“I ran Steamtown three times and the first time, because of the downhills, I started too fast and I ended up doing something like four and a half hours,” he explained. “But the next year I paid attention to every mile and I did 3:50. So I figured well, this time I’ll shave some time off and maybe do a 3:48.”
In the end, he figured right.
All those good Samaritans who saw Gillen’s head hanging low probably didn’t notice the little index card pinned to his chest. He still studied its numbers, although the finish line was long behind him.
“Basically this is an autopsy of last year’s race,” he said, explaining his strategy. “It’s every mile split, only I subtracted 2 seconds.”
So he tricked himself into running faster, but his quick start almost blew his plan out of the water.
“I kind of went fast in the beginning miles and I was worried,” Gillen said. “I was hitting the wall around 16, 17, 18, but I was able to tough it through and not lose all I gained.”
For Gillen, the day couldn’t have been better.
“It was a great race,” he said. “Perfect weather. I would say the headwind, at a couple of the miles there might have taken away a little time, but to be honest with you I’d much rather have a headwind and it be cool than it be warm.”
“This race,” he added, “the topography of it was made for the human body.”
Gillen, who lives in Ringwood, New Jersey, met the changes in the 2001 course with mixed feelings. Steamtown officials changed this year’s course, which has a 955-foot drop in elevation, to make it even faster.
“I think it was probably better because they had stone dust, which is actually an interesting material to run on,” he said. “It compacts really well. I design landfills at home with running trails on them and one of the things I’m thinking of using on the trails is stone dust and wow, there I see it in the park and I thought it was pretty good.”
In place of two intimidating hills around mile 14, runners now travel several miles of scenic trails along the Lackawanna River. Gillen said he liked the scenery, but wasn’t crazy about the woodchips along the trail.
“I’m kind of partial to pavement,” he said.
The race’s biggest hill near mile 24 has been shortened from eight to three blocks.
“I think they definitely cut down on the hills,” he said. “My sense is it’s probably better this way, but I personally like hills. I don’t lose that much time on hill. But it was a great race, it’s an interesting race, the people are great.”
For 25 years Gillen has been running marathons, with a whopping 15 under his belt. Yet for Gillen, there’s no place like Steamtown.
“This is one of my favorites,” he said. “I like the New York Marathon, I like the Marine Corps Marathon, but this is one of the best, I really like this.”
He brings his entire family to Scranton every year just to experience Steamtown, which is fast becoming known as the little race with the big heart.
“The course is very important, the fact that it’s topographically friendly,” Gillen explained. “But the people, the organizers, are great. It’s a user-friendly race. The fact that you can stay in a motel, and walk three blocks and get on the bus to the starting line is amazing. Getting into the New York Marathon is like negotiating the Paris Peace Talks, it's tough to get in.”

Central Jersey Road Runners
They heard it was a downhill course and they wanted to qualify for Boston.
Did they?
Well, no.
But it doesn’t matter.
“As bad as we feel, it was a really good race,” said a laughing Tom Henry, president of the Central Jersey Road Runners.
“The support along the course is wonderful,” fellow Road Runner Sue Patla said. “The course is tough, don’t you think?”
“Twenty-six miles of anything is tough,” 39-year-old Henry answered, shaking off the pain.
The club boasts 400 members, 15 of which ran at Steamtown his year. Both Henry and Patla finished at about 4:19 during their debut in Scranton, not good enough for Boston, but good enough to come back to Steamtown again. Thirty-nine-year-old Henry placed 66th of the 93 racers in his age group, while Patla, 43, came in 64th of the 85 runners in her group. She lives in Matawan, N.J.
“We’ve been on a lot of races ourselves, and here, everything is very well organized, very well done,” Henry said. “The best thing is everyone along the course, that’s what helps, everybody cheering you on.”
Again, Steamtown showed more runners it really is the little race with the big heart.
“New York has a lot of crowd support but that’s there,” Henry, of Cranford N.J., said. “But even Philadelphia, which is a bigger marathon than this one, has way less crowd support than this. It’s tough when you are out there dying, but when people are cheering you on, it really helps. People are giving you brownies and Fig Newtons, it really helps.”

