Maine guardsman qualifies for national marathon team

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LINCOLN, NEB. (05/07/2021) (readMedia)-- The streets were busy May 2, as 1st Lt. Lucas Bourget slipped on his running shoes and took to the pavement with National Guard competitors from all across the 54 states and territories. Bourget logged a qualifying three hours and eight minutes at the All National Marathon Trials to officially make the National Guard marathon team.

"What I love about running is that it's process-driven and that you get out of it what you put in," said Bourget. "Training hard and testing yourself on race day is fun."

While he's been running most of his young life, Bourget has not trained for competitive marathons until recently.

"While pursuing my undergraduate degree at the University of Maine, I competed for their track and cross country program," said Bourget. "In 2015, a close friend asked me if I wanted to run the Sugarloaf Marathon and pace him for a Boston Marathon qualifying time."

Bourget described a moment around the 17-mile marker of that race where he realized "how much I had left in the tank," maintaining sub-six minute miles and finishing at a very respectable two hours, 47 minutes.

Life did what it does best and provided a few distractors in the years that followed, but in 2019 Bourget experienced a renewed interest in competitive running when he came onto temporary active orders working in the personnel office at Joint Force Headquarters. There he met another soldier involved in the marathon team, Sgt. Maj. Bradley Merrill.

"We talked and he mentioned the marathon program," said Bourget. "I did a little research and looked at the results from the previous trials for the team and noticed that the cutoff was well within reason."

Now one of 70 National Guard men and women to make the team, Bourget looks forward to races at various locations around the country, not only for the races, but also participating at various expos where he will have the opportunity to represent the National Guard.

A native of Auburn, Bourget works full time for the Maine National Guard in Augusta as a security specialist overseeing physical security, operations security, and antiterrorism programs. During drill weekends, he is assigned as a human resources officer for the 133rd Engineer Battalion in Brunswick.

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Caption: 1st Lt. Lucas Bourget drives on during the All National Marathon Trials May 2, 2021, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Bourget finished in three hours, eight minutes to become one of 70 runners who qualified for the National Guard marathon team. Photo courtesy of Nebraska National Guard Public Affairs