The Corner Brook native, who lives in Dartmouth, N.S., had a final clocking of three hours, 31 minutes and 39 seconds in her first appearance at the Boston Marathon.
“I definitely had to battle to the end,” Seaward said Monday from Boston where she was recovering from the race with her brother Paul and mom Sheila on board for the journey to offer support and encouragement.
She was blown away by the crazy atmosphere she found herself in with people from all over the world focused on finding their way to the finish line.
She was impressed with the organization of the event and the support of not only the thousands of spectators who lined the streets but the fellow runners she shared the race route with in temperatures hovering in the mid-20s on race day.
She said the heat was a factor in her not getting the results she wanted before she took her spot on the start line. She was hoping to do the race in 3:15 and would have settled for a personal best of 3:25, so she was disappointed that she never had the race she wanted.
“You train hard and you have a goal in mind and I dreamed of doing my best there, but that wasn’t in the cards,” she said. “I kind of figured out about 10 kilometres in that it wasn’t my day so then I decided to pull back a little bit and try to enjoy it the best I could.”
The daughter of Corner Brook’s Sheila and Paul Seaward qualified for the 2017 Boston Marathon by posting a final clocking of three hours, 26 minutes and 14 seconds at the 2016 Scotiabank Blue Nose Marathon in Halifax.
She qualified for Boston on two previous occasions, but she got pregnant both times so she never had the chance to run it until this year.
With her family unit in check, she was ready this time around.
Boston proved to be the biggest test of her mettle when it comes to running marathons. She has already qualified for next year’s race, but has decided she won’t be going next year.
“It’s a lot of money, and it’s a lot of work to get here and be here, so I’ll do it again in a few years maybe and I’m going to do more marathons it just won’t be Boston next year,” she said. “It will definitely happen again in the future though for sure. It’s amazing … it’s like no other race.”
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