New Brighton’s Gabi Rooker goes from high-level gymnast to potential Olympic marathoner

Gabi Rooker begins her days running around the lakes outside of Minneapolis. In the mornings, she runs between 3 and 5 miles before heading to the hospital for work as a physician assistant. When she gets home, she adds on another 10 miles, goes to bed and repeats the next day.

That’s how the 36-year-old from New Brighton went from casual runner to marathoner to potential Olympian after a stunning fourth-place finish among Americans at last fall’s Chicago Marathon.

On Saturday, Rooker will be in the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in Orlando, where three female runners and at least two male runners will earn a trip to the Paris Games this summer.

She is ranked 11th among American women by worldathletics.org — an incredible achievement considering her late arrival to the sport.

As Gabi Hooper, she was a high-level gymnast. Aside from a short stint in high school when she ran track, she competed in a gymnasium from the time she was three years old to age 22, where she was a three-time individual (two vault and one floor) and three-time team NCAA Division III champion at Wisconsin-La Crosse.

She said she loved the idea of working through a skill, going step-by-step to learn something through a series of problem-solving before finally feeling the satisfying reward of success.

But after finishing college, she felt lost.

“Almost all gymnasts are going to be done after college, if you go on to college gymnastics,” Rooker said. “That’s kind of the endpoint, the end goal, so then there’s a period of relearning yourself and who you are as no longer a gymnast. That can be pretty tricky.”

Rooker started running casually after she graduated in 2010, but it was mostly an “off-and-on thing” and a way to stay in shape. She began full-time work as a PA, and in October 2018, decided to run the Twin Cities 10 Mile. There, she discovered Mill City Running, as the course was littered with members cheering on the racers. Looking to find a similar community to the one she experienced in gymnastics, she joined the team in early 2019.

Rooker’s rise was meteoric.

After cutting her time by almost four minutes in the 2019 Twin Cities 10 Mile, she set a goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, aided by her husband, Alex Rooker, her full-time coach for the past five years. The two met in high school and attended La Crosse together, and now, Alex coaches her along with Raev Endurance, an elite eight-person training team based in Minneapolis.

When the pandemic hit, Gabi Rooker’s first marathon was delayed until 2021, giving her another year to build mileage and develop a stronger training base. Because of that, she’s been able to significantly improve every time she races. Since running her first marathon nearly three years ago, she’s lowered her time by more than 30 minutes.

Her last race? Gabi Rooker placed fourth among American women at the Chicago Marathon, running 2:24:35 in October. She’s called her own rapid improvement “shocking.”

“I know my own goal has been and always remains to see how fast I can be,” Gabi Rooker said. “I don’t know if I had expectations. … Just really to be faster, get stronger, and I think that still remains the baseline goal, although the details within that are probably what changed.”

Going into the Trials, Gabi Rooker stands as the eighth fastest American woman. The next five runners in front of her are all within three minutes, and Saturday’s marathon figures to be a cutthroat race.

She may have an outside chance at making the Olympic team, but Gabi Rooker feels prepared to shock the running world once again.

“I’m just excited for the whole experience,” Gabi Rooker said. “I’ve never been a part of an Olympic trial. I’m really excited to be going there representing Nike. That’s something I really never thought was going to be possible. I get to toe the line with this really, really fast group of women and just kind of put myself out there, and I’m excited for all of it.”

Said Alex Rooker: “We’ve always said she’s going to get out there and do the best that she can for that day, and whatever happens, this journey has already been incredible for us. I try not to, and I don’t think she tries to on herself, either, put any grand expectations. It’s more to get out there and try to do better than the last time she was out there.”

Two other Mill City runners — Kim Horner and Heather Kampf — will be competing alongside Gabi Rooker, and she’ll have about 50 members of the running store’s race team lining the course to cheer her on. Back in the Twin Cities, there’s a watch party.

“Obviously, the race is the thing that I can pinpoint and point to and say, ‘This is the outcome of that training cycle,’ but I do feel really proud of a lot of the progress that we’ve made this training cycle mentally, physically, emotionally as life has changed a ton for us,” Gabi Rooker said. “I’m already feeling like, as a team, we’ve pushed a lot of boundaries that we haven’t before. I’m pretty proud of where we are already, and the race results will be one more piece of data that we can look at afterward.”