Kristen Seitz of Peterborough gets ready to run the Boston Marathon for the second time

Kristen Seitz of Peterborough started running during COVID.

“It was the one thing I was able to get out of the house and do safely,” she said.

She hired a coach to help her get faster, but swore she’d never run a marathon – that is, until a friend signed up for one.

“And now I’m about to run my sixth, so here I am,” she said.

Seitz’s sixth marathon will be the Boston Marathon on April 21. This will be her second time tackling the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boylston Street in Boston. She previously ran it in 2022, recording a time of approximately 3 hours, 55 minutes after qualifying with a time in the 3:30 range.

“My legs were tired after 10 miles,” she said of her first Boston experience.

Seitz, 39, said she didn’t appreciate the significance and difficulty of qualifying for Boston until she did it, and that “it’s just an amazing experience from start to finish.”

“I can’t even put into words how amazing it is to have the crowds cheering all along the course,” she said.

Seitz qualified for Boston this year by running 3:26 in last April’s Cheap Marathon in Derry.

“Since I qualified for Boston, I said to myself, ‘If I qualify, I’m going to run it, because who wouldn’t want to run the Boston Marathon?’” she said.

Unlike larger marathons, where the entry fees covers both the race and incidentals, Cheap Marathon registration is just for the race. Finishers don’t even get medals, receiving ribbons instead.

“If you register early, it’s $20,” she said. “It’s like 10% of what you pay to run a larger marathon.”

Seitz ran the Chicago Marathon last year as part of her effort to run the World Marathon Majors. Aside from Boston and Chicago, the New York City Marathon is the other domestic major. Seitz said New York is hard to qualify for and only accepts a small percentage of applicants to its lottery.

“I’ll continue entering the lottery, and if I get in, I’ll do it,” she said.

The overseas majors are in London, Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney, and Seitz said she would look to run those when her children are a little older. She and her husband, Matt, have two daughters – 7-year-old Violet and 10-year-old Charlotte.

“I want them to appreciate that they can get to explore other countries,” she said.

According to Seitz, training for Boston this year has not gone as well as she had hoped, as the winter weather has made it hard to go on the long outdoor runs she prefers.

“It’s really hard to do an 18-mile run on a treadmill,” she said.

However, Seitz said she’ll be ready to go at the start line.

“I don’t expect to run a personal best, but I’ll definitely finish,” she said.

If you’re a Monadnock region resident planning on running the Boston Marathon, let us know at news@ledgertranscript.com