https://downeast.com/the-extra-miles/
A spontaneous act of grit meets a random act of kindness at the Millinocket Marathon.
By Brian Kevin
Photographed by Chris Bennett
Joelle Ingalls was nearing the end of her second Millinocket Half Marathon this winter when she decided to text her husband back in Surry.
“Just passed mile 12,” she wrote. “14 to go.”
Seconds later, her phone buzzed furiously.
“Say what?” he wrote back, understandably confused, since his wife had registered only for the half, which he correctly thought to be 13.1 miles. She’d changed her mind, Ingalls wrote. She was going to attempt the full marathon. Her first ever. On next to no training. In December. In the snow.
“You’re insane,” her husband wrote. “Just don’t die. ♥”
Ingalls didn’t die. The 39-year-old paralegal — who ran while carrying stones from The Summit Project, engraved with the initials of fallen Maine soldiers — finished 26.2 miles in a little over eight hours, crossing the finish line well after dark, the last runner to do so (two women who’d walked the course finished behind her). But the final miles were rough. After mile 19, no spectators remained along the course, which at that point was well outside of town, following the forest road that leads to Baxter State Park.