Juneau runner Hilary Young set a personal best time of three hours, four minutes and 41 seconds in the New York City Marathon last weekend.
“It feels pretty good,” the 31-year-old said. “I was especially excited because it was a harder course than my qualifying race.”
Young’s time was 79th for all women and 39th for U.S. women. Kenya’s Mary Keitany won the women’s race in 2:24:25 and countryman Stanley Biwott won the men’s race in 2:10:34.
Young qualified for the marathon with a time of 3:07 in last year’s Portland Marathon.
“I actually felt stronger in New York than Portland,” sje said. “That is always a good sign.”
The NYCM is the world’s biggest and most popular marathon. The 2015 race included 50,530 athletes with an average finishing time of 4:34:45.
Young ran cross country and track as a freshman at Portland State University and former teammates invited her to join them in New York.
“We ran the Portland (Marathon) together,” Young said. “I had never done it before, so I thought it would be a pretty good experience.”
Her only other organized race after qualifying was the 12.1-mile Leg 10 in the Klondike Road Relay in September.
Training involved roughly 40 miles over five days each week during the four months leading up to New York. The longest training run was 24 miles.
Young stayed in mid-town Manhatten and had to catch a 5:30 a.m. runner’s bus, arriving at the start in Staten Island at 6:15 a.m. for the 10 a.m. start.
“I really liked, and it was apparent, that it was an international event,” Young said. “At the starting village they would make announcements in English and, like, five other languages. There was just a lot of good energy out on the course with a lot of people cheering in the different boroughs that we ran through. It was fun to have that constantly and to be surrounded by all these runners out there.
“The main thing is that there were so many people out there cheering for you that it distracts you from the pain. People were so excited to see you on the course and you were excited to see them, there were little kids giving you high-fives.”
Young said the hardest part of the race was after the finish and having to walk a mile to get out of the marathon area to meet family and friends.
“I ended up walking two miles,” Young said. “All I wanted to do was sit down. Throughout the course, obviously in a marathon, you are going to have some hard times, but I felt pretty good in comparison to other marathons. The other thing I really liked was they had aid stations at every mile so I just tried to alternate water and Gatorade.”
Young said she is considering Juneau’s Frank Maier Marathon now.
“I was thinking, I have never actually run the Juneau marathon,” Young said. “It would be fun to run on a course that I already know.”
