Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!

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