Templeton resident heads to Boston Marathon for second time
A handful of locals head to recognized marathon
Susan McAdoo holding her medal she earned after completing the Boston Marathon in 2014. Photo courtesy of Bob McAdoo
Susan McAdoo will travel to Boston in April to compete in her second Boston Marathon. Both years, 38-year-old McAdoo said she qualified at the Mountain 2 Beach Marathon from Ojai to Ventura.
“I almost had the same qualifying time down to the second the same year after year,” McAdoo said. She qualified with a time of 3:37:17. For her age group, 35- to 39-year-olds, she needed to complete a qualifying marathon is under three hours and 40 minutes. The qualifying times for women are 30 minutes slower than men in the same age group.
McAdoo and her husband, Bob, and their two children, ages 7 and 9, have lived in Templeton for the last five years, right around the time that she started running marathons. Though she had run 5K, 10K and half-marathons before, after moving to the Central Coast, she ran her first marathon, and said she was hooked.
“My first marathon was actually San Francisco. I didn’t know any better,” McAdoo said. “I just wanted to finish under four hours.”
She finished that first marathon on the hilly streets of San Francisco in three hours and 57 minutes. Her best marathon time so far is the time she qualified for the Boston Marathon.
“It’s an awesome experience,” McAdoo said. “I thought I’d do one and I’d be good.”
But she wasn’t. The Boston Marathon on Monday, April 20 will be her 11th marathon.
“THe best way to describe it is surreal. The amount of support there is crazy,” McAdoo said. “It’s amazing, but also pretty challenging too. … It was really emotional (knowing what had happened a year before). You can’t even imagine what it’s like unless you’re there.”
While training for a marathon, McAdoo follows a 16-week program, which has the longest run at 20 miles. However, McAdoo said she sometimes throws a marathon into her training schedule, as she did a couple of weeks ago when she ran the Los Angeles Marathon.
“It was by far my worst time, but it was really cool,” McAdoo said. “They shut everything down. … You get to see everything that you normally don’t get to do in traffic.”
McAdoo has competed in marathons in San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ojai, Los Angeles and Napa. While the McAdoos made a 10-day family vacation out of the trip to Boston, this year, she said she will travel by herself from Saturday through Tuesday. Several of her friends who also run marathons will also be competing in it. She joked that because the East Coast is seeing heavy snow right now, she might run the marathon in her snow boots.
In addition to running, McAdoo also cross trains by cycling and lifting weights. “It seems like I’m always training for something,” she said.
Local entrants in the 2015 Boston Marathon:
- Liz Byrnes, 57 of Paso Robles
- Vicki J. Clements, 44, of Paso Robles
- Stephanie W. Hamm, 35, of Atascadero
- Suzi Jianuzzi, 58, of Templeton
- Marshall Kruse, 47 of Paso Robles
- Natalie Traverso, 49 of Templeton
- Benjamin Walker, 28, of Templeton
