Austintown’s Toth moving up to full 26.2 miles

June 2, 2017 at 12:08a.m.

Mill Creek Park to be centerpiece

If you’re going to start running marathons, why not start in your hometown?

Austintown native Christina Toth is making the jump from half-marathons to the full thing on Sunday at the Youngstown Marathon.

“The only reason I’m doing it is because it’s in Youngstown,” Toth said. “I never even had an ambition to run a marathon, but since it’s here I thought I might as well try it since it is the inaugural one.

“My first half-marathon was the Mill Creek Park Classic.”

Toth joins one of at least 1,000 runners participating in the city’s first marathon Sunday, ranging from first-timers to veterans of the Boston Marathon.

The race passed the projected 1,000-participant mark before online registration closed on Thursday, race director Courtney Poullas said. More can still register for the full and half-marathons up until Saturday.

The race starts and ends at Second Sole on 224 in Boardman. While its employees will be working along the course, a few of them will be running in it.

“As soon as I get done running, I’ll help out anyway I can,” Leetonia’s Doug Botaw said. “Sunday is going to be a crazy day.”

Botaw comes into Sunday with experience in the Akron and Boston marathons. He’s not alone in experiencing America’s most high-profile marathon in “Beantown.”

Others are Austintown’s John “Scooby” Bolha and Canfield’s Jenn Polkovitch who are also working as ambassadors for the Sunday event.

Youngstown’s course is centered around Mill Creek Park with a cameo appearance from downtown Youngstown. It’s a different challenge from urban-centric Boston.

“You have to bank a lot of hills. You really have to practice the hills,” Botaw said. “The Park has a lot of high sides.”

It takes months of preparation just to be able to complete the 26.2-mile course.

“It’s cool to see how far you can push your body. I had never ran more than 13 miles, so on Saturday’s I’d run 14 miles and it was like ‘Wow, I can do this.’ And then you do 15 and then 18,” Toth said. “Plus there’s a lot of things you don’t really think about. I never brought a water bottle on a run, you just wait until the end but you can’t do that when you run 20-plus miles.”

It’s hard to avoid the subject of Mill Creek Park when discussing the marathon. It’s the race’s centerpiece.

“It’s cool how you’ll be running and if there’s like a slight wind, you’ll really hear the water fall. You can hear the lakes,” Toth said. “It’s just very peaceful and quiet compared to running on Mahoning Avenue or your neighborhood.”

Runners take their marks Sunday morning at 7.

“I’m excited and nervous to run,” Botaw said. “I’m hoping (The Vindicator has a) cold weather forecast for Sunday.”