Rowly Brucken: emailThis will be my eighth time pacing the 4 hour group for the Vermont City Marathon. As you can probably tell, I enjoy pacing the 4 hour group. Its an exciting group because so many of you are committed to completing a marathon in under four hours and I am glad that I can be there to help.

First, you you can do it. Do the training and weather permitting, I will be there to keep you on track and cheer you on. My goal is to help you anyway I can, either with advice along the way, keeping the pace, or just giving you support in any way I can. I will get to the finish line with one minute to spare. So I will try to run as close to 3:59 as possible. Then I will wait at the finish line until the last possible moment to cheer you on. Remember, I am tracking chip time, not gun time, so you will want to be behind me as we go over the start.

People who have run with me in the past know a little about my running history. The first marathon I ran was the New York City Marathon in 1983 when I was 20 years old. I finished the New York City Marathon in 3:48:52 (gun time) with minimal training because I was young and foolish. I was so sore after that marathon I could not walk down stairs. I hope that most of you will train better than I did as there are now multiple training plans available on the Internet.

Over the years I ran occasionally, but never ran another race until the Vermont City Marathon in 2001. I was older, slower, but had found a new passion. I have now completed twenty two marathons. I have also run the Vermont 50 five times and completed my first 100 this summer. You are also in great hands with my pacing team partner as she was the first woman to finish the 100 miler and beat me by about 5 hours. WOW!!! (My time was 23 hours, 9 minutes). So don’t let anyone tell you that age is a limiting factor, it just requires more training and more recovery time.

What I like about running is the freedom it gives me and that it helps me stay physically fit so I can do all of the things I enjoy doing, especially hiking and camping. I credit my ability to recover quickly from exercise to one piece of dark chocolate a day (go ahead Google it) and my change in running styles. Several years ago I was told to stop running due to knee issues, but instead I changed how I run and I now run in either FiveFingers or a zero drop shoe. So go out there and do it. This year I have also joined Strava, so feel free to friend me and ask questions.