Daily News-Record

Lindsey Keller is searching for the wall.

The James Madison senior hoped to find it at the Boston Marathon last week.

It didn't happen.

She sailed to a 33rd-place showing among the 6,653 women who started the celebrated race and finished 488th in the entire field of 17,950.

Obviously, the wall is still out there.

"I've never found my limit," Keller said after returning to Harrisonburg.

Keller, who isn't even on the track team at JMU, was the ninth-place American woman at the Boston Marathon, running the 26.2 miles in 3 hours, 3 minutes and 22 seconds. (Kenya's Catherine Ndereba won the women's race in 2:24.27.)

But what really makes the 21-year-old stand out is a startling fact: Boston was only the second marathon she ever ran. Keller qualified by running in another marathon in December.

"I kind of like to do things on the spur of the moment," said Keller, a varsity field-hockey player at Madison the past four years. "I saw there was a marathon and I saw that it was a qualifier for Boston, so I thought that would be really neat."

"Neat" defined by Websters: Slang for great, wonderful, fine.

"Neat" defined by Keller: Running 26.2 miles in grueling heat with little formal training.

Not that Keller went into the race unprepared. Before the marathon, she worked with JMU strength coach Greg Werner, running in the mornings and lifting weights in the early afternoons.

"If I asked her to run through a wall," Werner said, "she'd find a way to do it."

In December, Keller, who had never run more than 10 miles, got in her white 1998 Jeep Cherokee and drove to Huntsville, Ala., for the Rocket City Marathon.

"I had no idea what I was getting into," Keller said. "I was, like, it can't hurt to try it."

Keller more than just tried it. She needed to run the marathon in 3 hours and 30 minutes to qualify for Boston.

She crossed the finish line with 16 minutes to spare.

"Lindsey is almost a training machine," said JMU cross country coach Dave Rinker, who estimated most marathoners have had three to four years of formal training. "She loves pushing her body to the max. The marathon in many ways is really a matter of survival more than anything."

What possessed the geography major from rural Pennsylvania to believe her body could handle one of sports' most arduous tasks?

"I feel like I can mentally push myself through things," Keller said. "I know some people literally collapse and cannot go any further. But I thought if that happens, that's good, because then I know what my body can do."

Keller and her body have packed more into the past year than many amateur athletes do in a lifetime.

How many college kids can look you in the eye and say, "Honestly, Heartbreak Hill wasn't that bad"?

And honestly, you have to believe her.

In just the past year, the blond-haired Keller has played defense and midfield for JMU's field hockey team, competed as an independent at a Virginia track meet, taken up marathon running and skydived - to help battle her fear of heights.

Last summer - when many college kids spent their time at the beach or pool - Keller picked up mountain biking. She went to North Carolina and competed in a 24-hour race, cycling over a rugged six-mile loop as many times as she could.

Most of the competitors did the race in teams and traveled with support crews.

Keller brought her mother, Kim, and her Cherokee.

And she finished second. The novice qualified to go to the world championships in Canada, but couldn't because of field hockey.

"That was incredible," Keller said. "I literally was hallucinating during the ride. The hardest thing was mentally you had to be focused because there were hills, there were rocks. You could really hurt yourself."

Really?

Keller did crack her left knee cap over the summer in a bike wreck at Massanutten.

She may not worry about getting hurt, but her father, David, worries enough for the both of them.

"I feel a lot more comfortable when she has both feet on the ground," David Keller said. "She has enough brains to not be completely fearless, but she's close to it."

David Keller works as a taxidermist back in Benton, Pa. - a zero-stoplight town where Lindsey grew up as an only child, hunting with her dad and running with her dog, Butch. Her mother runs the office for the family business.

David Keller hoped his daughter would follow into his line of work, but after a summer skinning massive hides with a draw knife, Lindsey decided that wasn't the path for her.

It's rare, she said, that she can coax her father to watch her in her more extreme athletic pursuits.

One of the last times he did so, at a mountain-bike race in West Virginia, David Keller saw his only child crash right in front of him.

"We had stood there and watched almost every rider stick their front tire right there in a hole," David Keller recalled. "She came down that trail, and I said, 'Watch the holes.' I could see her head nod. But no one could see this coming and she didn't either."

But unlike many of the racers who had gone down before her, Keller got up, brushed herself off and got back on her bike.

With her infectious laugh and host of stories from her athletic adventures, Keller would be the life of the party - if only she'd go to one.

"She might be one of the only college students who didn't touch a beer or a drink in four years," her father said.

Of course, dads often are the last to know about their childrens' party habits. But Keller backed up his story.

"There's nothing wrong with partying, but I was never a big partier," Keller said. "I just didn't fit in that social aspect of it, so I had to find something else to take up my time."

It's unlikely she considered knitting or bridge.

JMU football assistant coach Casey Creehan is one of Keller's roommates. Having lived with Keller since June, Creehan has taken to forcing her to sit on the couch and watch television with him - at least for a few minutes every day.

"She can't sit still," Creehan said. "She has to be doing something every minute of the day. I've tried to loosen her up a little bit. She needs to have more leisure time in her life."

Keller tried to reciprocate. She went running with the 26-year-old Creehan.

"I'm thinking I'll leave her in the dust. She takes off on sprint and I'm thinking, she can't keep this pace up," Creehan said. "In a 2½-, 3-mile run, she beat me by half a mile.

"I'll never run with her again."

Now, Keller's looking for her next challenge.

There's a high-altitude marathon at Colorado's Pike's Peak. There's also a new interest: Iron Man competitions.

Oh, and if she finds the time, Keller would really like to go to the Olympics.

As an 18-year-old, she tried out for the U.S. national field hockey team - just to see where she stood.

Of course, she made it.

That team didn't qualify for the Olympics and Keller left the squad to keep her scholarship at JMU. Now, she'd like another crack at representing her country - but she's not sure in which sport.

"It was still in the back of my head," Keller said. "Putting on that red, white and blue - I only did it a couple of times - it was such an intense feeling."

Maybe even more so than the Boston Marathon.
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Record Number: 109E3F497B04682D