MISSOULA – Every year the Missoula Marathon seems to give us a great story about an individual testing the physical limitations of running, and this year Cynthia Lauren Arnold did just that.
Arnold, a polson native pushed her three kids in a stroller the entire race while casually picking up a world record for the fastest half marathon run with a three-child stroller.
Arnold trained for months before the race but still said she had some doubts coming in.“I wasn’t sure I was going to, to be honest. I know that sounds a little silly. But I wasn’t hitting the times I needed to head in a lot of my runs and so I was a little bit nervous going in,”said Arnold.
And the training paid off she didn’t just break the record she shattered it…her time of 1 hour and 29 minutes broke the previous record by just over 30 minutes and arnold placed 14th overall in the women’s half marathon.
She credits a lot of it to the training conditions that were harder than the missoula course.“ I think it’s windier here, where I live. When the wind hits the stroller it’s a real, huge draft. And the uphill are really hard. And I think our bike paths here where I’ve been running there’s a lot of wind and there’s a lot of uphill. That’s why I was a lot slower in training,” said Arnold.
And arnold says the entire way the marathon is set up and the encouragement she received made it all the better.“The atmosphere was really great and the he race, they were really accommodating and encouraging, never said no and that kind of helped me go into it with a really positive attitude,”said Arnold.
Arnold says her next goal is to run the fullback 26.2 mile marathon with the three kids.
