Olympic, UW volleyball star Courtney Thompson ready for Boston Marathon

Courtney Thompson was a seventh-grader the last time she ran a road race.

About 50 yards from the finish line of the 5-kilometer Christmas fun run, she puked.

Now, Thompson is 32, retired from an illustrious volleyball career and ready to try racing again. Monday morning, Thompson will run the Boston Marathon.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty big step up,” said Thompson, who got into the 26.2-mile race with a sponsor exemption from Hyland’s, a California-based homeopathic company. “But I’ve always been a fan of endurance sports and pushing yourself in that way, so I’m really looking forward to this.”

Of the 88 South Sound residents running the Boston Marathon, Thompson might be the least experienced. But none can match her sports résumé.

Thompson grew up in Kent, where she was the valedictorian at Kentlake High and led the school to three volleyball state titles. At the University of Washington, she set school records for assists, earned all-America honors three times and led the Huskies to the 2005 national championship.

After college, she played for Team USA and played professionally in Switzerland and Brazil. She helped the U.S. win silver at the 2012 London Olympics, bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and gold at the 2014 World Championships in Italy.

“The longest we would ever run for volleyball was like 30 seconds,” Thompson said. “We weren’t supposed to do long distance because we would start developing slow-twitch muscles.”

Following the Rio Olympics, Thompson decided it was time to retire from volleyball.

“I love traveling and competing, but I was ready for it to be over and spend more time with friends and family,” said Thompson, who traveled as much as 10 months per year.

She says she always planned to start running when she retired. After a lifetime training exclusively indoors, she was ready for something different.

“This is glorious. It’s like heaven,” Thompson said. “A lot of my friends who are retired go to the gym, but all I want to do is be outside.”

Late last year, Thompson was invited to run the Boston Marathon on the sponsor’s exemption. She jumped at an opportunity. Most runners must meet an age-determined time standard to get into the race.

“I knew it was like the Super Bowl of marathons,” Thompson said. “That is absolutely not lost on me.”

As an elite athlete, Thompson knows how to block out large, boisterous crowds when she competes. That’s not what she wants to do Monday.

“I’m not wearing headphones,” Thompson said. “I’m going all natural. I want to hear what’s going on in my head. And there are so many people along the way, I want to soak up as much of the experience as possible.”

Experiencing as much as possible is what Thompson has been doing since retiring.

“I’m just trying to enjoy the other side of life for a minute,” she said. “Doing things I couldn’t do before.”

As a kid, Thompson learned to snowboard at the Summit at Snoqualmie, but she wasn’t allowed to hit the slopes as a professional volleyball player.

Making up for lost time, Thompson took her dream snowboarding road trip over the winter. She visited Sun Valley in Idaho, Aspen in Colorado and Snowbird in Utah.

Thompson lives in California and recently started working for Compete to Create, a personal performance coaching company co-founded by Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll. She plans to move back to Western Washington in May.

Her Boston training plan included plenty of hills and some long runs. Her longest: 16 miles.

“I felt pretty good,” she said.

“There is so much to learn,” she said. “It’s cool. I really enjoy that part of it. There are definitely a lot of people who are better than me, but I’m excited to be a part of that community and learn and challenge myself.”

Thompson’s training program is preparing her to finish the marathon in 3 hours, 29 minutes. Should this happen, it would qualify Thompson for next year’s race.

Would she go back?

She does dream of doing an Ironman triathlon and a 100-mile ultramarathon someday.

“I would go back if I qualified,” she said. “I’m expecting it to be a fun experience. So I guess I couldn’t say for sure.

“I’ll let you know on Monday.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 12:51 PM with the headline "Olympic, UW volleyball star Courtney Thompson ready for Boston Marathon."