Before the Mountain, a run towards joy
How the Millinocket Marathon and a Half became the best race in Maine
Ed. note: This is the second guest post from a Maine writer on The Other Maine! Kay Amato is a Maine-based writer, teacher, runner, and gardener. They teach creative writing classes with Factory 3 in Portland. They live in Portland with their wife, dog and two cats. I really enjoy their yearly Instagram review of a specialty advent calendar (tea this year, jam last year, etc).
When I moved to Maine I had never heard of Millinocket. I hadn’t gone for a run in years.
This December I ran the Millinocket Half Marathon for the third year in a row.
Every time my wife and I drive the three hours north I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t just move to Millinocket. I love the race. I love the town. I love getting breakfast at the Appalachian Trail Cafe. What’s not to love about a December endurance challenge in northern Maine that happens in sleet, snow, or frigid weather?
The first year I experienced the Millinocket Marathon and Half I did not identify as a runner. In fact, I didn’t run it at all. I went up with my wife (a certified jock who eats miles for breakfast) and walked our dog in the woods behind Stearns High School, listening to history podcasts and getting rained on. I took solace from the chill in the decidedly delightful race-day craft market. Strolling around the bustling school gymnasium I checked off holiday gifts on my list: hand-poured candles for my colleagues, fresh-baked dog treats for our lab, and beautiful pottery for... myself. Then I walked over to the iconic finish line set up between two fully loaded logging trucks and cheered for my wife. Lady Gaga blared from speakers and people danced around a huge firepit in the park. The smell of woodsmoke cloaked the smell of sweat and Fireball, the aid-station beverage of choice. I was intrigued.
I signed up. The next year I trained through the late summer and fall, starting with slow three mile runs around my neighborhood in Westbrook and working my way up to a (also slow) twelve mile run on the Mountain Division Trail, and realized… I actually love running?!
The race morning dawned cold and gray. The starting gun fired and I, along with roughly two thousand others bundled in beanies and layers of technical fabric, pounded the pavement on Penobscot Avenue. Slushy snow lined the Golden Road, Maine’s famous North Woods logging route. Clouds hid the classic Mile 5 view of Katahdin. There were hills, hills, and more hills. There was ice and slush. There were runners racing to qualify for Boston and runners moving at their own pace, dressed as Fireball nips and Santa Claus and even an older gentleman from a local ski mountain doing the race decked out in full snowmaker gear.
Determined to meet my goal (run the whole time) I didn’t stop at the aid stations promising goodies such as dilly beans, grilled sausages, cookies, Gatorade, and, of course, Fireball. These aid stations put the simple electrolyte drink and gel tables dotting the courses at most races to shame. Runners looking to reclaim calories can stop at the temporary Top of the Hill Bar & Grill along the Golden Road, offering everything from burgers and hotdogs to orange slices to - you guessed it - Fireball shots. Runners stopped for selfies with hand-painted milemarker signs and warmed up by firepits. The overall atmosphere was less intense athletic competition and more community block party with some running thrown in. I was beaming as I ran between the logging trucks myself, shivering and exhausted and ready to do it all over again.
I think the best way to highlight what makes the Millinocket Marathon and Half unique is to contrast it with the Chicago Marathon, which I ran this fall as my first-ever full marathon. Chicago is one of six so-called “World Majors” - massive, competitive races that take place in big cities around the world. Where Millinocket is communal, convivial, and a little chaotic, Chicago is a well-oiled, speedy, optimized machine. For Chicago I had to raise over $3,000 dollars for a charity. As I waited in line for a porta-potty at the Chicago starting line I overheard two medical students in their twenties saying they “just didn’t get” how people could even run a marathon slower than four hours. I finished in four hours and forty minutes.
In Millinocket, which is free to run, folks stick around to cheer on marathon finishers doing their second loop of the course as late afternoon twilight creeps in. It’s a quintessentially Maine event, complete with Moose sightings, canoes full of shucked oysters on ice, and, of course, the ever-present frigid December wind. People run barefoot despite the single-digit temperatures and I lost count of the number of runners in holiday onesies. At both road races you will see an entirely diverse cohort of runners: folks in their seventies, people of different abilities and body types, elite runners and people like me, who do it for the mental health boost and the love of the game.
Even comparison doesn’t quite do it justice. There’s simply no other race like the Millinocket Marathon and Half.
This year I ran Millinocket with a sprained ankle and a “party pace wins the race” mindset. I stopped for cookies and Gatorade and took dozens of selfies with a majestic backdrop of snowy Katahdin in the background. I ran through downtown Millinocket in the final quarter mile smiling so hard it hurt. I came to a stop after 13.1 miles of icy running, happier than ever that I get to call Maine home.
And, of course, I’ll be running again next year.
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