10/14/2025
I am now in my 25th year of running marathons...The first 12 years I raced solo (though I started training with Shamus in his jogging stroller as soon as he could sit in it in 2007). I had some good years chasing fast times by myself but never had as much fun as I do running with Shay.
Shamus and I have now been racing together for 13 years! Our racing career together is longer than my solo years of racing, and I wouldn't have it any other way. This past weekend we raced the Steamtown Marathon together and had a blast taking in the scenery and simply being together on the road, listening to our tunes and rolling through the hills. My solo PR's (personal records) are in the rear-view mirror and have been for quite some time, but Shamus and I TOGETHER still have something left in the tank. However, what we accomplished together on Sunday at Steamtown in Scranton, PA, I never could have imagined.
We went into the race shooting for a new marathon best for us as a team (team records- TR's) and Shamus propelled us to that goal and then some! We set our new TR marathon time by about 10 minutes! But we also set TR's for the mile, 5k, 10k, and half marathon (and nearly every other distance imaginable) en route to our marathon TR! To me the most astounding was the fact that Shamus pulled us to a 3:55 downhill mile (that is NOT a typo...yes, I was able to keep up with Shamus (barely) as we sped down the hill passing the pace cars at sub 4-minute mile pace! Running sub-4 minutes alone was never on my radar as a goal, simply because it never seemed realistic. I was not a super-fast miler. My fastest solo mile was about 4:20...about twenty-five years ago! In fact, running that fast together never really entered my mind. Shamus and I clocked a 4:29 on a downhill mile last year, but sub-4!?!?!? I seriously did not know my legs could go that fast until WE were doing it on Sunday...en route to running over 26 miles together! I had no idea we had done it until after reviewing our mile splits after the race and honestly thought it was probably a glitch with the watch. But during the race Shay had checked our pace on his watch and it had us as low us 3:30/mile pace during that stretch (again I thought it was an error), and bike support near us during the race said he was riding behind us at 3:40/mile as we rocketed down the hill!
Again, there is no way we could have accomplished that feat (and all the miles and TR's that followed) without each other, and I never expected to see times like that for us as I get closer and closer to 50! But as Shamus has shown us all time and time again...Dream BIG...TOGETHER, ANYTHING is possible!
accomplish so much more!
Ainsley's Angels of America
ASICS
Adaptive Star Mobility
