Lewis completes Boston Marathon

Nikki Lewis crossed the finish line on Monday, April 17, in the nation’s oldest and most prestigious distance race: the Boston Marathon. She finished the race with a time of 3:42:36.

Lewis, who lives in Redmond, is the advertising manager for The Nugget.

She has a simple, if enigmatic, answer as to why she chose to take on the Boston Marathon: “Because I could; because I qualified.” That qualification came at last October’s Portland Marathon with a time of 3:36:07.

“The last few miles of the Portland Marathon, what keeps you going is the idea of qualifying for Boston,” she said.

Once she had qualified, she decided she might as well actually make the trip.

Lewis took up running to get in shape after her son Luiswas born. She discovered she had a knack for covering distances.

“I like running because it is really effective for staying in shape and keeping stress off your shoulders,” she said.

She was not content with simply running for exercise.

“Once you find out you can run and you enjoy it, it’s fun to push yourself and see how far you can go,” she said.

She ran her first marathon in 2003 in Portland and Boston was her fourth.

She enjoyed just being in one of America’s oldest cities.

“Boston was overwhelming but enticing,” she said. “There’s a lot to see there and you can almost just feel the history in the buildings.”

Lewis toured the course by car and expected a relatively easy time of it. She was wrong.

“I actually drove the course two days before and thought ‘It’s not bad at all,’” she said. “I got tricked. It’s uphill a lot. Mile 16-21 is uphill.”

She noted that the infamous Heartbreak Hill is at Mile 21, but said, “It’s not going to break your heart if it hasn’t broken already.”

With the lessons of Boston under her belt, Lewis said she would do more interval and hill training before her next marathon. But she’s not sure she’ll go back to Boston.

“I kind of want to keep doing different adventures,” she said. “I’d like to do Hood-to-Coast; I’d like to get a team or be on a team to do that,” she said. “There’s a midnight run in Alaska; there’s a marathon along the Great Wall of China...”