Annie Gould’s virtual marathon = awesome

OK. So, races are getting canceled or postponed all over the place. In the overall scheme of this insidious pandemic, road and trail races are pretty low on the priority list. In our world, not so much. Many of our loyal alums continue to train hard for marathons and other races. Two of our favorites, Annie Gould and Brie Vess, were planning on running the same marathon in Newport, RI, that Marist Running Alums Omar Perez and Billy Posch completed with such success last April. It goes without saying that this race – like all others -- was shut down, in this case postponed until the fall.

Many races are encouraging virtual options. Go and run your 5k, half marathon and marathon on your own and report it to us. We’ll even give you race SWAG! Annie didn’t wait for her appointed race date in a month. She decided on a sunny early spring Saturday (yesterday) to run herself a marathon on the Dutchess Rail Trail, and she did a great job with it, 3:36:37, only a minute slower than her time at the NYC Marathon. Obviously, with far fewer people! But hey, Annie made the best of this crappy situation. Good for her.

Here are her amazingly consistent mile splits, from her watch:

8:41, 8:35, 8:28, 8:29, 8:23, 8:29, 8:21, 8:22, 8:14, 8:20, 8:15, 8:16, 8:12

8:16, 8:13, 8:06, 8:15, 8:08, 8:11, 8:09, 8:07, 8:09, 8:16, 8:05, 8:08, 7:51, 1:30

Pretty consistent/slight negative split, nicely done! And she was even smiling at mile 20 -- no wall for her yesterday!

For those keeping score at home, Marist Running Alum Doug Ainscow did a virtual marathon on the DRT before virtual marathons were a "thing" ... so there's that. Hey, in these troubling times, just getting out the door and walking or running is an accomplishment.