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The 50th Marine Corps Marathon is less than a month away, and WTOP is highlighting some of the inspiring people who are running to that start line.
While many ninth-grade students are getting into the swing of things for their new school year, one Maryland teenager is preparing with her mother for the 26.2-mile race.
“I just have always loved running, and I really like running with my mom, and it’s just really special to me,” said Adriana Vastag, a ninth grader from Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
The Marine Corps Marathon will be the third marathon Adriana has run with her mother, Virginia.
The pair, like many others, picked up long-distance running to fight boredom during the pandemic.
“When COVID came and we couldn’t do so much else, we started doing a lot more running together,” Virginia told WTOP. “She did her first half marathon when she was 10. And we just loved racing ever since.”
One day last year they were at their local library and were inspired to look for marathons that would allow a 13-year-old to enter. On an impulse, they signed up for the Virginia Marathon with just one month to prepare.
After they conquered that race, they signed up for a marathon in Delaware just two weeks later. For their hat trick, they have turned to the “People’s Marathon.”
“We were trying to think of a marathon that might have some more meaning,” Virginia said. “We have grandfathers, great grandfathers who served in World War I and World War II, and so we thought the Marine Corps would be a really good one that we could run and dedicate to them.”
Virginia said both grandfathers served in the Pacific Theater, one seeing action in Papua New Guinea and the other serving in the Army Air Corps.
“Hearing their stories and the sacrifices that they made for us, it just seemed like … doing this run, we could honor our grandfathers who fought so that we could have the freedoms and the ability to do all that we do,” Virginia said.
WTOP spoke with Virginia and Adriana after they had just completed a 15-mile training run. They said most of the time they are training together and sometimes they even have Adriana’s younger sister come out with them for shorter runs. Running has certainly become a family affair.
“It’s really fun,” Adriana said. “We just kind of talk about our day and stuff like that, what we’re looking forward to.”
Unlike many marathon runners, they complete the race and their training runs sans headphones and music, choosing instead to talk to each other and enjoy the atmosphere of the race.
Though occasionally they would throw on the “Frozen” soundtrack when Adriana was younger.
Virginia said it can be tiring to run with her 14-year-old daughter, who she described as the “energizer bunny.”
“She’s much, much faster than me,” Virginia said. “She’s always telling me, ‘Come on, come on.’ So, dragging me through things.”
As they both were running the Delaware Marathon, Virginia was finding it difficult to keep up with her energetic daughter. Then she received wise words from a passing cyclist.
“I’ll never forget it, because he was just telling me, ‘You’re so blessed. You’re so blessed to feel this pain, to be able to do this with her,'” Virginia recalled.
Those words have stuck with her.
“It is such a blessing to be able to have the opportunity to have all this time together,” Virginia said. “We’ve run thousands of miles, thousands of hours’ worth of conversations and everything else that we’ve been able to have through this.”
Adriana is hoping to run a sub four-hour marathon on the streets of D.C. and Arlington.
Virginia said they initially started with just a daily walk.
“Then turned into running and just built up,” Virginia said. “I never would have imagined having run marathons and stuff like that. So hopefully it can inspire others to do the same.”
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