Running in her first 50 mile race, Larissa Abramiuk of Wayland won the USATF 50-Mile National Championship at the Tussey Mountain Ultramarathon in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania on October 3.

 

Abramiuk, the mother of two children and a resident of Wayland, has run eight marathons. Her best time for the marathon is 2 hours and 59 minutes. She won the 2002 Bay State Marathon in Lowell, Massachusetts. 

 

Marathons are a standard 26.2 miles. Any race longer than a marathon is considered an ultra-distance race, or ultramarathon. Abramiuk ran her first ultramarathon seven years ago. It was a 50 kilometer race, which is a little over 31 miles. After that she looked forward to running another ultra, but put it on hold when her children were born.   Now that her two boys are in school, she felt ready to get back into ultra-distance running. 

 

Training for the event involved putting in lots of miles on the roads. Eighty-mile weeks were the norm for her preparation. Even though she had never run a 50-mile race, Abramiuk said, “I was confident that I could do it.” Most of her training runs were 10 to 12 miles, but after completing a 40-mile session with her brother she knew that she was ready for the ultramarathon.

 

The Tussey Mountain Ultramarathon, located in Boalsburg, near State College, Pennsylvania, provides a mixture of grueling physical demands and the beautiful scenery of central Pennsylvania. The course has many challenging hills and is run mostly on dirt and gravel roads. Abramiuk chose this race because she wanted to take a shot at the USATF title and because she has family nearby in Ohio.  Her mother and brother made the trek to Boalsburg to be her support crew.

 

Race day was a perfect fall day for running. Abramiuk felt very comfortable in the early stages of the race; perhaps a little too comfortable. She explained, “I went out too fast for the first 20 miles.” By the time she passed 22 miles she was struggling. “The five miles from 22 to 26 were miserable,” she said. Her time at the marathon split was what close to what she had planned, 3 hours and 30 minutes, but she was not feeling good. Her brother stepped in at that point to give her encouragement and food. An ultra-distance runner himself who had recently completed a 100-mile race, he knew how to help Abramiuk get back on track. He helped her get refueled, both physically and mentally. 

 

“My brother was a big help. I started feeling better and began picking up my pace at mile 27,” Abramiuk recalled. She went on to say, “At mile 30 I gained a lot of confidence and as I approached 38 miles I knew I only had 12 miles to go.” Twelve miles was significant to her because that was the length of her typical training runs. After that, she remembered it feeling “easier.” The last three miles were mostly downhill and she said, “I felt great and really picked up the pace.” 

 

Abramiuk finished the race in 7 hours and 26 minutes, bringing home the first place purse of $500 and earning the title of USATF National Champion. 

 

Asked what she would be training for next, she said, “I want to work on my speed and prepare to run the Boston Marathon next spring.”