BOISE, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
Boise teacher Andrea Kelleher has built a reputation for going the extra mile. Kelleher, who teaches third grade at Boise’s Lake Hazel Elementary, received a teacher of the year award from the West Ada School District last year. Her next achievement, set to be realized on Sunday, will be running in the New York City Marathon.
Kelleher, 53, has been teaching for 14 years and has been a third grade teacher at Lake Hazel for 10. The upcoming New York City Marathon will be her eighth 26.2-miler. Though being able to participate in the race would be a dream for any runner, Kelleher will be completing the marathon after picking up the hobby in her middle-age.
BORN TO RUN? NOT QUITE
“I was the kid that was like, ‘nope, I’m good,’” Kelleher said. “Go run a mile? No thank you.”
It was not until her early 40s, when she was attending graduate school, that Kelleher would eventually pick up running. Her husband was away on a military deployment and Kelleher was looking for something of her own that could keep her both occupied and out of the house.
“I just kept saying, ‘I gotta get running, I gotta get running,’” Kelleher said.
She began building her running regimen gradually, working up to run a 5k, a 10k and then a half-marathon. Quickly her time spent running would become a time for reflection. Today, she continues to use her runs as an opportunity to consider her professional responsibilities. She would think of what emails needed to be sent to parents, which of her students needed to be talked to and any other school responsibilities that needed to be addressed in the future. As feet rhythmically hit pavement, “it was the perfect time to sit and go through that over and over again,” she said.
A conversation — overheard by chance — encouraged Kelleher to up her running aspirations.
“I remember one day I went to pick up my kid from school and I heard another mom say something about training for a marathon,” Kelleher said. “I was like, ‘You know what? If she can do it, I can do it.’”
Kelleher soon found herself running her first marathon alongside her sister in the New Orleans’ Rock ’n’ Roll marathon. Though the race has since been discontinued, it was known for its scenic route that ran through the city’s iconic French Quarter. This selection of locale was deliberate, she said.
“If I’m going to do a marathon, I’m gonna go somewhere and have a great time,” Kelleher said.
Though Kelleher described her feeling of completing the marathon as being unlike anything else, she was ready to hang up her sneakers after her run in New Orleans. The time commitment for training led to her sleeping less, being "cranky all the time" and seeing less of her family, she said.
This decision was short-lived. An acquaintance approached her not long after her inaugural marathon, with the opportunity of running another. Kelleher accepted, restarted her training regimen and would soon have another marathon under her belt. As she and her children moved alongside her husband for his military deployment, Kelleher said she would begin to run marathons wherever her family was residing at the time.
Now a Boise resident, Kelleher brought her running experience back to Lake Hazel Elementary. She served for 10 years as a coach for the school’s Girls on the Run program — a non-profit dedicated to developing girls’ social and emotional skills alongside engagement in physical activity. She has also implemented the broader lessons learned through running into her approach to teaching. Now phrases like “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” and “I’m not going to ask you to run a marathon without training for it” have become a commonality in the Kelleher classroom, she said.
"I know she talks about her running to her students," Jennifer Logan, Lake Hazel Elementary Principal, said. "It's just a way of finding things that are healthy, that you can rely on to relieve stress, to keep your body healthy."
Kelleher's impact as an educator stems from her looking to meet the needs of students through creative engagement. Whether it be drawing connections to running or sharing pictures of the family dogs, Logan said that Keller is always looking for an opportunity to foster connection.
"She cares about them as people, not just as students in our classroom," Logan said.
For Kelleher, continued classroom engagement is what helps foster an effective learning environment. When students are engaged, the lessons they receive prove more effective and strengthen mental muscles.
“You practice in education all the time and your mind is a muscle that we’re building all the time,” Kelleher said. “If we don’t practice, we’re not going to get better.”
Running was no different, she said.
NEW YORK CITY MARATHON
Kelleher ran the Chicago Marathon, her seventh, in 2016 before setting her sights on her "dream marathon" — the New York City Marathon — among the most prestigious in the nation. Last year, the New York City Marathon was the largest race in the world with over 51,000 finishers. This year's marathon is looking to have similar numbers with more than 50,000 runners expected to participate, according to the New York Road Runners website.
Kelleher put in for the marathon draw four years in a row for a chance to gain entry into the race, and four years in a row she didn't get the opportunity to participate. She then learned about a program that selects a limited number of teachers in the U.S. and Canada to participate in the marathon. After applying through the program in 2021, Kelleher was again denied, deciding at that point that she was “done with marathons."
“I kind of cut way back on my running … I was just kind of going through a slump,” Kelleher said.
It was not until this past year that she once again saw the opportunity to participate in the teacher selection program. Kelleher had recently received her aforementioned teacher of the year award and her newest application would prove to be the one that gave her the opportunity she had been hoping for.
“It’s all I talk about,” Kelleher said. “I think everybody's probably like, ‘OK, Andrea, let's get this over with, so we don't have to listen to you talking about this marathon.’”
She began her training on July 1 — training that has been inhibited by the record fire and smoke seen throughout Idaho. With this backdrop, along with knowing that her goal was to soak up the marathon’s atmosphere, rather than shoot for a specific time, Kelleher elected to go “conservative” with her training this time around: four runs a week, two days of cross-training and one rest day.
With the marathon approaching, her training mileage has increased. Her highest mileage week — about a month out from race day — had her run 45 miles, including her highest singular run of 20 miles. Neither the uptick in her mileage nor the busyness of the school year has been able to dampen her excitement ahead of raceday.
“I feel so blessed and privileged to be a part of this group, and I will encourage anybody to try out to do this, because it's just been an amazing thing,” Kelleher said. “This will be my eighth marathon, and I think that this might be the topper.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
