VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – Inspired by the marathon run in the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. The Boston Marathon came to be on April 19th 1897. And every year after that, the race is run on the third Monday in April, Patriots Day. Until 2020.

For the first time in the 122 year history, the Boston Marathon was postponed. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Boston Marathon will be run on September 14th.

Monday was Patriots Day and for the first time it was observed in North Dakota.

Ever since the spring sports season was put on hiatus, coaches have been looking for ways to safely engage their athletes who are home looking for activities to occupy their time. So Deb Beilke, assistant track coach and head cross country coach at Valley City High School, came up with a great way to accomplish this. Let’s run a marathon, kinda of.

Beilke explains how they came up with the 26.2 mile distance.

The time: 3 hours 49 minutes and 27 seconds. Beilke said that it was an acceptable time for a marathon, but it could have been faster. She herself ran about a quarter of the marathon.

The distance runners for the Hi-Liners ran other 20 miles of the race. They were: Sydnee Ingstad, Carly Goven, Greta Goven, Avery Murray, Lexi Triebold, Presley Curtis and Reagan Berg.

Beilke has qualified for the Boston Marathon 29 times and has run it three times (2005, 2009, 2018).

Below is the video put together by Coach Beilke.