Ed Little and his Mother Geraldine

“I said the rosary for him,” his mother Geraldine said, laughing and wrapping her arms around her son.
For Little, this race had to be conservative. Plagued by injuries for two out of four runs at Steamtown, Little was happy to finish at all.
“One time I had a stress fracture and I only went about 12 miles,” he said. “Then the year after that, my left knee started bothering me around 20 miles. Today it didn’t bother me I’ve been stretching a lot better.”
The weather helped, Little said, as did the changes to the course this year. Living in nearby Clarks Summit, he has an opportunity to run portions of the course through the year.
“I run that trail a lot,” he explained. “It definitely gives your legs a break. I actually ran my hardest through there I think.”
“It’s definitely better without the hills,” he said. ”The worst part of the race is the first 7 miles, it’s all that downhill, you know. That’s what makes you or breaks you. You go out too hard there, you can forget it at mile 20.”
Little said only a triathlon will keep him from Steamtown next year.
“The only way I won’t do it next year is I’m thinking about doing Ironman Florida, which is early in November, I wouldn’t do it in that case,” he said. “But that’s up in the air.”

Sue Frankeny
Not many 43-year-olds know the feeling of completing their first marathon, but Hershey’s Sue Frankeny does. She crossed the finish line at 3:30:24, and is happy with that ---probably as her lifetime personal best.
“Well, I don’t know if I will do it again,” she said with a laugh “I always said I wanted to do one marathon and get a good time and to say ‘okay I don’t ever have to do this again.’”
Frankeny said she hopes she won’t get caught up in trying to better her time next year.
“I know too many people who do it once and say that wasn’t a good enough time,” she said, still laughing. ”I feel like, you know, that’s reasonable, for my age.”
Steamtown was her pick because of its close location, she said, adding that if someone is to run only one marathon in a lifetime, this one was it.
“There were people out, cheering me on,” she said. “I was surprised that there were people almost everywhere.”
Her quads held up under the downhills, and she walked some of the uphills, but she planned it that way.
“I actually liked the trail that was fun,” she said. “It was a good diversion in the middle of the race, something different. I picked up a number of women along the way and that was nice too, we kind of paced each other. It was wonderful, we had a great time.”
 

Cindy Bubb
Her first run at Steamtown made 34-year-old Cindy Bubb eight minutes faster than her personal best, and her smile even wider.

Cindy Bubb

“This is my first time here and my second marathon, and it was awesome!” she exclaimed. “This race has a lot more people support – that was the fun of it. I was just in awe of all the people who came out and had stereos out in their yard. It was just so well organized, everything from the pasta dinner to the finish line. I just think there were a lot of perks.”
What she had heard about Steamtown lured her from her home in Williamsport, and she wasn’t disappointed.
“I heard from other people how much fun it was so I just came and everything was true,” she said.
We met a couple people here from our area. We started out together, me and my one friend, but she came in at 3:31; she kinda took off about half-way through.”
Bubb said she did 3:45, and conquered the hills. She placed 560 of the 1,349 racers.
“I liked the trails, the best part of it was the trails,” she said, her smile remembering the race. “The hills weren’t too bad, I mean they were bad, but you are always going to have hills. I will be back for sure.”
 

Ron Stiles

It seems remarkable that Ron Stiles even finished the race. After all, it’s hard to run a marathon when you are busy kicking yourself for not running Steamtown long ago.
“This was wonderful,” Stiles, 32, said. “I think it was just kind of amazing, all the little towns between here and there, and they were so supportive. This is my first time at Steamtown, I did Philadelphia, but I don’t even know why I would go back.”
Steamtown’s big heart won the Reading man over.
“The people here would keep me from going back,” he said. “Cheerleaders in every city and just people out in front of their houses, it was neat. And scenery-wise too. They put that Rails to Trails in there. Everything was great.”
Stiles made the weekend into a homecoming of sorts, since his brother-in-law is a native to Scranton.
“We were forced to drive around and look at his old haunts yesterday,” he said with a laugh. “That was probably the worst part of the trip.”
After six years running marathons, this year he fell short for Boston at 3:24, but he wasn’t upset. He said the back five miles got him, especially since he thought the race was more downhill than it was.
“There were some hills and a lot of flat but it was great,” he said. “I told myself before this that if I didn’t qualify for Boston I wouldn’t do another marathon, but I might. If I do another one, it will be this one. I think it’s better than Philadelphia. Everybody I talk to says this is the place to go.”

Ron Stiles and son Sam

Sam Stiles, Ron’s six-year-old son, smiled up at his happy father.
“I think he’d like to try it,” Ron said. “He actually made it to three separate stops to cheer me on.”
“I like running ‘cause it’s fast,” Sam said.