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At 74, Wright completes Boston Marathon

David Gunter Feature Correspondent | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 years, 8 months AGO
by David Gunter Feature Correspondent
| May 15, 2016 1:00 AM

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—Courtesy photo Wright shown crossing the finish line at last month’s Boston Marathon.

SANDPOINT —Some people are just born to run. The more distance you put in front of them, the happier they are about it.

Carol Wright fits that description, which came as something of a surprise to the runner, since she didn’t even try her hand — make that feet — at the sport until age 70. She certainly made up for lost time, racking up a series of half- and full marathons that eventually qualified her for the crown jewel in the marathon world.

Last month, at age 74, the Bonner County resident ran the Boston Marathon and still is basking in the glow of that event.

“It took me four years to get to Boston,” said Wright. “I thought the experience would be wonderful, but it was more than I could have imagined.”

The crowd factor took the distance runner by surprise, even though she’d been in the crush of runners queued up at the starting line before. Bloomsday prepared her, at least somewhat, for being surrounded, as she put it, “by thousands and thousands of people.” But Boston was a different animal. For that race, Wright found herself running with 30,000 of her closest friends.

She recalls her first impression, once her wave of runners finally got the green light to begin the race.

“As far as I could see, it was colors and heads bobbing up and down,” she said.

This runner’s tale had more humble beginnings, as Wright decided to take on a half-marathon in Bellingham, Wash., after learning that her daughter planned to run that race in 2012. Following about two months of running on her own with no particular thoughts of how to train, she was introduced to local ultra-marathoner and running coach Mike Ehredt.

Over coffee, Wright confided that she wanted to attempt the upcoming event and was pleased when Ehredt simply smiled and told her that, if she did what he instructed, she would cross the finish line.

“I was hooked,” she said, adding that the first race took her 2 hours and 20 minutes to complete. “I loved running right from the beginning.”

Under Ehredt’s tutelage, Wright ran in other half-marathons over the next two years. In 2014, she registered for her first full marathon event when she tackled the Windermere Marathon in Spokane. From start to finish, the race took her 5 hours to wrap up.

“I was beat and tired, but I crossed that finish line with a smile on my face and I said, ‘I want to do this again,’” the runner shared.

According to Wright, what goes on in the mind might be more important than how long one’s legs hold up when it comes to going the distance.

“At one point, I wasn’t sure I could do a half-marathon,” she said. “Then I wasn’t sure I could finish a whole marathon. You never know what your potential is until you do it.

“A lot of it’s in your head,” she added. “If you don’t think you can do it, you can’t.”

Before long, Wright was palling around —and running around —with a local group of distance running enthusiasts. Most of them were coached by Ehredt, who led the group on regular sessions that ranged from carefully paced outings, to trail runs to what Wright called “very extreme.”

Both Ehredt and his ultra-marathoner wife, Peggy Gaudet, know something about extreme running, having competed in some of the most grueling distance events the sport has to offer, including the 160-mile, six-day Marathon des Sables across the Sahara Desert.

Beyond that, Ehredt embarked upon two separate cross-country runs covering a total of more than 6,500 miles as he first ran 4,424 miles between Astoria, Ore., and Rockland, Maine, in 2010 as part of what he called Project America Run.

Pushing a 20-pound stroller equipped with a GPS system and bundles of tiny American flags bearing the hand-written name, age, rank and hometown of a service member who died in the war in Iraq, Ehredt placed a flag at every mile along his route.

In 2013, Ehredt set out on Project America Run II, this time to honor the fallen in Afghanistan as he placed another 2,146 flags between his starting point in International Falls, Minn., to the finish line at the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, Texas.

With such impressive credentials, even the Boston Marathon might seem like a warm-up run for this U.S. Army veteran turned running coach. But Wright said he takes every event seriously and trains his runners to be at their peak performance for each one.

“It’s kind of a year-long process,” she said of the training and qualifying process that leads to Boston. “And for some of us, it’s more like a three-year process.”

The preparation continued right up to race day on April 18, as Ehredt led pre-race training runs around a city that seemed to have nothing but marathoners on its streets.

“It was joyful,” said Wright. “The entire city is out running.”

The joy leading up to the big event was eclipsed by the act of actually competing in the world’s oldest and most-famous marathon.

“There’s nothing like the feeling of crossing that finish line,” she said. “It’s ecstatic.”

After returning home, a friend pointed Wright to an Idaho Statesman article about the 100 Idahoans who traveled to Boston for the race.

“And it said that the oldest was a 74-year-old woman from Sandpoint,” she said. “I thought that was kind of fun to read.

“A lot of people have asked, ‘Boston is over —now what are you going to do?’” Wright went on. “Just keep running; that’s what I’m going to do.

“I read in the paper the other day about a woman who was still running at 100,” she said. “So I figure I have at least 26 more years of running left in me.”

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