MANCHESTER –- Patti Dillon was running with the guys in the Greater Boston Track Club one day in 1979 when someone mentioned they were going to Manchester Road Race.
Where was Manchester? Dillon didn’t know. Did she want to go? Sure.
Dillon, one of the top American women’s runners at the time, not only ran the Thanksgiving Day 4.737-mile race and won it, but she broke the course record by over a minute, winning in 25 minutes, 37 seconds. The course record was 27:13, set by 1979 runner-up Lisa Berry, who also broke her own record, running 26:33 in 1979.
To put it in perspective, the 1978 winner Gale Jones won in 29:02 and a year later, Ellyn Block won in 28:19. Dillon held the record until 1985 when eventual four-time winner and eventual Olympian Judi St. Hilaire broke it.
“In late 1979, she was basically unbeatable at any distance,” said Amby Burfoot, nine-time Manchester winner and the former executive editor of Runners World. “She was totally dominating every race she ran.”
Dillon, 72, who lives in Windham, was honored Thursday as the honorary chairperson of the Manchester Road Race, which will take place Nov. 27 starting at 10 a.m. on Main Street in Manchester.
Patti Dillon of Windham, a three-time runner-up at Boston in the 1980s and a one-time American marathon record holder, is a member of the Mi’kmaq nation from Nova Scotia but was born and raised in Massachusetts. She will be the official starter for the Boston Marathon which falls this year on what some towns in Massachusetts, including Boston, are celebrating as Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day. Photograph by Mark Mirko | [email protected]
She didn’t remember much from the race that year.
“We came and had a good time,” she said. “I was always so nervous because I thought somebody like me was going to show up – somebody like me that nobody knows who was going to run really well. I was always like, ‘Got to run harder, got to run harder.’ You never knew. Nobody told you you were first woman. You just ran.”
She doesn’t remember seeing any other women in the field when she ran. At the time, women’s running was still an emerging part of the sport. The Manchester Road officially recognized women’s competitors for the first time in 1977.
Dillon never came back because she was invited to other Thanksgiving road races and then in December, she always went to Honolulu Marathon, which she won four times between 1979-81. She retired from competitive running in 1986 but has returned to Manchester to watch the race. Her husband Dan has run the race a couple times.
She has never run the race for fun.
“You don’t run races for fun,” she said and laughed. “The kind of fun I like, I’m not in shape for that.”
Back in the day, Dillon – who was a smoker and started running to lose weight – was an American record holder, a world record holder, and the top-ranked road racer in the world in 1980-81. She was the first American woman to break 2 hours, 30 minutes in the marathon (the second in the world) and the first female amateur athlete to sign a professional contract, with Nike.
She finished second at the Boston Marathon three times – in 1979 to Joan Benoit Samuelson, in 1980 to Jackie Gareau and in 1981 to Allison Roe, who broke the course record to beat her. Grete Waitz, nine-time New York City marathon champion, beat her in New York in 1980, setting a world record. That was when Dillon broke the American record (2:29:33). But injuries took their toll on her and she eventually retired, although Dillon still runs an hour a day.
Former winners return
The 2023 and 2024 men’s winners, Morgan Beadlescomb and Andrew Colley, will be back on Thanksgiving to run, as will four-time women’s winner Weini Kelati, who holds the course record (22:55, 2021). Edwin Kurgat, who finished third last year at Manchester, could challenge for the win. Also Olympian Andy Butchart of Scotland, who finished third in 2019, will be back. Colley won the race last year in 21:09 and Beadlescomb in 21:12.
As of Thursday, 10,811 runners and walkers had signed up for the 89th annual race, which starts at 10 a.m. on Main St. in Manchester.