Wood runs in Boston Marathon
By KRIS BAGLEY sports@leader-news.com

Samantha Wood

El Campo's Samantha Wood finished her third marathon this year.

She ran in the Houston and Austin races in January and February and completed the 112th Boston Marathon Monday. Monday.

"It's kind of hard doing three marathons in the span of four months," Wood said. "Considering the training and how much time I had, I was pleased. Hopefully, from now on I think I'll do one marathon a year and I can have the proper training cycle."

A 2003 ECHS graduate, Wood finished the marathon in 3:18:18 and placed 3,913 overall and 370th among all female runners.

In order to prepare for her run in Boston, Wood studied the course and the elevation chart around the area.

"Not having any hills around here, I wanted to know, at least mentally, what to prepare for," she said. "I would say probably the hills were the hardest part, even down hills. It's really hard on your quads and there's a lot of downhill (running). That was probably the hardest part."

Along with the added hills, Boston drew a large number of competitors that added to the difficulty.

"I would say there were definitely more people on the course. It's like you're running through a wall of people - especially at the end. There's a lot of hype about it. There were 25,000 people in the race, so you're constantly dodging around people. It was pretty crowded but fun."

Amidst the crowd of runners, Wood was reunited with Ruth Mick, a friend of hers from Lipscomb University. The companionship seemed to help Wood work through the marathon path.

"I actually met up with a friend who lives in Pennsylvania," Wood said. "We're college friends and I haven't seen her in a year and we haven't trained together at all. We ran the whole thing together and finished together at the end."