The Trip That Changed Me: How Running the World’s Biggest Marathons Pushed AnneMette Bontaites’s Limits

For AnneMette Bontaites, running the New York City Marathon was supposed to be a one-time experience. A personal challenge, a bucket-list item, and then back to normal life

But somewhere between the starting line and the finish, plans changed.

The decision to run that first marathon was almost a whim. Bontaites, a Denmark native who now lives in Boston, had run two half marathons and joked to her best friend, “Well, two halves make a whole. I've done a marathon.’”

The friend, also a runner, begged to differ on that distance math and made her an offer: She’d fly to New York from the pair’s home city of Copenhagen and they’d run Bontaites’s first marathon together. By mile 18, the friends had made a pact to run the Copenhagen marathon together, too.

Soon the races began to stack up: After Copenhagen came Paris, the Marine Corps Marathon, and eventually the prestigious Abbott World Marathon Majors series, which includes seven races in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo.

"Before you actually run one, I think in the back of your mind, most people [think], 'There is no way I could ever run a marathon.' And then when you do, it's this really incredible fulfilling feeling of, 'Wow, I really did this.'"

And the discipline and mental grit required to train and run those races also reshaped how Bontaites approaches challenges far beyond the course.

“It helps when you actually break down the 26.2 miles into five-mile increments because then it becomes less daunting mentally,” she says. “Itake that to work with me.”

The lesson, she discovered, wasn’t just about running—it was about reframing overwhelming goals into manageable steps.

Bontaites completed the Abbott series in August 2025 when she ran the Sydney Marathon and considered retiring, but then Athens – birthplace of the marathon – came calling. That race was in November.

“I thought, ‘Let's end where it all began,’” she said.

Follow AnneMette's travels through the Atlas here.

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