Running wild: Woman returns for Free Press Marathon, her 70th race on her way to 100

The Detroit marathon was a crucial step for Carey Socol in her goal — ultimately accomplished — to run a marathon in each of the 50 states by her 50th birthday.

Now aiming to run 100 marathons before she turns 60, she will be back in Michigan and among the thousands at the downtown starting line early Sunday morning for the 46th annual Free Press Marathon presented by MSU Federal Credit Union.

For Socol, who lives in New York City and is now 51, the weekend will raise her tally to 70 marathons. She holds fond memories of her first Detroit marathon back in 2011, in part because it also was her first international marathon — the race's 26.2-mile course famously passes over the Ambassador Bridge and into Canada before looping back to the U.S. mainland via the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

She is aiming to finish Sunday's race with a time at or under 5 hours, which would be a bit slower than normal for her because she is using the race as training for the New York City Marathon on Nov. 5.

"I’m a proud mid back-of-the-pack runner," said Socol, who has managed to avoid serious injuries during her decades of marathoning.

“I very much listen to my body," she said. "When I feel good, I go faster, but I definitely don’t go out there to kill myself when I train. So it’s more about longevity for me.”

Nearly 24,000 participants have registered for this year's weekend of races, which is back to the typical participation levels before the COVID-19 pandemic. There were about 19,000 participants last year and just under 13,000 in 2021. (The 2020 live races were canceled because of the pandemic and instead happened in a virtual-only format.)

"This is the first year that we feel we’re really back to the levels we saw prior to 2020,” said Free Press Marathon vice president and race director Aaron Velthoven, who is also vice president of Michigan.com.

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This year is the second year since the major redesign of the marathon course.

The course now bypasses Belle Isle, notorious for being cold and windy, and finishes in downtown near Campus Martius at Congress Street and Woodward. Until last year, the finish line was on Fort Street near the start of the race.

But there are a few new tweaks to this year's course. Those in the marathon and international half-marathon, after emerging from the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, now will spend more time heading north along Woodward Avenue in downtown.

The Detroit marathon has grown from just one race to a series of races, relays and challenges over a weekend. There is the classic marathon and international half-marathon, which both start at 7 a.m. Sunday, and the U.S.-only half-marathon (start time 10:30 a.m. Sunday). The events also include a disability division for wheelchair racers and handcyclists.

On Saturday, there is the 5K run/walk, the competitive 1-mile run, the Meijer Kids Fun Run and, new this year, the Kids Marathon challenge.

'You become a little addicted'

Socol ran her first marathon, the New York City Marathon, in 2000. She approached that race as a one-time "bucket list" life accomplishment — "I always wanted to run one." But she had made friends in the running group that she joined to prepare for the race, and felt encouraged to continue to train with them for another marathon.

And she came to enjoy running as a stress reliever and mental break from work and family life.

After her second marathon in Providence, Rhode Island, she began hearing about people who had set out to run marathons in all 50 states. So she set out to achieve the same goal.

"I was like 'that sounds really fun. What a great way to see the country,' " Socol said.

"And so it kind of snowballed organically," she continued. "It was kind of that relationship with other runners. It became fun weekends away. Eventually I had kids, so it became kind of a stress release. You become a little addicted to it."

Socol usually travels to marathons with running community friends who are also running the race, although sometimes she has turned a marathon trip into a family vacation to a new state with her daughter, who is now 15, and her son, now 18.

Some of her favorite marathons have been in Missoula, Montana — "It was beautiful and I had a great race" — in Newport, Rhode Island, which she ran last year on a gorgeous fall day, and in Miami, which is where she grew up and where family could come out and see her run.

One of the most challenging marathons for her was in Big Sur, California.

"Big Sur is the most beautiful, but also hilly and very windy," she said.

Socol had a brief scare when getting ready for her first Detroit marathon in 2011.

Participants in the full marathon and international half-marathon need Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative-compliant documents, because the race crosses the U.S. and Canadian borders. But she accidentally grabbed her ex-husband's passport instead of her own, and didn't realize the mistake until she was in Detroit and needed to present her passport for the marathon.

"But luckily because I had just renewed mine, they were able to look it up in the system with my license and approve me," she said.

Socol was running in the 2013 Boston Marathon at the time of the domestic terrorist bombing. She recalled being about a mile from the finish line when officials stopped her and everyone else still in the race. She returned in a subsequent year to complete the marathon.

$250,000 raised for charity

When preparing for a race, Socol, who works as a college counseling director, said she will do a 6-mile run that is between her workplace and her home on Manhattan's Upper West Side two or three times per week, and then on weekends do a 12- to 14-mile long run in either Central Park or along the West Side Highway.

Socol often uses her marathons to raise money for charities and charitable causes, and estimates she has raised close to $250,000 since she started marathoning. Some of her causes include the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and The Foundation for Tomorrow, which provides education opportunities for African children.

The fundraising has allowed her to take part in highly competitive marathons, where she otherwise would need to hit a qualifying time.

“I’ve raised a lot of money for different organizations, and that’s been really rewarding," she said.

Socol's new personal goals are to run 100 marathons before she turns 60 as well as to complete all six "major" world marathons. She already has run four of the six (New York City, Boston, Chicago and London), but still needs Tokyo and Berlin.

Although she has done most of her marathons with running group friends, on Sunday she will run solo. That is because another reason for her return trip to Detroit is to accompany her son, now a high school senior, on a college tour of the University of Michigan.

So he likely won't be joining mom at the starting line at 7 a.m.

"He is probably sleeping until I have an hour left, and then coming out to watch me," she said.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Woman returns for Free Press Marathon, her 70th race on her way to 100