Cristen Walker started small.
“I literally started with just a quarter of a mile one day,” the Pittston resident and faculty member at The University of Scranton said.
Just four years later, Walker will be running in her third marathon — and first big race outside the area — when she takes part in the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon Sunday, Nov. 6.
Although her running goals are modest — Walker says that she will be happy just to finish before dark — her accomplishments as part of a team are impressive.
Walker and Jeff Grant give Pittston two runners among a team of 50 that will join WNEP-TV’s Ryan Leckey in the world’s largest marathon. They will raise money for Allied Services to assist people with disabilities in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Allied Services has reached the level of Silver Charity Partner with the New York City Marathon, which includes many charity connections within its field of nearly 50,000 runners.
“We’ll all meet Sunday morning,” Walker said Friday while making the long, late-night drive from a commitment at Indiana University of Pennsylvania to New York City. “We have a bus ride to Staten Island.
“Being that Allied is such a big charity now with the New York Marathon, this year they have something new with the silver charity, so we actually have a tent on Staten Island, near the start line as part of charity village.
” … We get to be under a tent with a little bit of heat and a little bit of food and water before we start the run.”
Walker, who has run two Steamtown Marathons and three half marathons, runs with a Scranton group CINAO — Can’t Is Not An Option.
Frank Swaha, who she said as group leader “taught me how to run 5K to a marathon,” encouraged Walker to apply to be part of Leckey’s Team, “Ryan’s Run.”
Walker interviewed in March and was accepted on to the team.
“A big part of that is raising money for Allied Services, specifically for children and adults with disabilities,” she said. “It’s not really about running ability. It’s about interest, desire and charity.”
Membership in the team includes a requirement to raise $5,000. Walker wrote letters and spread the word among family, friends, business associations and patients of her husband, Jeff Walker. Their combined generosity helped Walker easily exceed that goal.
Grant landed his spot with the help of his employer. He is a corporate videographer for Quantam Rehab and Pride Mobility Products in Exeter, one of the corporate sponsors of Ryan’s Run.
Although that helped Grant get his position on the team, he also did the individual $5,000-plus in fundraising with help of social media.
Grant, whose only previous marathon was Steamtown in 2014, added to his normal running routine to prepare himself for New York.
“Nomrally, I try to keep myself in shape for a half marathon,” said Grant, who traveled to New York early Friday to spend some time at the Race Expo there.
“So instead of running 10 or 12 miles once a week, I was running 20-21 miles on Sundays.”
Because of the size of the field and the varying ability of runners, the New York City Marathon uses a staggered start with elite runners early, followed by runners of different ability spread out through the rest of the morning, according to their projected times.
That means after gathering with others from the group that is approaching its goal of $500,000 raised, many participants in Ryan’s Run will be on their own as they run the streets of New York.
“I like it that way,” Grant said. “When I’m running, I like to get in my own head and zone out.”
Funds raised will be invested in cutting-edge rehab technology.
More information about the campaign is available at alliedservices.org/.ryansrun.
