<\/p>\n
Oakland resident Julie Lossos-Snow, 45, (far right), pictured with running friends and fellow racers Sadie Smith of Kirkwood (middle) and Benjamin Westhoff (left), following her win at the Greater St. Louis Marathon on April 11, 2026. It was the third time Lossos-Snow has been the overall female winner of the race. Smith was the overall female winner of the marathon in 2023.<\/p>\n
| photo courtesy of Julie Lossos-Snow<\/p>\n
\u201cRespect the distance.\u201d That\u2019s what Oakland resident and three-time marathoner winner Julie Lossos-Snow tells others who are training for their first marathon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having run 14 marathons since the age of 20, the 45-year-old Lossos-Snow has learned a lot about overcoming injuries, the importance of recovery and knowing when to take a break.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last month, Lossos-Snow was the overall female winner \u2014 for a third time \u2014 at the Greater St. Louis Marathon (formerly the Go! St. Louis Marathon) with a time of 2:58:01, revealing the 26.2 miles are more than about the distance. Those miles also represent a lifetime journey of learning how to keep doing what she loves while maintaining her overall health and well-being.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first time Lossos-Snow won the marathon (then called the Spirit of\u00a0 St. Louis Marathon) was in 2001 \u2014 her first time running a marathon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having run cross country at Lafayette High School, she was briefly part of the indoor track and field team at the University of Missouri her freshman year, but realized she was better suited for longer distances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided it wasn\u2019t for me. Short, speedy track is not necessarily my strong suit or where my passion is, so I eventually started training for my first marathon,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Running her first marathon at 20 years old, Lossos-Snow had youth on her side.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember missing a 20-mile training run because I had a paper to write and waited until the last minute (to write it), but I was young and it worked out. It worked out well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Finishing her first 26.2-mile race in a time of 3:00:45, Lossos-Snow\u2019s marathon journey was just beginning. But her love of running started long before that during her middle school years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a wonderful middle school PE teacher who was very encouraging of my running endeavors,\u201d she said. \u201cI was pretty shy and didn\u2019t want to go out for the middle school track meet or cross country meet, but she encouraged me to do so and I fell in love with it.<\/p>\n
Successes & Setbacks<\/p>\n
After running several marathons throughout college, Lossos-Snow graduated with a degree in psychology and worked as a case manager in the mental health field in Columbia, Missouri, before moving back to St. Louis in 2005. Shortly after returning to St. Louis, she started coaching cross country for MICDS.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Julie Lossos-Snow runs in the 2010 St. Louis Go! Marathon. It was her second time winning the race.\u00a0| photo courtesy of Julie Lossos-Snow<\/p>\n
In 2006, she won her second marathon \u2014 the Lewis and Clark Marathon \u2014 in a time of 3:12:51. Training hard and injury-free for the four years following her win at the Lewis and Clark marathon, Lossos-Snow had a series of successes. Those included breaking three hours in the Hong Kong Marathon in 2008, running a personal best at the California International Marathon in 2010 with a time of 2:45:40, and winning her second Go! St. Louis Marathon in 2010 with a time of 2:52:31.<\/p>\n
Her time in the California International Marathon qualified her for the Olympic Marathon Trials in 2012, but she developed a stress fracture leading up to the trials and was unable to run.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lossos-Snow then decided to take a break from marathoning for the first time since 2001, and started graduate school at the University of Missouri-St. Louis to pursue her master\u2019s degree in mental health counseling.<\/p>\n
But the break was brief. Wanting to help a friend break three hours in a marathon, Lossos-Snow trained and coached her friend for the Little Rock Marathon in 2014. With terrible weather conditions and a hilly course, neither of them ran the marathon in less than three hours. Lossos-Snow said after Little Rock, she had mixed feelings about doing another one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was still in school, so that was my primary focus. The primary reason I wanted to do the Little Rock Marathon was to help my friend. I kind of hung up my marathoning shoes \u2014 again,\u201d said Lossos-Snow, who did not run another marathon until 2022.<\/p>\n
Team Support<\/p>\n
