Alison Cohen crosses the finish line of a half marathon pushing a stroller with her three children, a 130-pound load.

By Len Lear

Alison Cohen, 42, a resident of Mt. Airy since 2009 (“I love it, love it, love it,” she insists) is probably the greatest athlete you never heard of. At Lower Merion High School in the early 1990s, Alison earned 13 varsity letters in five sports in two years while also playing four musical instruments.

In 1992 Alison, who was then 5-foot-5 and still is, scored more points in a single season then any other basketball player, male or female, in the history of Lower Merion High School — 1,266. Four years later that record was broken by a fellow you may have heard of — Kobe Bryant — who merely went on to become the third leading scorer in NBA history with 33,643 points. (The Cohen-Bryant connection was noted in a New York Times article on June 12, 2001.)

Despite her superlative hoop skills, Cohen chose instead to play tennis at the University of Virginia (UVA) “because there was the professional option afterwards, and I thought, especially with my height and the amount of commitment I had given it growing up versus my results, I had the most potential to succeed in tennis.” So Alison played tennis on the professional tour after college and achieved #400 in the world in singles and #300 in doubles.

Cohen was not exactly a brainless jock who took basket weaving classes and left school, as many athletes do, without a degree. She graduated from UVA in 1996 as a Physics major and was captain and #1 player on the tennis team. She then earned a Masters degree in Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in 2005 from the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Today, in her 40s, Cohen is not a threat to Serena Williams or to hit 3-point bombs with the accuracy of Steph Curry, but since the competitive fire still burns in her gut, she has accomplished another astonishing athletic feat that should soon be acknowledged in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The idea for this new athletic challenge came to Alison when her wife, Nurit Bloom, was pregnant with twins two years ago. Cohen would take her oldest child, Naomi, now 3, for 5 or 10-mile runs.

“When I learned we were having twins,” Alison recalled, “I immediately found a double baby jogger. When the twins turned six months, almost to the day, I was out with them in early weekend mornings. Baby jogging has been a huge part of our fitness and transportation.

“So, inspired by my awesome colleague who pointed out to me that the single baby jogger world record was set, I considered attempting the double-baby-jogger marathon world record. I applied to Guinness and waited. And tried to find a race that would allow me to take a stroller.

“And I waited. And by the time the race came around, I hadn’t heard from Guinness. And life is busy. And spring of 2016 passed by. And then it was a hot summer. And then the twins got really big and heavy, and the thought of doing a marathon with them seemed insane.

“But one fall night, I had an awesome run. Felt great. Turning 42 soon. My 3-year-old was up in the middle of the night, and I was lying on the floor of her room. Why should I exclude her from the record? Why focus on the full marathon, not the half? I started Googling and found there was no half-marathon record for a triple stroller. How fun would it be to put our kids in the Guinness Book!”

So Alison trained like an Olympic athlete, pushing the stroller with her three children in it, 130 pounds in all (the kids weigh a total of about 90 pounds, plus another 40 pounds for the stroller), for mile after mile. But the training was not the only thing Cohen had to worry about.

“On our regular runs,” she explained, “I often have to stop every few minutes. 'I want a snack, mommy!' 'She has my blanket, mommy!' 'I don’t want my mittens, mommy!' 'Mommy, my hands are cold!'”

Also, Cohen learned that triple strollers are hard to come by. “I chased up this huge old triple stroller in New Jersey on craigslist,” she said, “just a few weeks before the race. The wheels were out of line, had a tendency to go flat and/or fall off and veered to the right.”

But as great athletes and entertainers all know, the show must go on, so on Oct. 23, 2016, Alison and her wife awoke their three daughters, now 3 and one-and-a-half (twins), at 5 a.m., put them and the triple stroller into their 1998 station wagon and headed to the Atlantic City Half Marathon. The goal: to set a world record by pushing all three of them in a half-marathon in under two hours.

“There were about 10,000 things that could have gone wrong with the day, and none did,” said Alison, who negotiated the 13-plus miles with lots of witnesses in the incredible time of one hour, 54 minutes and nine seconds!

“Guinness has not yet confirmed it,” said Cohen, “but I'm sure it will be a record.” That is approximately 8.8 minutes per mile. (Very, very few 42-year-olds anywhere could run a half-marathon at under nine minutes per mile, not to mention pushing an additional 130 pounds!)

Interestingly enough, there was a woman named Suzy Goodwin in North Carolina who planned to set the record with her triplets the week after Cohen ran in New Jersey. Goodwin got lots of press and ran the race in two hours, one minute and 16 seconds, more than seven minutes slower than Cohen!

In addition to setting world records and having her own basketball record broken by Kobe Bryant, Cohen is now president and CEO of Bicycle Transit Systems, a company that focuses on bike sharing programs, such as Indego Bikes in Philadelphia. Prior to that, she was an investment banker. “I want to be the best,” she said, “but not in the traditional best way.”

For more information, visit alicohen.tumblr.com.