Dan Smith
Jenni Nolen works out at the Kirk Family YMCA, where she is a trainer.
The Big Lift, The Small Woman By Dan Smith Jenni Nolen is a tiny woman with a huge heart and the ability to lift three times her weight. And now she holds a world record. Jenni Nolen stretches out her height as much as she can. “I’m 5-foot-one and a half,” she emphasizes. “Don’t forget the half. I need it.” Well, “need” is relative, especially for a 52year-old woman who can lift three times her 101-pound weight (308.8-pound deadlift in this case)and set a world record with that lift recently. She actually lifted 320, but a technical glitch erased that significant accomplishment, saving it for a later day. The same day, she bench pressed 115.7 pounds, a Virginia state record. By comparison, a football player is generally asked to bench press his weight. She, of course, surpassed that.
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Nolen, mother of two grown children (and separated from her long-time husband Rob Clark), has been lifting weights for 10 years, but power lifting competitively for three years. She is already piling up the records: two national deadlift records and state marks in the bench press, squat and dead lift. Nolen is a trained artist whose work is quickly recognized in the Roanoke art community, and the former co-owner (with Clark) of Cantos Books, a popular store that served customers from the Roanoke City Market for several years. She managed the store and kept the books (not her favorite thing to do).
