SHELBURNE — Today, on Patriots’ Day, when about 30,000 runners will be thundering through the streets of Boston, three-time Boston Marathon runner Cathy Powell of Shelburne Falls can rest on her laurels, knowing she has met her goal this year to run a marathon in every state in the nation.
At 55 years old, Powell just ran her 55th marathon last month in Hawaii — the last state on her “to-do” list of marathon running.
“This was my two-year plan,” said Powell. “I always knew Hawaii was going to be my 50th state. I told my children, I will pay for your housing; you will have to buy your plane tickets.”
Powell ran the Big Island International Marathon on March 20, with her four children, their spouses and two grandchildren present. “We had two weeks of fun in Hawaii.”
Powell was not a high school track star and only ran her first marathon when she was 41 years old. “Running was just something we did when we went outside to play, as kids,” she remarked.
Powell says she doesn’t remember which years she ran which marathons, or even when she set her goal to run at least one marathon in every state. “My first couple of years, I would only do one (marathon) a year. Then I did one in the spring and fall for several years,” said Powell.
Powell was a young mother with four children and a full-time job working for Mercy Ambulance (now Medcare), when she took up running. She has done emergency medical service work for about 28 years.
“I needed something for me that wasn’t work, or raising four children alone that I could just go out the door and let the crazies out for a short time,” Powell wrote in a blog for MedCare.
Powell said her first race, when she was 37, was the Bridge of Flowers 10K race, which went along one of the routes she was already running for fun.
Powell said she never ran more than 6.2 miles until her friends at The Body Shoppe in Greenfield were doing a 12-mile “run for coffee” on Saturdays. “Steve and Becky Shattuck got me started,” she said. “They were going to be training people to do marathons, and that was when I got my first training.”
From a few marathons a year, Powell progressed to running three to four marathons during the spring or fall season. “There were back-to-back marathons — sometimes three in a month,” she said. “But it was all logistics and finance, too.”
“When I was trying to qualify for Boston, that was something I always wanted to do. It’s a little harder to qualify now,” she added. “I felt pretty lucky to do it three times.”
“It was never my intention when I started running marathons to run one in all 50 states, but the friends I was running with were and still are always up for an adventure,” Powell said. “We would go places as a group, to keep costs down, and I had family all over, so I would plan a visit and a marathon. I just kept ticking off states. The more I traveled and the more people I met, I thought: why not me? I can do this.”
The trim athlete sports a tattoo on the back of her neck of a pair of running shoes along with the slogan: “26.2. Just Keep Swimming.”
Early on, while visiting her daughter in Tennessee, Powell had a migraine, was vomiting all night, and had a marathon to run in the morning. “I came all that way, spent the money to get there and I was not going to miss out,” she wrote in her blog. “It was hot, humid and I had nothing in my system, and still a bit of a headache.”
Earlier in the visit, Powell and her daughter had watched the movie “Finding Nemo.” When her daughter dropped Powell off at the start of the race she told her: “Mom, just keep swimming.”
“I did, and I have been telling myself that through every marathon since, when things get ugly,” says Powell.
Powell has occasionally won first, second and third-place awards for finishing times for her age group, but Powell isn’t as interested in coming in first as she is in just completing the races, she said. “I’m always just putting one foot in front of the other.”
“(The point) has always been just to finish,” she said. “If I have an amazing (running) time, that’s great. But it’s never been about paces and times. It’s always about getting the exercise and having fun. I’ve told myself, if it ever stops being fun, I won’t do it. But it’s still fun.”
Powell has a brother who has run marathons in every continent in the world, who has joined her for some of the U.S. marathons. Also, Powell and her brother have traveled together to run marathons in Antarctica and Africa, with Marathon Tours in Boston. Powell has done the big marathons in Boston, Chicago and New York City, but also loves the smaller ones, which have lots of local volunteers and residents who come out to cheer on the runners.
When asked how she works out, Powell says: “I’m on-again, off-again, doing other exercises. In summertime, I bike. I’m kind of my worst enemy when it comes to stretching. I might run two or three days a week — as long as I get my long run in every week.”
Powell’s long run is a 10-mile stretch, she says.
“It keeps me sane,” she says of running. “It’s just something that I do for me. And I’ve met so many amazing people, and have seen places I would have never thought about. I feel very, very blessed. I’ve been all over the U.S. (and people) But I feel really blessed and really lucky to be able to do what I’ve wanted to do. And glad that my family has been able to share a large part of that.”
For now, Powell doesn’t have plans to run another marathon yet, but she’s planning instead to walk the Grand Canyon later this summer. “It’s seven miles down, seven miles across and seven back up,” she says.
You can reach Diane Broncaccio at: dbroncaccio@recorder.com or at: 413-772-0261, ext. 277.