Going the distance: Several locals participate in Boston Marathon

Of the 30,000 runners who participated Monday in the Boston Marathon, eight were members of the local running community.

Local runners Mike Burnett, Paul Fliege, Andrew Johnson, Ashley Schmittzehe, Alan Barnette, J. Steven Schmittzehe, Matthew Windeknecht and Carol Winter competed in the 26.2-mile race, which is among the world's premier marathons.

For Burnett -- a first-time Boston Marathoner -- the race represented the culmination of hundreds of miles logged in training.

"I've been actually running for three years, but training for a marathon's about a 20-week training cycle," he said. "You have to qualify for Boston, so it's a big deal to try to get fast enough to make it."

And qualifying is difficult. This year, for a 30-year-old man to qualify for Boston, he must run a marathon in no more than 3 hours, 5 minutes -- a time which would have netted silver in the inaugural Olympic marathon in 1896.

"But I was here with a group of people who have run this five or six times," Burnett said. "So I knew going into it what to expect, and that was very helpful."

Runners such as Carol Winter of Uniontown, who, at 55, finished 51st in her division.

"I'm the oldest one," she said. "I'm the mom around here."

Monday was her fourth time running the Boston Marathon, something she said she never considered as a goal when she began running.

"You know what? It never was." The second marathon I ever ran, I ran with my daughter, and she helped push me across the finish line faster than I thought I could," she said. "I didn't realize I had qualified until the next day, because I didn't think I'd ever be fast enough to qualify."

She said while Boston hosts a great marathon, her true goal is just to keep running.

"I had an injury last fall that made me rethink what my goals were," "My goals are to just keep running. I don't have to run fast, I just want to keep being able to run."

She said she uses a few techniques to power through tough miles during a race.

"I think a lot about how other people are struggling with different things, and I'm not struggling near as hard as they are by running a marathon. I think about God a lot and how I trust in Him to get me through it, however he decides I'm gonna get through it," she said. "And sometimes, I just count to 90. Then start over at one again."

And a good running community helps, too, which she said Cape Girardeau has. While the number of Cape Girardeau runners who qualified for Boston this year may be a testament to the speed of local runners, Winter said the inclusivity is a better measure.

"The Cape running community is fantastic. It doesn't matter if you run fast or slow, short distances or long distances; everybody's welcome," she said.

"What you'll find on almost any given day of the year there'll be a group out running," Bennett said. "Runner support, the running community, the guys who own the running store, it's unbelievable how much help they can be."

Johnson, who also ran his fourth Boston Marathon this year, expressed a similar sentiment.

"I feel like it's a tight-knit community we support each other. We've got runners of all different levels, and we don't look down on people whether they're slow or even walkers. If someone's putting in a good effort, you know, that's the main thing," he said. "We're all starting form different levels, but we're all just trying to do the best we can."

And they enjoy each other's company off the track as well, Burnett said.

"There's a party at Fenway Park tonight. so that'll be the first thing we're gonna do as a running group," he said. "And we'll find a local watering hole to have some fun. But we'll do it all as a group."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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