Moultonborough grad earns spot in Boston, with a little help

MOULTONBOROUGH — Adah Chapman thought she had it in the bag last year. It was May 4. Chapman, who had run ultra distances prior, was competing in her first official marathon: the Revel White Mountains event held on the Kancamagus Highway. She had finished in 3 hours, 23 minutes and change — more than 6 minutes under the cutoff time for a 17-year-old like her to qualify for entry into the prestigious Boston Marathon.

It was well ahead of her expectations. She and a bunch of friends had signed up for the event five months prior, when she was still a student at Moultonborough Academy, without realizing their senior prom would be taking place the night before the race. Chapman stayed up all night with her friends, and did her first marathon on no sleep.

“I was definitely a little bit shocked,” Chapman said in a phone interview from Western Colorado University, where she studies exercise science and education, and is on the trail running team. She had trained, but not too diligently, and had celebrated her time by greeting family members along the finishing chute and taking time to high-five spectators before she crossed the finish line.

Those high-fives ended up being costly. The thing about Boston is the association that runs the race publishes qualifying times for various age groups, but then has a secondary roll-down because they get too many qualifiers to permit each of them to get a bib. During the culling process, the threshold for each group gets incrementally faster, and for Chapman’s group it ended up settling about 5 seconds faster than her finishing time.

She was out of a bib — until she wasn’t.

“Four-and-a-half weeks ago, I’m sitting on a chairlift” — in addition to being a distance runner and nordic skier, she makes sure to find time for downhill skiing — and said she decided to check her phone. She saw an email from Clif Bar, a sports nutrition company, with an offer for her. It turns out the company has a certain number of bibs under its control, which they offer to people who just barely miss out on qualifying. Would she like one?

“Yeah, I’m going to take it,” was her immediate response.

That offer came a few days before she was due to race in the national nordic championship, and less than two months before the date of the marathon. That left her with little chance to train, though she did have her coach write a training strategy she has tried her best to follow. Maybe she’ll even sleep before this race.

But Chapman isn’t holding herself to a specific finishing time. Instead, she wants to allow herself the mental space to appreciate the race for what it is: a marquee event that looms large in the tradition of distance running and continues to attract the best runners from around the world.

“It’s really significant. Long distance runners that aren’t professionals, this is the peak of everyone’s career. Some people work year after year trying to qualify for it,” Chapman said.

“I just want to go and have fun.”

Chapman said she has been aware of the marathon’s place for years. A family friend of hers, Scott Graham, has run it every year for decades. She has even gone down to Boston to cheer him on. She found out Graham, who will be running for his 39th year, is starting a little before she is, so she’s hoping to meet up with him on the course.

“I hope to catch him and to run with him for a while,” she said.