The Starting Line Was Never Really About Running: Vermont Marathoners on the Life Moments That Changed Everything

There's a version of the marathon story that goes like this: a fit, motivated person decides they want a new athletic challenge, follows a training plan, and crosses the finish line feeling accomplished. That story is real, and it's valid.

But spend enough time in the Vermont City Marathon community and you'll hear a different kind of story. One where the marathon wasn't the goal at first—it was the lifeline. Where lacing up running shoes had less to do with race times and everything to do with surviving something, rebuilding something, or finally becoming someone.

We sat down with several Vermont runners to hear those stories. What came back was something we weren't quite prepared for.

"I Needed to Prove I Was Still Here"

Carla Beaumont was 44 years old when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that left her exhausted, in pain, and questioning what her body was even capable of anymore. For two years, she scaled back everything—her work schedule, her social life, the long hikes she used to take every weekend in the Green Mountains.

"I felt like I was disappearing," she says quietly. "Not dramatically. Just slowly becoming less of myself."

Her physical therapist suggested low-impact cardio to help manage inflammation. Carla started walking. Then she started jogging. Then, almost by accident, she ran three miles without stopping and stood in her driveway afterward crying.

"It wasn't about the distance. It was about the fact that my body did something I asked it to do. I hadn't felt that in years."

She signed up for the Vermont City Marathon eighteen months later. She didn't break any records. She finished in just over five and a half hours, surrounded by strangers cheering her name from the sidewalks of Burlington. She says it remains the most significant thing she's ever done.

"I needed to prove to myself I was still here. Still capable. Still fighting. The marathon did that for me."

A Career in Pieces, a Training Plan to Hold Them Together

Tom Guerrera spent fifteen years building a career in financial services before the company he worked for downsized and his position was eliminated on a Tuesday afternoon in March. He was 51. He had two kids in college. He had no idea what came next.

"I'm not someone who handles uncertainty well," he admits with a laugh. "I like structure. I like knowing what I'm doing and why. And suddenly I had none of that."

A neighbor mentioned she was training for a half marathon and invited Tom to join her on a Saturday morning run. He showed up in old basketball shoes and nearly died after two miles. He came back the next Saturday anyway.

"There was something about having a goal with a clear structure. You run this many miles on Monday, this many on Wednesday, a long run on Sunday. You build toward something. I needed that so badly right then."

Over the following year, Tom found new work in a different field, rebuilt his financial footing, and ran the Vermont City Marathon. He says the two processes—rebuilding his career and training for the race—became intertwined in a way he didn't expect.

"They both taught me the same thing: you don't have to see the whole path. You just have to do the next mile."

Running Through Grief

When Simone Archambault lost her mother to cancer in the fall of 2021, she did what a lot of people do in the immediate aftermath of loss: she threw herself into logistics. The funeral arrangements, the estate, the family phone calls. Staying busy felt like staying afloat.

But after the logistics were done and the relatives had gone home, the silence was enormous.

"I didn't know what to do with myself," she says. "I'd go for walks just to get out of the house. And one day I just started running. I don't even know why. I wasn't a runner. I'd never been a runner."

She ran three blocks that first day. Then six the next week. She downloaded a training app, started tracking her miles, and found that the rhythm of running gave her a place to put the feelings she didn't know how to hold anywhere else.

"My mom used to say that when you're sad, you move. She was a dancer. I think about that a lot when I run. I'm moving for both of us now."

Simone ran the Vermont City Marathon the following May with her mother's name written on the back of her race bib. She says she talked to her the whole way.

The Transformation That Started With a Doctor's Warning

At 38, Devin Marcotte was told by his doctor that his blood pressure and cholesterol levels were heading in a direction that needed to change—fast. He was overweight, sedentary, and, by his own admission, not taking great care of himself.

"It was a wake-up call. I have a seven-year-old. I want to be around for a long time."

He started with a walk/run program, dropping weight gradually and building endurance over about a year. The idea of running a marathon seemed absurd to him at first—something for people who were built differently, who had always been athletic.

"I had to completely rewire how I thought about myself. I kept saying 'I'm not a runner.' And then one day I realized I'd been running for fourteen months and I needed to stop saying that."

He crossed the Vermont City Marathon finish line having lost 47 pounds from his heaviest weight. His doctor called it remarkable. He calls it the start of a completely different life.

"The marathon was the proof. But the real change happened in all the ordinary Tuesday morning runs when nobody was watching."

What the Road Gives Back

These stories are different in their details—illness, job loss, grief, a doctor's warning—but they share something at their core. Each of these runners found the Vermont City Marathon at a moment when they needed more than a race. They needed a reason to keep going, a structure to hold onto, a community of people who would cheer for them even when they were strangers.

That's what this race has always been about. Not just miles and medals, but the deeply human need to move through hard things and come out the other side changed.

The Vermont City Marathon starts and finishes in Burlington, but for runners like Carla, Tom, Simone, and Devin, the real journey started somewhere else entirely—in a doctor's office, a quiet house, a parking lot at 6 a.m.—and led them here.

Wherever you're starting from, there's a place for you on this course.

Run Vermont. Run Strong. Run Together.