Boston Marathon running with a strong local presence

tmills@kalamazoogazette.com 388-2731

Schoolcraft's Brenda Stoddard has tackled the Boston Marathon once before.

She remembers what it was like on the downhill's out of Hopkinton and on the series of rises that lead up to Heartbreak Hill. She knows the incredible feeling of thousands of spectators cheering when you cross the finish line.

Monday, she'll go through it all again, but this time she'll have one more reason to keep her legs moving -- teammates will be counting on her.

Area runners Stoddard, Bonnie Sexton, Mindy Kuehl-Houser, Molly Sherrard, Cindy Owens and Sherry Selby, along with Farmington's Kim Peterson, Fort Gratiot's Julie Kamer and Amy Aylmer of Grand Blanc, will join forces in this traditionally individual sport to make up a women's open team for Front Line Racing Team, a Michigan-based organization that brings runners together for many of the country's biggest events.

"When you're running for a team it's like, 'Hey, I gotta do well,' " Stoddard said. "I'm running not only for myself but for the rest of the girls."

In addition to the women's open team, Front Line has put together a women's masters' squad which will include Portage's Amal Mansour, and a men's open team that 23-year-old Steve Cuttitta of Kalamazoo has joined.

The two latter groups came together easily, as did the men's masters' team, but finding runners for the women's open team proved to be more difficult for Fred Vanhala, founder and president of Front Line.

"I wasn't really having any success at all getting any women to compete in the women's open event," he said.

But Vanhala's large network of runners eventually came through when Battle Creek's Anne Flynn suggested contacting Sexton, who is vice president of membership in the Kalamazoo Area Runners club. The rest fell into place.

"I'm really excited," Vanhala said. "We went from having no team at all to having a group of phenomenal runners."

For the Boston Marathon, team competition is scored by combining the times of the top three runners.

Stoddard and Kuehl-Houser are the only ones of the local group ever to have run Boston. It will be Stoddard's second.

Kuehl-Houser, who at 26 years old is the youngest woman of the group, is the most experienced Boston runner with five already under her belt. Seeded 47th in the women's overall division, she will line up early with the elite women.

Still, her teammates aren't expecting any record-breaking performances from her (although they wouldn't be surprised). The Portage resident is still recovering from Ironman Arizona (a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run), where she finished 164th overall and won her age group only eight days ago. She had been just trying to "survive it," she said, and in the process, recorded a personal best of 10 hours, 53 minutes, 55 seconds.

For the rest of the group, Boston is a new beast to tackle, and an intimidating one at that. Everyone knows about Heartbreak Hill, the relentless rise between miles 20 and 21, but less infamous and just as difficult are the steep downhills in the first four miles of the race. A too-fast start will deplete reserves needed to climb the rises that lead up to Heartbreak Hill.

"I'm really scared of going out too fast," said Sexton. "I want to be able to do the uphills."

The downhills are the first subject of advice that Stoddard touched on.

"You feel like you want to fly on them," she said. "Respect them."

Selby, of Augusta, and Galesburg's Owen are going into Boston with only their qualifying marathons to draw experience from.

"I had a great experience at Chicago (Marathon)," said Selby, who finished her first 26.2 in 3:20.

Owens also qualified at October's LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon in 3:42. Mansour, who is a second-year Girls' on the Run coach, ran Chicago in 2003, but qualified in last year's Bayshore Marathon with a time of 3:38.

Duluth, Minn., is where Allegan's Sherrard captured her crucial finish. She ran Grandma's Marathon in 3:39.

Front Line, which got its start in 1999, typically recruits runners from all over the state, but until now, there haven't been many from Kalamazoo.

"Suddenly, we have a big presence out in Kalamazoo," said Vanhala, who ran for Kalamazoo Valley Community College in 1975 under then-coach Phil Wilson.

Vanhala started the racing team after he ran the Detroit Free Press Marathon as part of a five-man relay team. He had such a good time that he began recruiting even faster runners from around the state to compete.

"Every year after we just keep getting stronger and stronger," Vanhala said.

At last year's Boston Marathon, Front Line was the only team in the country to place within the top 10 in each division.

The women's masters' team took fourth, women's open fifth, men's masters' was 8th and the men's open team finished 10th.