Masters Runner Roberta Groner is Proof That Peak Performance Has No Expiration Date

For this story, Outside Run spoke with Roberta Groner about her running history, past race results, and her goals for the New York City Marathon and beyond.

When Roberta Groner toes the starting line of the 2026 New York City Marathon, she brings a trajectory unlike almost any other elite in the professional field. At 48, the former registered nurse, running coach, and mother of three isn’t just preparing to tackle 26.2 miles through the five boroughs. She’s also aiming to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials.

Groner never imagined she’d be here, given the fact that she didn’t start out as a distance runner; she even stepped away from the sport for more than a decade.

She began running in the seventh grade when her junior high’s track coach approached her. “He said, ‘You look like you could be a runner,’ and recruited me to run the mile,” she tells Outside Run. “I never really had a choice.”

Groner continued running throughout high school and into college until her senior year when her stepbrother passed away. “I think I was just in a moment of my life where I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she says. “It hit me hard, and I kind of walked away from running at that point.”

Rediscovering the Joy of Running

She didn’t run again for more than 10 years. Groner had three kids in three and a half years. She was a nurse with a demanding schedule. She felt a pull to reclaim a slice of her own identity. Encouraged by a coworker, she signed up for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon in 2010.

“It wasn’t like I started back with any expectations of running at any type of high level. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just for fun.’ And then I ran the half marathon, and that’s kind of when I got interested in longer distances,” Groner says. She finished with a time of 1:34 and fifth in her age group.

Groner decided she wanted to see where running could take her, so the next year she trained for the Chicago Marathon, where she qualified for the Boston Marathon with a time of 3:12. She ran Boston in 2013, crossing the finish line in under 3 hours.

She moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey in 2014, where she kicked her running into yet a higher gear.

“That’s when I got an appreciation of running with teams again,” Groner says. “There’s this whole Grand Prix series in New Jersey, and I moved out here, and people were like, ‘Oh, come run for my team,’ and I got to meet people, and I started training a little bit more seriously.”

In 2015, Groner ran the New York City Marathon for the first time, finishing with a time of 2:45.30. “People were telling me I could have almost qualified for the Olympic Trials and that I should go run another marathon. This is when the 2:45 standard was there,” she says. “I was like, ‘Are you crazy? I’m not going to go run another marathon in the next five weeks.’ So I decided I’d make it a goal for 2020.”

Groner made enormous strides in her training, descending into sub-2:30 territory. It was then, in 2022, when she realized she had more talent than she thought and made the decision to step away from her career as a nurse to focus on her running full-time as a Masters athlete and a coach.

Groner qualified for the 2020 and 2024 Trials.

Navigating a New Season

Today, at 48 years old, Groner’s training looks a lot different than it has in years past. Rather than pursuing the 100-mile weeks of her early 40s, she now caps her peak weeks between 85 and 95 miles, integrating cross-training on the bike and regular strength sessions.

Navigating perimenopause and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) over the last two years has added a complex new layer to Groner’s running journey. After starting HRT just five weeks before the 2026 Grandma’s Marathon, Groner DNF’d.

“I do think my body was just really going through some changes of thermoregulation and glycogen storage, and I think I just felt off from the beginning of my marathon,” she says. “I was racing my whole heart out, but when I came through at halfway, there was no way I could do another half at that same exact pace.”

Groner says it’s taken some time to figure out what’s going on with her body and how being on HRT is affecting her running.

“I’m getting more education and information on [the fact that] just getting on [HRT] doesn’t mean it’s going to be a miracle cure right away,” she says.

Nevertheless, she’s excited for the upcoming New York City Marathon, which she calls her hometown course.

“I’m not a New Yorker, but I’m close to a New Yorker,” she says. “And I think I need to do something hard and challenging and be home. I’m super excited to get out there and finish this one. I told myself no matter what, I’m going to finish. I really want an OTQ. Now that I’m reaching closer to 50, I still love running, and I feel I’m still competitive, and I still feel like there could be PRs—I’m always hopeful, I still train like I’m going to. I want to keep following this career journey through to see what I could do.”

In September, Groner ran 55:03 at the Bronx 10 Mile (a personal best), and in October ran 1:15:30 at the NYRR Staten Island Half Marathon in preparation for New York.

If Groner doesn’t qualify for the 2028 Trials, she says she’ll focus on shorter distances and go back to her roots of “just having fun.”

“When I start to get a little too serious about [running], I have to remember that this is fun. If we can’t laugh and enjoy it, then why are we even doing it?” she says. “Especially in the marathon, anything can happen that day, and that doesn’t mean you aren’t fit for it. You just have to realize it’s just one day, and our bodies don’t always operate on that one exact day, so I feel like you just need to have fun with it and keep it light.”