In 2009, Jenny Simpson crossed the line in 3:59:90 as the first woman in NCAA history to finish a 1500m race in under four minutes. Seventeen years on and her record still stands, but now, Simpson will no longer run again. In June, the 40-year-old collapsed while pacing the Sir Walter Pop Up Mile, with the medical emergency permanently changing things, and now, a personal facet has emerged.

For Simpson, her biggest loss just happens to be her daily runs with her husband, Jason. A former distance runner himself, he got married to her in 2010, and the couple has been running together since. Now, that has changed as the Olympic bronze medalist can never run again after being diagnosed with a rare heart condition.

“We’ve been able to run these parallel paths for so long, and both feel really fulfilled. But running those parallel paths has often been very literal,” Simpson told The Athletic. “When we run together as a married couple, there are no phones. You don’t have to look at each other; you’re side by side.”

She suffered a sudden cardiac arrest while pacing a track event in Raleigh, requiring lifesaving CPR before surviving another cardiac arrest at the hospital. In the aftermath, doctors identified ARVC, a genetic heart condition that had been hidden until intense exertion exposed it.

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“Like, you can really have meaningful time together, even in silence,” she continued in the Athletic report. “Or these long conversations out in a beautiful setting, totally undistracted and uninterrupted. We’re going to have to find something else now, to keep that meaningful, undistracted connection, as frequent in the future as it was in the past. I don’t know that we have the full answer for that yet.”

For context, Simpson paced a group of eighth-grade girls at the Sir Walter Pop Up Mile and finished the race in good condition. However, while mingling with other spectators and friends, Simpson felt off and stepped away. That was when she collapsed, and the presence of trained medical professionals helped save her life.

Not just that, Fleet Feet’s CEO Joey Pointer and his wife Ivy Pointer, a pediatric ICU physician, played key roles in that. Their son, Liam, suffers from a similar heart disease.

Thus, they had an AED, or automated external defibrillator, on hand. So, while Dr Pointer began CPR on Simpson, the Fleet Feet CEO rushed to get the AED, which ended up saving Simpson’s life.

She was then rushed to the hospital, and after several life-saving procedures, Simpson finally woke up four days later. However, she doesn’t remember anything that happened during that time, including from the day she collapsed.

“I first started being aware of what was going on around me on June 21, so it was a long time while I was in the ICU,” Simpson explained. “The first thing I remember is just thinking, ‘Why? Why am I in the hospital? And why is everyone around me so sad?’”

The 40-year-old was fortunate to have the right people, equipment and medical care around her when she needed them most.

Jenny Simpson opens up on how lucky she got

When Jenny Simpson walked into the Sir Walter Pop-Up Mile on June 16, 2026, she expected a regular day. The 39-year-old was present at the event as a special guest and the newly appointed Chief Running Officer for Fleet Feet.

That was until a friend convinced her to give a group of young girls a treat and act as a pacemaker for their mile. Given that Simpson was a legendary Olympic medalist and had spent much of the previous year running in all 50 states for her community-focused RUN USA Tour, pacing a 5:30 mile seemed like a walk in the park.

Though a casual jog for her lungs and legs, the effort triggered a hidden, genetic heart condition. Moments after crossing the finish line, her heart short-circuited, sending her into a sudden and near-fatal cardiac arrest.

And that’s exactly what it turned out to be until she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. That’s when the doctors explained to her what exactly had happened and why. They diagnosed her with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, or ARVC, a rare condition. 

“I was an Olympian in track and field. I ran marathons all over the world. I’ve run down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It could have happened at any of those points,” Simpson said, as per The New York Times. “I mean, you can’t help but have your mind wander and think, man, of all the places that the lightning would strike, metaphorically.”

Strangely enough, Simpson and Liam Pointer underwent surgery on the same day at the same hospital.

“I’m just so fortunate not only that it happened in a public place, but that the people, the bystanders, were so willing to come into a scary situation, and they knew what to do.” 

For Simpson, surviving the collapse came with a painful trade-off. But as she looks back on how close she came to losing everything, the Olympic medalist knows that losing running was still far better than losing the chance to keep living.