Perkins coach Cobb competes in her second Boston Marathon

Laura Cobb has been living the marathon life for almost two decades. Cobb, an assistant volleyball coach at Perkins, recently completed her second Boston Marathon. She finished in 3 hours, 27 minutes and 26 seconds when the race took place April 20 in Massachusetts. "I think the goal for any marathon is personal to the runner," Cobb said. "I personally set realistic goals on what I think I can achieve. For this race, I had a really good training block and felt like I could get under 3 hours, 30 minutes. For my next marathon at Cleveland in two weeks, I'm going to pace the four-hour running group so it'll be a little different. "I'm going to slow down and help those runners try to achieve their goal." Cobb ran the Boston race in 2024, finishing in 3:52:41. Cobb also qualified in 2010, but did not compete. "For Boston, you have to meet the qualifying time to get into it and it makes it desirable that it doesn't let everyone into the race," Cobb said. "Even if you do meet the qualifying time, if there are runners faster than you it will lower the threshold. So it is almost trying to chase an invisible bar. "I qualified the first time in 2010, but there were people faster than me so I missed the cutoff by 32 seconds. I was eventually able to qualify again 13 years later." Cobb said she got into running when she lived in Europe playing professional volleyball for Pieksamaki Volley in Finland. "When I first moved there, I didn't have a car so we had to walk everywhere and where I lived was kind of far from the city center, so I started running to get there faster," Cobb said. "I actually hated running growing up because I had severe asthma and would get asthma attacks. I specifically turned to marathons when I got home from Europe. "My college teammate informed me that she had run a marathon so that lit the fuel to my fire." Cobb ran her first marathon in Akron in 2007. She specifically chose that marathon because she got a free pair of Brooks running shoes by finishing. She was 25 years old on that day in 2007, but is seeing the differences now at age 43. "Definitely getting older has both advantages and disadvantages," Cobb said. "The advantage is the wisdom of knowing that slowing down on slower days is a good thing. I used to run fast paces for every run and that sabotaged me on race day. I was too tired to give my best performance. "Now, I understand that you don't always have to run fast. On the flip side, it takes longer for my body to recover and I have to let my body recover." Cobb has run marathons in Miami and Chicago, as well as the Ogden marathon in Utah, Flying Pig in Cincinnati and the Glass City in Toledo. She has also completed five Ironman triathlons in which the running component is the same 26.2 miles. Those included the Ironman Cozumel, Ironman Wisconsin and Ironman St. George. "A marathon is tough whether you're a fast runner or a slow runner," Cobb said. "You are covering 26.2 miles and that is an amazing achievement no matter what the pace is. But what I love about marathons is that the race is the icing on the cake. The really gritty part is the training day in and day out." Cobb, who graduated from St. Joseph's Academy in Cleveland before playing volleyball at Ohio University, said Boston is unlike any other marathon. It was televised on ESPN2 this year with Kenya's Sharon Lokedi repeating as the women's champion. "It is the oldest marathon and it has such tradition," Cobb said. "Boston takes place on Patriots' Day, which is a huge holiday in Massachusetts. Spectators pack the race course from start to finish. It is really amazing. "It is a point-to-point race and they bus you out to Hopkinton and you run from there all the way into Boston." There are six major world marathons and Cobb has checked two off her list in Boston and Chicago. She hopes to compete in Tokyo, Berlin, London and New York City before she's done racing. During marathon training, she runs either five or six days a week. Cobb is putting in anywhere between 30 and 50 miles a week when training. Cobb is retired from nursing, but has a furniture restoration business, Redhead Refinishings, that she runs from home while raising four kids. "Set a goal and go after it," Cobb said. "You'd be amazed at what your body can do."