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By Linda Scherer
Staff Writer
At just four years old, Katie Thompson began her running career.
Her first race was in the Winsted Legion Days half-mile fun-run for kids – and she has been running ever since.
Her most recent accomplishment was at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth June 21 when she made the qualifying time needed to register for the Boston Marathon April 20, 2009.
For women Thompson’s age, the qualifying time is under three hours and 40 minutes. She made it with almost five minutes to spare.
Registration for the 2009 Boston race, the world’s oldest annual marathon, will begin in September. The field will be limited to the first 25,000 entrants.
Will Thompson be one of those to sign up?
“Oh my gosh, yes! I already have my hotel booked,” Thompson said.
This is her second year to run in Grandma’s Marathon. The atmosphere surrounding the race has been a real attraction for Thompson. She is not out to win – she just likes to run and compete for time.
The 2007 Grandma’s Marathon was Thompson’s first marathon ever.
She had made up her mind she was going to cross the finish line no matter what. Whether it was running, walking, or “if I had to crawl. I was going to finish,” Thompson said. “I really didn’t know what to expect.”
Last year she had just missed her qualifying time by 18 minutes, which isn’t a lot of time if those minutes are divided up between the 26.2 total miles in a marathon.
Still, it meant more practice time for this year’s run if she wanted to get the time she needed.
“This year I did a lot more training,” Thompson said. “I did a lot more distance, a lot more cross training with weights, biking, and swimming.”
Although Thompson was better prepared physically for this year’s marathon, Mother Nature did not seem to be on her side. In fact, most of the time the weather seemed to work against her.
“The weather started out being quite warm and then we had to struggle with a lot of the wind. Especially coming off the lake, and about the last 2.5 miles it was downpour rain,” Thompson said. “It was kind of nice to cool off,” she added.
Running is something Thompson has always enjoyed. She took cross country and track from seventh grade through her senior year at Holy Trinity High School.
Her running abilities sent her to sections every year, gave her all-conference titles and MVP for both track and cross county.
To prepare for this year’s Grandma’s Marathon in June, besides her daily workouts, she ran two half marathons in the spring – the St. Cloud Earth Day, and the Maple Grove half marathon. She even surprised herself when she won the Maple Grove run.
Thompson is looking forward to a few more running events this summer. A couple of them, Thompson’s dad will be running with her. She and her father have done the state fair milk run together every year for the last nine years, missing only one year.
She will also run the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in October.
“It starts by the Dome and ends at the Capitol, so it is basically a race from Minneapolis through the chain of lakes, and then you make it all the way up the big hill at Summit to the Capitol,” Thompson said.
After the Medtronic marathon, Thompson plans to have a little down time but then will begin her training for the Boston Marathon.
“You want about four months to train for a marathon,” Thompson said. “I am a little nervous because I will have to train a lot more indoors since you can’t put miles on outdoors in the winter,” Thompson said.
Practice for her will be five to six days a week with 90 minute workouts of running or cross training.
Why does she do it?
“I have been running all my life and it is just something that I have kind of been good at,” Thompson said. “Sometimes I wonder why I am running, but most of the time I just love it. You just get out there and run. You are on your own for however many miles you are running.”
Thompson is a 2007 graduate of the College of St. Catherine. She majored in radiology and works at Hennepin County Medical Center full-time, five days a week, Sunday through Thursday, and every third weekend. She volunteers for the Rideview ambulance one day a week and works whenever needed in X-ray for Ridgeview Medical Center.
She is bringing some of her hometown fans with her to the Boston Marathon in April. A 2002 Holy Trinity High School classmate, Missy Williams, and Thompson’s parents, Alan and Debra Thompson of Winsted will accompany her to Boston to applaud from the sidelines.
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