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Monday, March 18, 2024
Marathon Woman: NOTL’s Margot Devlin completes her 10th NY race
Margot Devlin crosses the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge during this year's New York City Marathon. SHAUN DEVLIN/SUPPLIED
Holding her 2022 New York City Marathon medal and wearing her prized medals from the 2021 London marathon and the 125th edition of the Boston marathon, also in 2019. SHAUN DEVLIN/SUPPLIED
Margot Devlin's 2022 NYC Marathon medal. SHAUN DEVLIN/SUPPLIED
Margot's medals. SHAUN DEVLIN/SUPPLIED

Margot Devlin is a woman on the run.

She’s not fast, but she is determined and dedicated – and just completed her 10th New York City Marathon, an admirable accomplishment at any age.

But it’s phenomenal at 66 – and she has no plans to slow down.

When she’s not running, she works as the COVID compliance co-ordinator at the Shaw Festival and has voluntary gigs with the annual Rotary Holiday House Tour, NOTL Ambassadors program, Chautauqua Residents Association and the Shaw Guild.

Exhausting and inspiring.

“I’m very slow, definitely not fast,” Devlin says. She doesn’t talk about her race time, “just that I made it over the finish line.”

Completing a race that’s 26.2 miles (42 kilometres) requires discipline and determination. It’s roughly the distance from Old Town to Beamsville.

And so far, she’s done 14 full marathons and 13 half-marathons. Besides New York, she’s run London three times (two of them virtually) and did Boston virtually in 2021.

After a few weeks off since the Nov. 6 New York run, she’ll soon start training for April’s London marathon.

It’s often chilly or rainy, on race day in NY, but this year it was 80F.

“The marathon is a really cool way to meet people and experience New York,” she says.

“And the next day, everyone wears their medals around town and New Yorkers congratulate you.”

She credits her Zoom trainer, Dee Simpson of Toronto, with her success.

Simpson, who soon turns 80, is a big supporter. “She keeps trying to get me to go faster. No way,” says her protege.

During the pandemic Devlin and her husband Shaun converted their garage into a training facility and whether she’s pounding the pavement or in her home gym, when prepping for a race she trains seven days a week.

And she’s not stopping. Her goal is at least five more NY marathons.

“Because after you do 15 you get to wait for the start in a heated tent on Staten Island with all the elite runners and celebrities,” she says with a grin.

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