A “marathon shift” might take on a different meaning for Mary Kronable, a nurse in Alton Memorial Hospital’s Surgical Services department. After all, Mary has now run in two marathons – and has also qualified to run in the prestigious Boston Marathon next year.
Mary, 31, was the top overall female in the Belleville Main Street Marathon on Sept. 28 with a time of 3:27:33.762. And no one was more surprised than Mary.
“Winning was amazing because I went into this with very low expectations,” she said. “I didn’t realize I had switched with a co-worker and came in the day before the race to find out I was on call that night. I ended up working until 9:30 that night.
“The cafeteria was closed by the time we got a short window of opportunity to eat. All that was available was a little bag of pretzels from the doctors lounge, so that was my dinner. All my normal pre-race routine went out the window. I went home and slept and woke up with the mindset, ‘I have trained for this and it is going to be what it is going to be, I have nothing to lose.’ I went out with heart, and shocked myself on little sleep and not much food in my belly.”
Mary started at AMH in the Lab and has been in the OR since 2013. She is an area native who attended Marquette Catholic High School and then attended Quincy University on a softball scholarship. She then studied at Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing in Quincy.
“Mary is a wonderful caring nurse who is always smiling,” said her manager, Cathy Wagner. “She is a joy to work with. I was walking in one morning, and she was slightly jogging behind me and passed me quickly. In an attempt to encourage her, told her I knew she could run faster than that!”
Well, after all, it is a marathon and not a sprint.
“I have been running for two years,” Mary said. “I started training for the Go STL half marathon in 2018 and that was my first distance longer than a 5K.”
Mary then ran in the Go St. Louis Marathon this year, and the Belleville Main Street Marathon was only her second one of the full 26.2 miles. She did run an ultra-marathon called Dark 2 Dawn this summer in St. Charles recently signed up for a 50k ultra-marathon next May in Bryce Canyon, UT.
“I train as much as I can whenever I can,” Mary said. “It’s hard to plan training because not only do I take call and work full time but I also have three children (ages 6, 4, and 2). Their dad lives in Texas, so I have to rely on my amazing family to help support my running habit. I usually wake up at 4 a.m. to get my runs in before the kids are awake. I've very close to 1,000 miles for this year but my distance varies depending on what I am training for at the time.”
Mary Kronable, a nurse in Surgical Services, shortly after placing first among all females in the Belleville Main Street Marathon on Sept. 28.