Coach Jerry Alexander

Jerry has extensive experience coaching marathoners at both the elite and community levels. As the coach of the Georgetown Running Club (GRC) since 2010, Jerry has coached 21 qualifiers (and counting) for the United States Olympic Marathon Trials. At the 2024 Trials, seven GRC men competed, which was the most of any team in the country. As the coach of Northern Virginia Running Club since 2006, Jerry has coached more than 200 Boston Marathon qualifiers, many of whom were masters athletes. Jerry’s athletes have competed in all of the World Major Marathons, and he has helped the athletes prepare for the unique challenges of each of the races.

Jerry’s expertise extends beyond the marathon. In 2025 the GRC men won the USATF Clubs Cross Country Championship, and in 2023 the GRC women finished third. On the track, GRC athletes have competed in the USATF Championships four times, won six Penn Relays Olympic Development championships, and one GRC athlete who competes internationally is a 5x gold medalist in the Games of the Small States of Europe in the 800 and 1500.

The diversity of Jerry’s experience informs his coaching methods. In any given week Jerry works with elite athletes training for national level competition, novice runners training for their first 5k, and everything in between. Jerry has the ability to relate to runners of all abilities, and he understands that each runner’s goals are extremely important to them.

Jerry was a walk-on at Columbia and he used his final year of eligibility to compete as a first year law student at Vanderbilt. Jerry started his coaching career as the head coach at the University of the District of Columbia, a Division II school, and moved to Division I as a long-time assistant at American University. In his spare time, Jerry works as an attorney for the United States Department of Justice. Jerry lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife Michelle, and their adult son Jacob lives nearby.