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“For the first time in my life, the jacket I was wearing fit.”
Julia Emmons earned a history Ph.D. and was set for tenured academic life, teaching library science at Emory, but her true passion was running.
When the fifth director in five years of the Atlanta Track Club and Peachtree Road Race resigned, she threw her running shoes in the ring and was hired, despite having no experience running anything, “not even a water station.”
In the following 22 years, she grew the world’s largest 10K from 25,000 to 55,000 runners, established simultaneous races for soldiers in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan and managed Olympic women’s marathoners – later serving on Atlanta’s City Council.