“I like to do well,” says Pagano, who recently won the women’s division of the 2008 Maine Marathon. It was her first marathon, but Pagano, 26, has been running since she was 8 years old.
Her parents have always been active, and at 8 Pagano was already accompanying them on recreational runs and amazing them with her stamina. “I remember once I ran five miles with them. They were really impressed, I guess, but I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time,” Pagano says.
She began running competitively in junior high and continued at Morse High School, where her track team was the state runner up two years in a row. Pagano herself placed fourth in the state in the 800 meters one year and third another. She kept running in college, winning a prominent race her senior year, but then stopped competing altogether after graduation.
“I was really busy, and since I wasn’t training with a team I was worried that I wouldn’t be fast,” Pagano says, adding with a shrug and a self-deprecating smile. “When you compete, it’s fun to win.” She continued to run recreationally, however, and last April set her sights on completing a long distance run. “I was like, ‘I run a lot. I should do a marathon,’” she says, and since she lived near Back Cove, she began running seven miles a day — twice around the loop — adding in longer runs on the weekend.
Around that time, she also started running the weekly Back Cove series sponsored by Maine Running Company.
“I hadn’t done speed training for four years, but a friend convinced me to go, and I ran it in 19:37, which was my best time ever for a 5K.” Pagano went on to set a personal record of 18:32 and win the series, which helped her to prepare for the marathon and also netted her four pairs of Mizuno running shoes. Since Pagano goes through four to five pairs of running shoes a year, those will certainly come in handy.
But even with her success in the Back Cove series, on the day of the marathon, Pagano didn’t expect to win. “I wanted to try to run a seven-minute pace,” she says, and she knew that would put her within reach of a winning time. “But I wasn’t sure if I could keep it up.” And during the first miles of the race, she had no idea how well she was doing.
“The half-marathon and the relay make it kind of confusing,” she says, because there are a lot of people running really fast and there’s no way to tell which race they’re running. After the turn around point for the half-marathon, however, the number of people in front of Pagano went from a lot to a few.
“I passed a woman around mile eight, and then I didn’t see any others until miles 13 and 14,” she says. It was then that she found out she was in first place. “A guy on a bike came up, and I was like, ‘Why is this guy riding next to me?’ But then he introduced himself — he was a course monitor — and said, ‘I’ll be with you as long as you’re in first.’”
At that point, Pagano thought, “Oh shoot. Now I really can’t slow down.” But then she reminded herself that she wasn’t running against anyone but herself, so she just watched her time and focused on meeting her seven-minute mile goal, pretending there was no one else out there.
Somewhere around mile 20 it became clear to her that she really might win, and that was also when she started to experience some serious foot pain. “I remember saying to the guy on the bike, ‘This is where it turns into a completely mental race,’” Pagano says. Despite her pain, she managed to stay on track. “I just told myself, ‘It’s going to hurt whether I run a nine-minute pace or a seven-minute pace, so I might as well go fast and get it over with.”
Still, Pagano insists that even with the pain she enjoyed every minute of the race. In fact, according to Pagano, the most difficult part for her was trying to drink while she was running. “I had Gatorade up my nose, in my eyes — I was covered with it,” she says, laughing.
At present, Pagano is still recovering from the marathon, but after the holidays, she expects to be back in training mode to get ready for Boston. This time around, Pagano has set a new goal: she wants to break three hours.
After seeing the fire in Pagano’s eyes, it seems likely that she’ll meet this goal and any other that she sets for herself. “I think I can do it because I’m going to train properly this time,” she laughs, recalling that for the Maine Marathon she nearly ran herself to exhaustion before reading online that she was supposed to be stepping back her mileage from time to time rather than just increasing it. “Plus, I know what to expect more,” she adds.
And with a few months to go, perhaps she can even take some time to practice drinking on-the-go. After all, Gatorade up the nose can’t be a pleasant sensation.
— Belinda Ray