Whether running marathons or not, one consistent throughout the years for Lossos-Snow has been her involvement in Big River Running Company. She spent almost nine years before graduate school working for Big River Running. It was where she met her husband of 14 years, Carter, who also was part of the company\u2019s training team in 2007.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Julie Lossos-Snow with her husband, Carter, after the 2023 Jack and Jill Marathon held in Montana. | photo courtesy of Julie Lossos-Snow<\/p>\n
In 2016, Lossos-Snow had an accident that caused high hamstring tendinopathy. Not feeling competitive enough to run with Big River\u2019s racing team, she kept to smaller races for several years.<\/p>\n
In 2021, she resumed running with the Big River training team, participating in the group long runs on Sundays. She attributes much of her motivation to returning to marathoning to the support and friendship she received from the Big River Running training team. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI started running with them and just loved being back with the group,\u201d she said. \u201cOf course, when you get a bunch of runners together, they all have amazing goals, so that got my wheels spinning a bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to the point where I had a healthy enough segment of training, and thought maybe I want to try this again and prove to myself that I can still train and run a marathon and stay healthy doing it,\u201d said Lossos-Snow, who is a counselor at Parkway South Middle School.<\/p>\n
With a goal of not training hard and to simply finish, Lossos-Snow ran the Indianapolis Marathon in 2022, then the Jack and Jill Marathon in Washington State in 2023. Already struggling with plantar fasciitis before the Jack and Jill marathon, Lossos-Snow had to stop racing entirely in 2024 while she had a procedure to help ease the pain of her plantar fasciitis.<\/p>\n
The Comeback<\/p>\n
After several \u201cretirements,\u201d Lossos-Snow returned to competitive racing with the ultimate comeback, breaking the tape as the overall female winner for\u00a0<\/p>\n
the third time at the Greater St. Louis Marathon on April 11, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of her running partners, Benjamin Westhoff, has been running with Lossos-Snow for several years. Westhoff has witnessed her struggles and comeback attempts, and is inspired by his friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sport that\u2019s dominated, like most sports, by younger athletes. It\u2019s so incredible she had such a great comeback,\u201d said Westhoff, 48. \u201cShe is super disciplined, smart and pragmatic. She takes the long view.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen someone gets injured, they often try and play through the pain,\u201d he added. \u201cBut with Julie, there have been times she\u2019s not pushed too hard and has been very conservative about coming back. That ultimately paid off big time for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow marathoner and friend Sadie Smith of Kirkwood, who was the overall female winner of the Go! St. Louis Marathon in 2023, said Lossos-Snow\u2019s longevity in the sport is impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is a role model for both female and male master\u2019s athletes. Winning Go! in her 20s, 30s and now 40s truly speaks to her grit and determination,\u201d said Smith, 47, who has run a sub-3:00 marathon in 42 states toward her goal of going sub-3:00 in all 50 states.<\/p>\n
\u201cJulie is a St. Louis legend, and is both a kind and supportive teammate and competitor,\u201d Smith added. \u201cShe wins with grace and humility, and brings such positive energy to our local running community. On a side note, nothing in the world makes me happier than showing up to a race and seeing Julie there. I know it will always be a dog fight and incredibly good-natured competition!\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on her latest marathon success, Lossos-Snow stresses the importance of prioritizing sleep and recovery. She\u2019s also decreased training mileage as she\u2019s aged, added strength training and focuses on proper nutrition during long runs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there was something else that helped Lossos-Snow cross that St. Louis finish line in first place a few weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI had great support out there,\u201d she said. \u201cObviously with the running community, my friends and family, and the racing team cheer section, but also the woman who was second (place).We ran together for about 13 miles in the middle of the race. That was hugely helpful. It felt like teamwork, even though we were racing each other. It was really nice working together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oakland resident Julie Lossos-Snow, 45, (far right), pictured with running friends and fellow racers Sadie Smith of Kirkwood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3056,143,145,144,126567],"class_list":["post-298762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-features","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-webster-kirkwoodtimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}