Winni run club now has 4th member, first female

SANBORNTON — After Bruce Kneuer became the first person confirmed to run around Lake Winnipesaukee in 1989, it took more than 30 years for the third person to tackle the hilly 62-mile course. Nathan Lamarre, Kneuer’s son-in-law, ran it on May 15.

Just four days later, on May 19, Colleen Thurston ran it, becoming the fourth known person, and the first female, to circle the state’s biggest lake on foot. Myles Chase ran the route in 2010, as a fundraiser for the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction.

Thurston’s time, 14.5 hours, makes for the unofficial female record for this very unofficial, but increasingly popular, ultra route. She said she never thought about running around Winnipesaukee until she heard of Lamarre’s accomplishment, but figured she could handle the distance. So she made a plan, laced up her shoes and hit the asphalt.

The route, she said, was “brutal.” She’s used to running in the mountains, but the elevation changes around the lake were more challenging than she expected. It was more physically taxing than a trail race, because pavement is unforgiving and the roads are sloped toward the shoulder for drainage. “You’re constantly overcompensating on one side,” she said, and it was more mentally tiring, too. “You’re constantly worrying about cars.”

Thurston enjoys “big runs,” as she calls large, organized road races — she called the New York City Marathon an “absolute party" — but her favorite runs aren’t organized races. They’re just routes she identifies as a personal challenge, ones where she’s the only one out there, and the people at the finish line are few in number, but great in importance.

She began and ended her run at the corner of Routes 11 and 11B in Gilford, near Patrick’s Pub& Eatery.

When she approached the finish, “My whole family was there,” she said.

Well, her whole family minus one, that is.

‘A tough nugget’

Thurston, 34, grew up in Sanbornton, and went away to Wyoming to start her adult life. In her mid-20s, she moved back home, and a friend got her to start running.

“When I started running, I couldn’t run 3 miles to save my soul,” Thurston said, marveling at how quickly her appetite for distance has grown.

Though she said trail running is now her “bread and butter,” she got started running on the road. That 3-mile limit quickly vanished, and soon she was settling in at the half-marathon distance. Even then, though, she started to feel the pull of distance, and set her sights on a full marathon.

Looking back, it seems like the sport of running was determined to get Thurston into realm of ultra-marathons — defined as any distance greater than 26.2 miles. Case in point, during her first marathon, on Martha’s Vineyard, Thurston got lost and had to find her way back to the course, and likely covered around 30 miles by the time she found the finish line.

She stuck to 26.2-milers for a while, hitting some of the classics: NYC, Chicago, Berlin. In fall 2019, something happened in her life that had her reaching for a greater test.

“My mom got diagnosed with breast cancer in October of ‘19,” Thurston said. “In my head, I thought, 'If she’s going to go through something arduous and difficult, I want to go through something arduous and difficult,'” so in January 2020 she signed up for the Ghost Train trail race, an ultramarathon held in Milford and Brookline around Halloween.

Over the next few months, even as the COVID pandemic spread around the world, it seemed as though it would be safe to run a race by October 2020. But in June, organizers saw the writing on the wall and canceled the race.

Thurston was already deep into her training plan at that point, so she concocted a plan to keep herself pushing toward the goal. She got special permission from the town of Wolfeboro to set up a small support crew in a parking lot at the end of the Cotton Valley Rail Trail, and ran her first ultra by herself, with only those closest to her — including her mom and her dad — in attendance.

“I got into this very much solo mindset,” she said. “I had to do it by myself.”

Her mom, Jo-Ann Nolan, beat breast cancer, but then the disease returned in her brain and lungs. She died in 2022. Through it all, Thurston kept running as a way to process and heal.

“A month-and-a-half after my mom died, I had all of this energy I needed to expel.” Thurston called two of her best friends, and the trio met up at the Grand Canyon for a route aggressive enough to match her level of grief, a rim-to-rim-to-rim run, from one side of the Grand Canyon to the other and then back again, 46 miles in total, with nearly 11,000 feet of elevation gain.

Thurston has stuck with ultrarunning since. Now, marathons or last week’s Mount Washington Road Race are training runs for her. Thurston is planning to run the Ghost Train this fall, and next month, the Jigger Johnson Ultra, which heads out from Waterville Valley and summits several peaks in the White Mountains along the route.

She said running, particularly long distances on trails, has become a way of life. “It’s one of those things,” she said. Thurston said she feels grateful to live within easy access to trails in the Belknaps or the Whites, and she sees long days on the trails as special opportunities, rather than training obligations. “Some people read, some people go for walks, or sew. It’s my hobby,” she said. “If I’m too far away from the woods, if I’m not in the mountains enough, I get irritable.”

Kale Poland, a trainer in Moultonborough who has been working with Thurston for several years, said he’s been able to watch her grow into an ultrarunner, and her growth trend hasn’t plateaued.

“It’s a tough nugget to run 100 miles on your own,” Poland said, recalling the conversation he had with Thurston in 2020. “When they canceled it, she just had this need or want to do it. We put a program together ... She just hammered all night. It was so fun to a part of.”

Poland said Thurston is a font of positivity whose attitude is infectious. She is compelled by “pure intrinsic motivation,” which is what enables her to do such great distances on her own.

“I’m fascinated to see what she can do if she continues on this path. In terms of ultra, she’s pretty young, and she’s learning so much every year,” Poland said. “I’m trying to think of anyone who’s run a solo 100 just for fun, and it’s a pretty short list.”