Kadrmas ready for first marathons

• Kathy Kadrmas

Press Photo by Dustin Monke Dickinson’s Kathy Kadrmas runs Wednesday near the Dickinson Recreation Center. Kadrmas, 31, will do her first two marathons in a two-week span beginning Saturday at the Fargo Marathon.

Talk about it

Kathy Kadrmas needs music when she runs. It’s the only way the former sprinter can slow herself down.

“I have to run with music,” Kadrmas said. “If I don’t, I’ll start off slow and before I know it, I’m sprinting again.”

On Saturday morning, Kadrmas will plug in her earbuds and embark on the next leg of her relatively fledgling journey into distance running.

After running the Fargo Marathon’s half marathon race last year, Kadrmas is competing in her first full marathon there.

Barely two weeks later, on June 5, she plans to run another 26.2-mile race, the Deadwood (S.D.) Mickelson Trail Marathon.

“It’s a lot of mental preparation, as well as physical preparation,” said Kadrmas, a 31-year-old certified nursing assistant and a 1998 graduate of Dickinson High School.

Kadrmas has competed in sprint triathlons before moving on to numerous 5K and 10K runs and, eventually, half marathons (13.1 miles). Her first half came during the Las Vegas Marathon in December 2009.

“I didn’t do much until I decided I needed to get off the couch,” Kadrmas said with a laugh.

Times don’t matter to her, she said.

Completing the Fargo Marathon in less 4 hours, 30 minutes — considered well below an above-average time for United States women — is her goal.

“I do not want to let myself walk,” Kadrmas said.

She completed the Las Vegas half marathon route in 2:26.26 less than two years ago. Last May in Fargo, she cut 6 minutes off that time.

Kadrmas said she feels her times will improve slowly as she continues to acquaint herself with the sport.

“You have to learn to pace yourself,” she said. “I taught myself by counting sidewalk squares or finding songs with the beat of the music that’s going to slow me down rather than make me go faster.”

Kadrmas’ training partner, Nicki Fath, said she is in the right shape to pull off her goal of running her first two marathons just two weeks apart.

“She’s very driven,” said Fath, who is also running in the Fargo Marathon on Saturday. “She trains really hard and she’s in really great shape.”

Kadrmas said her biggest accomplishment to this point has been convincing herself she has the ability to do marathons.

“People always think, I could never do that,” Kadrmas said. “There’s obviously a lot of physical preparation, but it’s more mental preparation. I always tell them, it’s getting past that voice in your head that’s constantly telling you to stop. Once you get past that, then you can do it.”

Fargo Marathon

Hundreds of southwest North Dakota residents competing Friday and Saturday at the Fargo Marathon races, including the youth run, 5K, 10K, marathon relay and half marathon. But, only eight are entered in the full, 26.2-mile marathon. They are:

Jason Bang, 34, Killdeer

Nicki Fath, 38, Dickinson

Lisa Holding Eagle, 29, Dickinson

Greg Jung, 44, Dickinson

Kathy Kadrmas, 31, Dickinson

Adam Dale Karpyak, 31, Dickinson

Carla Mortensen, 38, Dickinson

Darrin Roach, 46, Dickinson

Tags: fargo marathon, kathy kadrmas, sports