Margo Jennings is a retired teacher and athletics coach. Jennings enjoyed a 40-year teaching career while coaching track athletes of all levels for 30 years. Using her self-created training plan, focusing on low mileage and strength training, Jennings coached many athletes, most notably Maria Mutola (Mozambique), who won Gold in the 800m at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and Dame Kelly Holmes (England) who won double gold in the 800/1500m events at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Jennings is considered by many supporters as one of the best middle distance running coaches in the world. Early life Margo Jennings was born and raised in the Bronx borough of New York City. Her mother Ann, an avid fan of the Arts, was a legal stenographer for Louis Nizer before quitting the profession to raise Margo and her older sister Jayne. Jerry, her father, owned a wholesale furrier shop in New York City's Garment District and was a fervent sports fan. Encouraged by her mother, Jennings studied dance and piano, beginning daily lessons at four years of age and continuing through high school. An accomplished performer by thirteen, she attended high school at the High School of Music and Art in New York City. She attended the University of Miami from 1962–1966, during the years of segregation, race riots and the rumblings leading up to the Vietnam War. An active civil rights supporter and member of the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority, she was President of the Panhellenic Council during her senior year. Inspired by the African American students she met while student teaching in a "disadvantaged" school in Miami, Jennings developed her positive reinforcement, confidence building teaching methodology. Encouraging her students to set goals and achieve them, she taught with an ethos that tiny steps in the right direction, lead to big changes over time. Her teaching approach was the foundation for her athletics training plan. Coaching career Middle school coaching After graduating college, Jennings spent seven years teaching in Miami. The next 10 years found her traveling, serving in Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), living on a farm in Rogue River, Oregon. and becoming a recreational runner. In 1980, Jennings moved to Eugene, Oregon. In 1981, she began teaching 6th grade at Hamlin Middle School in Springfield, Oregon and coaching the 7th and 8th grade boys and girls track and cross country teams. Studying the training plans of top athletics coaches, Jennings