For the past five years, Ashley Kelso ’07 has had a dream, and for the past five years she has been training and working toward it.

On Monday, April 19, 2004 her dream came true as she ran and completed the Boston Marathon, a 26-mile race. With a net time of 3:27:31, she finished 2,506 out of 16,743 total runners, and 238 out of 6,239 female runners.

The dream started five years ago when Kelso’s high school cross-country coach ran the marathon. “She sent me a postcard that said ‘I’ll see you here in four years,’” Kelso laughs. “That was when I decided that I wanted to run it someday. It seemed so neat.” In the years that followed she continued to run, always keeping her eye on the goal. In order to qualify for the Boston Marathon, a runner must run a qualifying time in a certified race. Kelso ran her qualifying time during the Philadelphia Marathon in November 2002.

Kelso continued her training when she came to Albright in fall 2003, mapping out courses around the campus and community. Because the Boston Marathon course contains a lot of hills, Kelso says, “I ran up and down Mount Penn once or twice a week in order to prepare.” She tried to create a balance between doing distance, speed, and hill training, and ran approximately 80 miles per week. She also tried to sustain her weight and keep up her energy by consuming lots of soups and pastas.

The day of the race dawned sunny and warm. Kelso and her fellow runners gathered on the starting field, which is in Hopkinton, a rural area outside of Boston. The race started at noon, and runners were called to line up 12 minutes before the race began. “I started crying as soon as I lined up,” Kelso says. “I wasn’t really prepared for the emotional aspect. You have all this time to get really nervous before the start of the race. I cried for the first two miles of the race—and I don’t know why.” The heat was another dimension that she was not prepared for. “ I was used to running in the cold and I was not expecting the heat! I think it was actually one of the hottest marathon days ever, because the temperature reached 85 degrees!” But she kept herself hydrated, stopping at water stations as often as she needed to, and had her lucky rubber duck in a fanny pack around her waist to keep her going.

Surprised by how well she did, Kelso says, “I was just trying to finish in the top half. I came in much sooner than I was expected to.” Instead of the top half, Kelso finished in roughly the top eighth! As the race came to an end, Kelso remembers thinking, “What do I do now? I’ve reached my biggest goal and I’m only 19!” But since then Kelso has quickly formed new goals.

In addition to switching her major from alpha to secondary education and English, she says, “I’ll probably do the Boston Marathon every year until I can’t. People think I’m crazy but running has become a stress reliever. It’s just a part of my life, like brushing my teeth.”