Jerry Schumacher is the head coach of the Bowerman Track Club’s professional team and one of the most accomplished distance running coaches in the world. Since becoming a full-time Nike professional coach in 2008 he has assembled a mind-boggling list of achievements. 19 of his athletes have made Olympic or World Championship track teams and 8 have set National Records. His athletes have racked up 32 National Championships in track, added 8 more in Cross Country, and collected 6 medals at global track championships. In the span of a year, Jerry coached Shalane Flanagan to a win at the New York City Marathon and Shelby Houlihan to multiple Diamond League victories at 1,500 meters, demonstrating the breadth of his coaching acumen. If he has a signature event as a coach, it is the 5,000m, where athletes he coached hold 11 of the 20 spots on the US top 10 lists for Men and Women. In 2017 he was named the USATF Coach of the Year.

His professional coaching career has thrived in Oregon, but Jerry’s roots are Wisconsin red. Born and raised in the state he was a multiple time All-American in Cross Country and Track at the University of Wisconsin, finishing 5th in the 1500m at the NCAA Championships. He worked as an assistant at his alma mater for several years before taking the head cross country coach job at the University of North Carolina. That stint was to be short lived, however, as the UW job opened up and Jerry was called home to lead the Badgers at the tender age of 28. Over the next 10 years he coached dozens of All-Americans, multiple National Champions, and won 7 team trophies at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, including the 2005 title.

By the end of his decade at Wisconsin, Jerry had assembled one of the best professional training groups in the country consisting mainly of his former Badger athletes. In 2008 he moved that group out to Oregon to train with the support of Nike. His decision in 2014 to merge his professional group with the Bowerman Athletic Club to create the Bowerman Track Club was essential in creating the greatest top to bottom, Pro to Youth to Masters, track club in the world- who’s website you are presently pursuing.

In the track and field world Jerry is known for two things: his prodigious resume and shunning the public spotlight. To his athletes and friends he is known for his gregarious storytelling, love of hard work, and stubborn insistence that jeans are fancy and black pepper is “too spicy”. His favorite recreation activities are getting his heart rate above 170 beats per minute and spending time with his wife, Kathy, and their four children.

Co-Founder of Heartbreak Run Co. and purveyor of stoke in the Boston running community, Dan Fitzgerald provides a rare look into the life and times of our no...