KATONAH, N.Y. – As a trainer at a busy horse show barn, Laena Romond found herself with a rare few hours off on a Sunday morning in December 2024.
Romond is also a runner; she doesn’t get to race that much because she works on weekends. There was a half marathon that morning in West Palm Beach, near her winter horse show stable in Wellington, Fla.
“We were supposed to show that day and someone canceled or our plans changed on Saturday afternoon, so my Sunday morning opened up,” she said. “The race started at 6 (a.m.). I was like, ‘If I run it and run fast, I can still be at work at 8:30.’”
She laughed. Not only did she run, Romond, 43, won the 13.1-mile race and was interviewed after by a local TV station.
“Five minutes later, all these different people were texting and asking me, ‘What are you doing?’” she said, laughing. “An hour later, I was at a horse show.”
Romond, who lives in Brookfield, works at Heritage Farm in Katonah, N.Y. Mondays are off days after the busy weekends, so Romond can run the Boston Marathon. In her fourth time running Boston last Monday, Romond was the top Connecticut female finisher in 2 hours, 43 minutes, 35 seconds. She was followed by Mira Records of Middletown (2:50:26) and Jessica Smith of Stafford (2:51:08).
Romond’s job is physical; she rides and shows horses at a high level and teaches students. She’s either on her feet or on a horse all day. So when does she find time to train for marathons?
In Florida, where the New York-based barn moves for four months in the winter, she gets up early, sometimes at 3 a.m., to run. She does her long runs usually on Mondays.
“I’ll do a 5K here and there,” she said. “Our work schedule is six days a week and Monday is the off day. Most races are not on Mondays so Boston is very convenient.
“I was never big into racing for that reason. I could do a Turkey Trot or Fourth of July if I had a holiday off.”
Romond grew up riding horses and ran cross country and track for her high school team in Colchester, Vt. She went to Mount Holyoke College and in 2002, her freshman year, won the USEF/Cacchione Cup as the top collegiate hunt seat rider.
She was inspired to run her first marathon after watching Des Linden win at Boston in miserably cold, wet conditions in 2018.
“It had always been in my head to run a marathon,” she said. “They run (the) Vermont City (Marathon) where I grew up and I had run it as part of a relay. I wanted to run the full distance, but I was never sure how to navigate the training in this lifestyle.
She ran the 2018 Philadelphia Marathon and finished in 3:22:27, qualifying for the 2020 Boston Marathon. But Boston was postponed due to the pandemic and that June, Romond fell off a horse and landed hard on her feet, rupturing ACLs in both knees.
“I had to go to a few surgeons to find someone who would do them both at the same time,” she said.
She had surgery July 1 and didn’t run again until April 2021. At that point, Boston had been postponed again, to October of 2021.
“I cycled all that winter and I was a physical therapy beast,” she said. “So I wasn’t starting from nothing. I wasn’t sure how the running was going to go. My surgeon was not optimistic about how it was going to go in that timeframe or in general.”
Yet Romond made it to the start line in Hopkinton in October.
“I was emotional at the start because I got to that point,” she said. “When I knew I was going to make it, it was pure elation; that was at the top of Heartbreak Hill. That was a peak marathon experience.”
Now her marathon training is just part of her schedule.