Gina Driskell Denten attended Hennessey High School and graduated in 1992. During high school, she made the state cross-country team in 1990 and was part of the state track and basketball teams from 1989 to 1992. After graduation, she enrolled at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and continued her athletic career. Gina then moved to Colorado in 2005. She’s always been an avid runner and ran her first marathon in 2009. Since then, she has completed eighteen marathons, three of them international, 30 half marathons, and a few trail races.
On April 17th of 2023, Gina had the fantastic opportunity to run in the Boston Marathon for a third time. Before this achievement, she had qualified twice previously, but those races were not traditional – her first chance was in 2020 which got canceled due to COVID-19, but she got to run it virtually. Her qualifying time for 2020 was also accepted or 2021, and that race was rescheduled to October. She ran the 2021 race with Jennifer Hajek Storch, a 1994 Hennessey graduate. This time, she qualified at a marathon in Arizona and now was finally able to take part in person on the usual Patriots’ Day that the race is run on.
“This run went better than I thought it would,” said Gina. “It was a perfect day weather-wise: rainy and cool.” She finished with an impressive 3 hours 49 minutes 18 seconds which enabled her to re-qualify for next year’s Boston Marathon.
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