Running News Daily

Women´s 2018 flying Pig Marathon winner Caitlin Keen is the 2021 favorite

If all goes according to plan, the women's winner of the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon will celebrate with a cold beer and a burger at Zip's Cafe in Mount Lookout. 

Sometime around 10:30 a.m. Sunday, after hurrying by the Halloween harriers, 29-year-old Caitlin Keen hopes to join the exclusive club of two-time winners of Porkoplis pride.

Keen, who spent her elementary school years in Hyde Park (St. Mary's), has been training in sweltering Fort Worth, Texas, and is looking forward to a Sunday morning start with a chill in the air.

She breezed to her first Flying Pig win in 2018, then was outkicked at the end of the 2019 race by Anne Flower to finish second the last time this race was run. Where most participants are happy to finish, Keen's eye is on the prize, even though her last marathon was in Feb. 2020 at the Olympic Trials.

"I'm coming off of a lot of running without racing," Keen said. "I've been training all summer when it was hot. You're just dragging yourself through it, picking yourself up every day. I think it's probably going to be for my benefit. The weather looks pretty good."

In the previous 22 trots of 26.2 miles, there has only been a trio of female winners who have crossed "The Finish Swine" as champion twice. In the second and third years of the race, Becky Gallaher won in 2000 and 2001 back-to-back. Amy Robillard also went back-to-back in 2014 and 2015. Flower, the 2019 champ, is the most recent.

No autumn Flower

On a whim, Anne Flower put in a month's worth of training while working as an emergency room resident and won in 2016. The Anderson Township native, now a full-fledged doctor, repeated in 2019, which technically makes her defending champ since the coronavirus pandemic halted the "live" race in 2020.

Flower is skipping this year's Pig and running in a marathon in Indianapolis the following week. That leaves Keen, now a Fort Worth resident, as a heavy favorite.

Flower, who is hoping to get a PR on a fast course at Indy Nov. 6, is gravitating toward longer races having recently competed out west in events at Moab, Crested Butte and Pike's Peak.

"I've started running ultra marathons in the past few years and have had similar success," Flower said. "Marathon distance is starting to feel too short and fast for me to keep up!"

She plans on cheering this weekend and points toward Keen, whom she outdueled in 2019 as a runner to watch.

"Caitlin Keen is super fast!" Flower said. "Cincinnatus Elite and Columbus Running Company Elite also have very talented teams. Of course, there are always the 'not yet known' runners who could perform well and finish first."