Ironman’s Trent Taylor conquers Boston Marathon

Posted by Oree Foster | Apr 30, 2015 | Track & Field |

Ironman participant Trent Taylor ran a personal best of 2 hours, 40 minutes during the 119th annual Boston Marathon and finished 219th overall. (Courtesy photo)

FORT DEFIANCE

Racing in his second marathon ever, Trent Taylor ran a personal best during the 119th Boston Marathon.

“I was pretty satisfied with my performance,” Taylor said. “Coming into this race, I set a personal goal of 2 hours, 40 minutes.”

Taylor said he could have finished at least two minutes faster for a couple of reasons.

“First, I was not expecting the congestion at the start of the race,” he explained. “The first mile of the race was so crowded and it made it very difficult to run. After crossing the first mile marker, I realized that I was running a seven-minute mile pace, which was a minute slower than I wanted to run.”

Taylor completed the race in 2:38.36, which was 10 minutes faster than his previous best time. He finished 219th overall.

He said the Boston Marathon has a lot of history and prestige. He watched last year’s race from his living room and he drew inspiration from Meb’s Keflezighi first place finish. Keflezighi is an American long distant runner.

Taylor said the qualifying time for his age division was 3 hours, 5 seconds. He asked his running coach, Steven Ravnitzky, if he could run a marathon to qualify.

“He told me I wasn’t ready and that running a marathon would interfere with my Ironman training because of the physical demand a marathon has on the body,” Taylor said. “We talked and decided that I would run the Shiprock Marathon at 75 percent effort. My time was fast enough to qualify for Boston and slow enough to recover without interfering with my Ironman training.”