Pounding the pavement around Park County has paid off for Kinley Bollinger, who recently flew across the country to participate in the 127th edition of the Boston Marathon on April 17.

GETTING STARTED

Prior to COVID-19 hitting, Bollinger had not been much of a distance runner despite her mom Annette being an avid runner.

“Over Covid I was one of those people that was like, ‘I am going to do something new since we have so much time,’” Bollinger said.

She started small and built from the ground up 1 mile at a time until she decided to join the Cody High School cross country team her senior year.

IN A GROOVE

After participating in cross country, Bollinger noticed that she thoroughly enjoyed running longer distances more than 5k and shorter distances.

“5ks were harder than marathoning in my opinion,” Bollinger said.

Realizing that she found success at longer distances, Bollinger decided to take a shot at a marathon in February 2022, heading down to Savannah, Georgia, to take part in the Skidaway Island Marathon.

There are two different methods to enter for the Boston Marathon — finish below a qualifying time to enter a lottery and enter competitively at the marathon, or enter as a runner for charity.

The requirement to be able to enter the lottery with a chance at the Boston Marathon is a time under three hours and 30 minutes.

Bollinger ended up finishing the Skidaway Island Marathon in 3:29:51 — nine seconds below the qualifying time required.

She was uncertain if she was going to enter into the lottery at first, since the Boston Marathon is seen as the premier marathon.

She figured she would put her name in, and to her surprise there was not an overwhelming amount of entrants and she was chosen as one of the 30,000 participants in the Boston Marathon.

MARATHON WEEKEND

Making her way to Boston, Bollinger got in on Saturday just two days before the start of the race due to other commitments including school at Northwest College.

She said that the entire week before the race is centered around the marathon, but she was unable to experience a lot of the events due to her arriving in Boston later than most.

In Boston, the entire city gets off the day of the marathon due to Patriots’ Day, so everybody around the city flocks to the route to cheer on the participants.

“The whole atmosphere of the city is insane,” Bollinger said.

She said that her favorite part of the route was the run through Wellesley, Massachusetts, where the entire college comes out to support the runners as they come through just after the midway point of the race.

“It was an incredible experience to see everyone come together to cheer everybody on,” Bollinger said.

After finishing the race she improved on her first time, coming across in 3:24:41.

She said that she met tons of people that have been doing the marathon for upwards of 20 years, and plans to enter her name into the lottery once again next year for consideration.

LOCAL RACES AND TRAINING

Bollinger returned home and continued to keep running, taking part in the 5K Berry Run at Northwest on Saturday and taking victory in the inaugural running of the event.

“Boston is my favorite and I definitely want to do it again but the local races are the best,” Bollinger said. “Seeing the community coming together for these races is so important. Those that do the endurance races are so tight knit.”

She said that heading into the summer she plans to continue waking up at 5:30 a.m. to train and participate in various races.

Her training primarily consists of a triathlon style — training via swimming, biking and running.

She said this summer she plans on running a couple triathlons, some half marathons and a 50k trail race at the end of the summer.

Bollinger said she encourages anybody wanting to get into running to start small and continue to grow from there.

“I could barely run a mile back then (2020),” Bollinger said. “Start there, and go from there.”

Bollinger said she knows it sounds crazy for someone from Powell going to the Boston Marathon, but she did it, and plans to keep going as long as she can.