Melfort runner hits her stride in world's biggest marathons

SASKATOON The terrain around Melfort isn't ideal for a distance runner. Challenging hills and deep valleys are hard to come by. Flat is mostly what you get.

But for as long as she has run marathons, Robyn Luthi has made the most of the country roads and gently undulating landscape of the Melfort area. It's where she trained to qualify for the Boston Marathon, and where she gained the strength and endurance to break the three-hour mark.

The place itself gives her a sense of security, a sense of home.

“I've always been a runner, ran my entire life,” said Luthi, now 43, days after competing in and completing the Tokyo Marathon. She finished in just under three hours.

“I like running in Melfort because it's safe. I know my surroundings, so that's a source of comfort to me. I have my running route and run it most every day.”

Luthi grew up in Melfort. Her mother was a teacher, her father an agrologist. The mother of two has a social work degree from the University of Regina and practised social work for a number of years until she got a yearning for change. She now owns Prairie Skies Realty, where she is a broker.

After her second daughter was born in 2011, she felt compelled to get back into middle distance races of five and 10 kilometres and half-marathons. It's hard not to dream of running a marathon after you've done a half, she said. For Luthi, it wasn't any old marathon she trained her sights on.

“One day in 2017, I just wanted to say I ran the Boston Marathon,” she said. “Once I ran my first major I was kind of hooked and decided I wanted to run all six of the world major marathons.”

To date, she has run five: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London and Tokyo. Only the New York City Marathon, the world's largest, is yet to be conquered. It starts at 8 a.m. on Nov. 3 and goes for 26.2 miles, or 42.16 kilometres. She plans to be there.

Luthi was a runner in high school at Melfort and Unit Comprehensive Collegiate. She credits renowned Saskatchewan performance distance coach Harvey Weber with training her.

In her teens, she fell in love with the sport, finding it to be an important tool of self-care and mental well-being, and ideal for her competitive nature. Running also gave her a community of close friends.

“I love that everything I put into it, I get out of it,” she said.

From her first marathon to now, she has cut 31 minutes from her finishing time. Running back-toback marathons in under three hours has been one of her major achievements.

Without hard work, centred around a highly detailed workout regimen and schedule, she would never have found herself in marathon crowds numbering tens of thousands of runners, competing against the best distance runners in the world. She ran Berlin and Chicago when new world records were set in the men's event.

In 2012, after a 13-year hiatus from competitive running, Luthi returned to competitive running in the 10K national championships.

“Running is a positive, uplifting and supportive activity for me. It's kind of a way of life.”