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New path leads former star in old direction
Santa Rosa High and Stanford great Julia (Stamps) Mallon will compete in SF Marathon
Published: Friday, July 24, 2009
Eric Branch
PRESS DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Former Santa Rosa and Stanford star Julia (Stamps) Mallon is shown with her six-month-old baby
Ashlin Rose Mallon, after winning the Napa-to-Sonoma Wine Country Half Marathon.
She’s 30, more than a decade removed from one of the most storied distance-running careers in high school history, and
Julia Stamps isn’t a world-class runner.
Stardom, even greatness, seemed to be her birthright.
But she’s not an Olympian. Or the next Mary Decker. Heck, she not even Julia Stamps any more.
She’s been married for three years — it’s Julia Mallon, by the way — and has a six-month-old daughter, Ashlin Rose,
along with a career as a hedge fund marketer in Miami.
Running? Well, the former legend at Santa Rosa High and six-time All-American at Stanford is still managing to do plenty
of that. Just not at the level most expected when she won seven state titles, four national crowns, qualified for five
world championship teams and was the cover girl on Running Times Magazine at Santa Rosa High.
These days, Mallon sees people that knew-of-her-when and hears a familiar question.
“What happened? I hear that pretty commonly,” Mallon said. “I think it’s sweet that people care.”
For many of those people, Mallon’s story stopped when she broke her tibia and fibula in a skateboarding accident as a
junior at Stanford, an injury that left doctors uncertain whether she would ever walk without a limp. Her limb required
four screws and 15 pins to stabilize.
Eight years later, Mallon is fully recovered and finds herself in an interesting position, running somewhere between
really good and world class.
She will step to the starting line at the San Francisco Marathon on Sunday morning as a veteran of 12 marathons in the
past seven years.
Her talent remains undeniable. Twenty months after her broken leg, she wasn’t limping. Instead, she had already
reinvented herself as a marathoner and run her first 26.2 miles at the 2002 New York City Marathon in 2 hours 54 minutes
47 seconds, placing 30th among women in the world-class field.
Not bad for a rookie juggling a high-stress finance job at Morgan Stanley.
In the ensuing years, she kept the jobs in finance — she works from home these days for Weston Capital — and found
Mr. Right, Jon Mallon, an executive with Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management. Of course, she’s also squeezed
in pregnancy and motherhood.
And if her injury, subsequent jobs and family have interfered with the professional-running path she once seemed destined
to take, well, she says, she’s thankful for life’s unexpected twists.
“I really feel (the injury) was a blessing in disguise for me in that I tried something new,” Mallon said. “I’ve met
my husband and we’ve started a family. Both roads would be great, but I love my husband and I love our daughter and
I’m extremely happy with my life right now. I kind of have it all: My husband, my daughter, my career and even running.”
Yes, even her running.
It is a testament to her unique talent that it has flourished, despite being crammed into a corner of her jam-packed life.
She qualified for the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials with a personal-best time of 2:46.17 at the 2003 Chicago Marathon. She
won the 2006 San Francisco Marathon and, in another nod to her freakish ability, finished second at the Big Sur Marathon
in April, three months after giving birth. Last week, she won the Napa-to-Sonoma Wine Country Half Marathon despite
stopping to stretch her strained hamstrings during the race.
She is good. Really good. But not quite good enough to register on the national radar. Her personal-best time, for
example, is 14 minutes slower than the time Blake Russell ran at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Boston to
capture the third and final spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
But what if Mallon restructured her life? And got a coach? And wasn’t forced to run many of her 75 miles a week at
5 a.m. — before her husband left for the office — or on a treadmill while Ashlin Rose watches Baby Einstein on a
nearby playmate? Mallon has discussed the possibility with her husband. She isn’t ready to take the plunge, but she
hasn’t ruled it out, either.
“It would be interesting to see if I devoted two years and gave it everything I’ve got to see what I could do,” she said.
“... It would have to be the right time and the right situation. But it would also have to be very, very soon. Every
year that goes by I think gets a little more difficult.”
Jon Mallon said they first began discussing the possibility after the birth of Ashlin Rose in January. And after Julia,
with little training, finished runner-up at the rugged Big Sur course in 3:04.18 in April, the discussions became more serious.
“I think that really proved that she’s at a point right now where it might be worth considering, to see how far she could
go with running,” Jon Mallon said. “She’s training a little bit more, but we’re just taking it one step at a time right
now.”
Julia Mallon said, perhaps only half-jokingly, that she should hire Danny Aldridge as her coach in the event of a
full-fledged return to running.
Aldridge, a two-time national champion in the 1,500 meters at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who ran professionally, coached
Mallon in high school and remains a well-known Empire running guru.
The pair have stayed in contact through the years. And Aldridge says if Mallon fully devotes herself to running, the
results might be memorable.
Mallon’s passion for the sport is legendary. One example: When she was in the hospital for a ruptured appendix as a
freshman in high school, she began relentlessly pacing the halls, with an IV in her arm, “training” for the junior
world cross country championships.
“If she wants to make it a serious thing — Julia is so headstrong — that that’s exactly what she’ll do,” Aldridge
said. “She’ll hold nothing back. It’s all or nothing with her. And people like that usually have success in athletics
... I would love to see it. It would be great to sit back and see what she could do.”
For the moment, however, Mallon’s future in the sport remains uncertain.
She’s not Julia Stamps any more.
But maybe, just maybe, Julia Mallon’s circuitous path could lead to what she began running toward years ago.
You can reach Staff Writer Eric Branch at 521-5268 or eric.branch@pressdemocrat.com