Vermont City Marathon update:

5/28/17  26.2 miles  4:14:55

After a week of feeling old (this past week marked 20 years since my med school graduation, my 20th wedding anniversary, and my 25th Yale reunion!) Sunday's race made me feel like I'm not over the hill yet.  Despite the hills and the heat, I finished 27th in my division, out of 123 women.  I'm quite pleased with my time—not a PR, but it's my best time since 2014.

The visit to Burlington got off to a rocky start.  Our hotel had inadvertently canceled our reservations and had given our room away.  We spent about a half hour thinking that we had nowhere to stay (all other rooms in that hotel and in all other hotels in Burlington were full on account of the marathon) but someone else canceled last minute, so they gave us that room.  Whew.

(The view from the new room ended up being beautiful!)

View of Lake Champlain from our hotel

Then the hotel restaurant ran out of pasta the evening before the race.  OUT OF PASTA!!  How does that happen??

Family selfie during our almost pasta-free dinner before the race.
(They managed to find some linguini for us!)

Despite these hiccups, race day was great.  Burlington is an impossibly lovely city on the banks of Lake Champlain in northern Vermont.  The marathon route wound in and out of the city in a clover-leaf fashion, treating us to gorgeous scenery along the waterfront and then returning us often to downtown.  The VCM advertises that it is "not hilly".  This is not true!  While I agree that there were only two big climbs (at mile 9 and again at mile 15), there seemed to be about a dozen moderate ones.  Still, the last 10 miles was mostly downhill, which was welcome.  I had been anticipating this fact, so much so that when I turned onto Battery Street for the last big climb of the race (the “Assault on Battery”), I almost wept to see the cheering crowds there.  (The Burlington Taiko drummers were especially inspirational!)

Before the start, posing by the lake

At the starting line

A view of the climb up Battery Street, from our hotel window

Half-way up Battery Street

Collecting some water from Alec!

And I'm off again!

Looking tired in the chute before the finish...

...until I see Todd and the kids!

Done!

Here are more pictures of the day from the Burlington Free Press.

The City of Burlington turned out tons of spectators.  One particularly nice feature of this marathon was that our race bibs displayed not just our numbers, but also our names, so that I would hear random spectators cheering “Go, Kristy!”  It was a nice touch.

Viewing the spectator signs at any race are always entertaining, but at the VCM had a few I’d never seen before:

~ Run like United wants your seat!

~ (Seen around mile 22) Mexico’s not gonna pay for the wall you’re hitting!

~ You think running a marathon is hard, try standing with these kids (Todd’s favorite)
~ Maple syrup shots ahead (And there were!)

Here is my Vermont City Marathon medal. Because I had run the Hartford Marathon within the previous year, I got an extra medal for completing the "New England Double"!  In the words of my running partner, Neil: “Golly—that’s SWAG.”

Time for a little rest now.  My next race isn’t until the New Haven Road Race in September, so I’ll go easy this next month.  Even though I’m resting, you can always donate to our annual campaign for the Children’s Tumor Foundation here:  www.krath4jane.com :)