Her first time out running a marathon proved to be the charm for Jodie Schoppman, a band teacher at Searingtown Elementary, who won the women’s division of the Long Island Marathon on May 1, and qualified for next year’s Olympics trials.
Qualifying for the Olympics trials was the objective for the 26-year-old Schoppman, who had planned to run a half-marathon until the day before the race.
Instead, ran the full marathon and won the race with a 2:42:54, just under the 2:46 required to qualify for the Olympics trials.
Her fiance Aaron Robertson, a marathon runner and band teacher from Altamount, convinced he she was ready to run the big race.
“A week before the race he said, ‘I think you could run a marathon’,” Schoppman recalled.
Robertson won the Long Island Half-Marathon with a time of 1:10:05.
Schoppman’s original game plan was to run a half-marathon on Long Island and then run a marathon in Ottawa, Alberta in Canda at the end of the month to try for the Olympics trials time.
“The whole object this month was to get the time for the Olympic trials. That was a goal. That was why I did it, because we thought I could do it. It was like not putting all my eggs in one basket,” she said.
Now that she’s achieved her goal, she’ll be running a 10K race in Ottawa instead of the marathon.
Schoppman was already headed for a 50K super-marathon in the Netherlands on August 20 , which she qualified for by winning the 50K national amateur championship here in March.
“It’s considered an ultra-marathon,” she said. “We just did it on a whim and it worked out pretty well.”
She said the Herricks School District is permitting to take a leave of absence in 2011-2012 to train for the Olympics trials on Jan. 14. She said her band students are also supportive and think it’s “cool” that she won the marathon.
A graduate of Island Trees High School, Schoppman ran 5K cross country there and at SUNY Potsdam, where an injury temporarily stopped her running. She started running again in 2008 after being graduated from SUNY Potsdam with a degree in music education and performance.
Her fiance had also attended and been graduated from Potsdam before she went there. Robertson had remained in the area, and the two became acquainted in the extended running community of alumni that exists in Potsdam.
Schoppman has been teaching at the Searingtown Elementary School for the past four years.
In her spare time, she still finds time to play the flute, her primary pastime when she’s not logging miles in training for her long-distance running.
“Music and running are the things I wind up doing all the time,” Schoppman said.
