(Supplied)

By Ian Gustafson

Under three hours

Red Deer woman wins Edmonton Marathon

Aug 19, 2025 | 12:15 PM

Red Deer’s Kristen Spady was unsure of her own expectations but came out as the clear winner of the women’s race at the Edmonton marathon.

She finished the marathon on Sunday in a speedy time of two hours, 53 minutes and 20 seconds beating out the next fastest time of three hours and six minutes.

Spady explained she didn’t expect to win but is glad she did.

“I’m so overwhelmed and blown away that I was able to pull that off,” she told rdnewsNOW. “It was huge.”

Spady previously ran the Edmonton Marathon and Woody’s RV World Marathon last year but both were what she described as a disaster.

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After a second try at Woody’s Marathon again this year, she said everything seemed to click so she wanted to make another attempt at the Edmonton Marathon.

“This was just my fourth ever marathon but I wanted to see if I could redeem myself again. The pace that I ran is my average pace but where I run my marathons it was better than what I was expecting,” she added.

An important step in her success that day, she said, was proper nutrition prior to the race. She made sure to eat the right amount of carbs, which helped her achieve a great start to the race. She also gave credit to her ability to keep a consistent pace throughout the marathon and not burn herself out early on.

She hopes to continue to run marathons in the future but plans to do so locally because as a mother of four boys, they stay busy throughout the year.

As someone who has remained active throughout her life, at one point she claimed she’d never run a marathon but after a knee injury, out of frustration she made a deal with her trainer that if she could get back to 100 per cent, she would train for a marathon.

Following knee surgery, she trained for most of last year to be able to run a marathon, which is 42 kilometres long. The rest was history.

“It was a lot of fun. There were so many people out encouraging all of the runners, especially being the first female that made it through. People were reading my name tag and shouting at me to keep going… It was like running on a high the entire time.”