SALT LAKE CITY — Are you tossing the night away? Suffering from those infomercial blues? Don't worry, it's nothing an old fashioned 26.2 can't cure.
The Deseret News Marathon will launch again Monday, and Sue Mantyla of Salt Lake will be there, just as she has been for almost everyone else's marathon for the last 15 months. She has raced in 28 states, from the Boston Marathon (27,000 runners and a half-million spectators) to the Andrew Jackson Marathon in Tennessee (100 runners and a few raccoons).
She's faced pouring rain in (surprise!) Portland, Ore., and run on back-to-back days at Disney World, doing a half-marathon the first day and a full marathon the next. Thirty-nine miles in two days and what does she get? A medal of Goofy. Seriously.
As for the Deseret News race, it's just one more adventure for Mantyla, but one she wouldn't miss; this will be her first try in Utah's oldest marathon.
She didn't start running marathons until age 50, after having five kids.
"Fifty," she says, "is the new 30."
Particularly if you plan on running until you're 125.
"I was turning 50 and thought, 'I've got to find a way to go to sleep, so I decided to wear myself out, get something to help me sleep at night,' " says Mantyla. "And it works. When I run a marathon, as the day goes on, I'm happy to go to bed. Running is hard work."
Mantyla had run in high school and later in a number of 5K and 10K races, but in 2005 she noted something seemed to be missing. Some say it was her common sense. She signed up for the Salt Lake Marathon and finished her first race, but when she got to the 23-mile mark, she was "literally delirious." Afterward, her family walked her to a grassy area where she says "the world was spinning and I was throwing up. It was awful."
That was it, one and done. At least for a while.
She did one other marathon, in January 2010, and another on her 55th birthday, the next month. That's when she got serious. Eventually she was introduced to a running club called the Marathon Maniacs, who acknowledge members that reach certain milestones. One of the highest honors goes to those who run 30 marathons in a year, so she decided to give it a shot.
Her reward? Zippo, except of course the satisfaction.
Not even a head band.
Who wouldn't want to run nearly 800 miles for a few pats on the back?
OK, don't answer that.
The first of her 30 races was in Tacoma, followed four days later by another in Casper, Wyo. Before she knew it, she was on a bi-weekly schedule — except when she was on a weekly schedule. In one October stretch she raced on four consecutive weekends.
If there's one thing that could be said about Mantyla, it's that she's a finisher. Aside from completing her goal of 30 races from May 2010 to May 2011, she overcame a personal fear of traveling. Little known running tidbit: Marathoners don't actually run to all their destinations.
A self-proclaimed home body, she says flying around the country to run was "totally getting out of my comfort zone."
Her husband Don, an LDS stake president until recently, was too busy with church work and operating his accounting firm to make every trip. Soon, though, his wife had both running and traveling down to a science. She broke the four-hour barrier for the first time at Edmonton, Alberta, and wept with emotion as she ran past the Lincoln Memorial during the Marine Corps Marathon. The Mardi Gras Marathon took her through the French Quarter, a place where live-for-the-moment briefly collides with healthy-for-life.
Her 30th race came May 1 in Cincinnati, exactly a year from the start. The Deseret News Marathon will be her 14th race of 2011.
Through it all she suffered shin splints, cortisone shots and blisters that produced staph infections. Yet Mantyla says she plans to continue to run about one marathon a month "until I'm dead."
As for the Deseret News race, she says she hasn't scouted the course and doesn't plan to. She likes to discover the scenery for the first time while she's racing. Could she encounter unexpected difficulties like bad weather or blisters? Of course.
Just don't expect her to lose sleep over it.
email: rock@desnews.com
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Deseret News Marathon
Race starts at 5:30 a.m. on Monday
Late registration today at Energy Solutions Arena from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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