LAKEPORT — A year that began with being named Woman of the Year at Stars of Lake County will become even more exhilarating for Julie Kelley on Monday morning when she”ll run in her fourth Boston Marathon.
“Everybody would love to qualify and go to Boston, so I know it”s such an honor,” the 44-year-old Lakeport resident said.
The Boston Marathon is probably the most highly recognized marathon in the world.
Held annually on Patriots” Day, a Massachusetts holiday, the 26.22-mile race winds through Boston”s streets. More than 25,000 athletes will run in Monday”s race, the 115th Boston Marathon, while some 500,000 spectators will line the city”s streets and millions more will watch on televisions worldwide.
“Everything about Boston is awesome,” Kelley said of her previous experiences. Her favorite part of the race itself is the attentive onlookers. “The whole way, there are people on both sides,” she said.
Close family members will join Kelley on this trip to Boston. Her husband Tom, daughter Rachel and sister Chelsea will leave with Kelley on Saturday and stay through Wednesday. “I really wanted my whole family to share it with me,” she said.
Family has always played an important role in Kelley”s marathon career. “Hard work, great friends, discipline and family support are what have helped me,” she said.
In fact, it was Tom who encouraged her less than a decade ago to use her passion for athletic training and try her hand at marathons.
“I would never have imagined running that long (a distance)” before Tom”s suggestion, said Kelley, who soon found she had a knack for the long-distance training. “It was like, the older I got, the better I ran,” she said.
Marathons also became a channel for another of Kelley”s passions: sponsoring survivorship.
Doctors diagnosed her mother with breast cancer in 1995. “At that point, I would run for hours, thinking, hoping, praying. It was a release,” Kelley said.
Kelley”s mother survived her struggle against breast cancer, a success that dramatically impacted Kelley”s life. “I became the person that I was intended to be,” she said.
So when she began competing in marathons in 2004, Kelley ran to sponsor survivorship. “When you find somebody to run for ? you just don”t stop,” she said.
For each of her previous 11 marathons, Kelley found the stories of survivors to be the greatest of motivations. “It”s easier for someone to give up on themselves than give up on someone else,” she said.
Kelley”s running thrived off of the survivorship fuel, as she began consistently surpassing her four-hour marathon time goal. Her on-the-course success helped her qualify to be part of the distinguished Boston Marathon field in 2007.
Kelley competed in three consecutive Boston Marathons, breaking the four-hour mark in 2008 and 2009, but the death of a close friend, along with other personal life developments, led to her skipping last year”s Boston race. “I don”t think mentally I was prepared,” she said.
A new job helped rejuvenate Kelley going into the 2010 training season, as she found renewed professional purpose working with physical therapist Bradley Smith at Innovative Physical Therapy, which opened in Kelseyville last year.
“Working with Brad?there are no negatives. None,” she said. As office manager, Kelley enjoys encouraging and interacting with clients, who are in need of various types of physical rehabilitation.
Kelley competed in a Boston Marathon qualifying race in 2010 and submitted her finishing time, which barely fell below the required timeframe. Then on Oct. 20, she received an e-mail offering her entry to the 2011 Boston Marathon.
“Oh God, I get to run it one more time,” she remembered thinking while reading the e-mail. Kelley felt as if her acceptance was divine recognition of her lifelong commitment to giving to and encouraging others. “For everything that I do, it came back,” she said.
She soon began an intense cross-training program, which has her in better physical shape than years past. “This is the first year I”ve been strong,” she said. The 16-week advanced program advised her about what to eat and how to train, with the latter compelling her to run 40 to 70 miles per week.
Kelley will wear bib No. 13902 on Monday, placing her in the second wave of competitors, which she said is “awesome” because she had started from the third and final wave in previous years.
Increased strength and a better starting position won”t be the only changes with her 12th marathon. Though survivorship will remain close to her heart, Kelley will be running for herself and her family on Monday. “It”s so hard for me to run for myself,” she said.
Kelley looks to start a “new beginning” in her life following Monday”s race.
Now that her daughter is getting older and her family has other interests, she plans to ramp down her marathon training, which has occurred non-stop since 2003.
She is looking forward to enjoying new experiences with her family, as well as finding other ways to sponsor and promote cancer survivorship.
“I feel like there are other things waiting for me right now,” she said.
Kelley said she will continue running, and may even compete in the occasional local marathon, but won”t devote the time to training intensely, a decision that used to seem “bittersweet” but now “actually feels pretty good.”
“If the choice came down to running a marathon, or being with my family or Sponsoring Survivorship, I would definitely chose them over my running,” she said.
Contact Jeremy Walsh at jwalsh@record-bee.com or call him at 263-5636, ext. 37.
