Runningmates Mount Desert Island women find sustenance in today’s high-energy version of yesterday’s coffee klatch

Holly Smith straps on her Camel Back, checks the laces of her high-tech running shoes and zips a plastic bag of Fig Newton cookies into her pockets.

She’s a mom on a mission.

Smith and other Mount Desert Island area women, who form a loose chapter of the Eden Running Group, are training for the Sugarloaf Marathon in May. Today’s assignment: to run 21 miles around Eagle Lake, Aunt Betty’s Pond and other hilly stretches of Acadia’s carriage trails.

While they run, the women – all friends, mostly mothers – discuss their children, jobs, husbands and dogs. They grow silent on the hills and, on the way down, trade tips for eating well and for dealing with blisters and other running-related injuries. They have funny nicknames for each other, such as “Achilles Marion,” after one member’s nagging foot injury.

It’s the coffee klatch of the 21st century, but the coffee cake has been replaced with Fig Newtons and the java with high-energy sports drinks and goo to help them hoof it through the final miles.

“You get out here, because you have to meet somebody – and if you don’t show up, they call you,” Marion Fine, 44, of Bar Harbor said before the training run began.

“They harass you!” Smith, 41, said smiling.

Ginger King of Bar Harbor is described by the other women as the resident cheerleader of the ‘Old Crows’ running group. In her 30s, she’s a firecracker of a mom who wears horn-rimmed glasses and a positive attitude as comfortably as a worn T-shirt. King completed the Sugarloaf Marathon last year. It was her first marathon, and when she shows the photographs from that rainy day it’s with pride and a clear sense of accomplishment.

“We pull each other through, definitely,” King said. “When I’m bummed out from a bad run, these girls are great. They pull my spirits up.”

Though few among them would describe themselves as natural athletes, thanks to the supportive camaraderie and the instructive tips found in their training bible – “Four Months to a Four Hour Marathon,” by author Dave Kuehls – all hope to finish the upcoming 26.2 mile marathon with reasonable times and in good spirits.

“It’s really cool,” King said. “Honestly, I would not be running this marathon if it wasn’t for them. … I really enjoy it.”

The Old Crows – or “Old Broads” as one calls the group – allowed a Bangor Daily News reporter to join them for part of their 21-mile run. Let’s get this clear: I’m no marathon runner. I consider myself to be a fairly mediocre jogger who has run, at most, five miles at a stretch. A flat stretch. So “enjoy” is a hard word for me to fathom while gasping up a seemingly endless hill. My chest hurt, my legs hurt. It even hurt to breathe. Though I was seriously tempted to collapse on one of the handy granite coping stones lining the trail, and wait for a park ranger to rescue me, quitting didn’t seem like a very good option. The group was both dogged and supportive, urging me to keep on truckin’ to the top of the hill.

“Our long runs are always together, for the most part,” King told me before the run. “You’re going to be surprised at how slow we go.”

It didn’t seem all that slow to me, but it sure was steady – a pace checked carefully by the women on their watches to make sure the run would finish on schedule.

The little things can make a difference, when you have hours, and miles, of running ahead of you. But in the end it seems that it’s this community of women runners and dogs – the group has been known as “Wild Women With Dogs,” a name coined by 56-year-old runner Ty Lourie of Bar Harbor – that can mean everything.

“Once in a while, there will be a Saturday where there’s 15 females and 16 or 17 dogs, and you’ll be running in this enthusiastic pack of mammals,” Joyce Peterson of Bar Harbor said. “And most of them are female. It’s really a beautiful thing.”

And the life lessons learned through long-distance running can be important.

“If you can run for four or five hours, you know that there’s a whole lot of other stuff you can get through,” Peterson, 49, reflected.

Sara Murray, 30, of Bar Harbor is the youngest runner in the pack. She’s also the only one without children. She credits the group with giving her the momentum to complete long training runs.

“I feel like every time I go out to do a long run, I’m dreading it,” she said. “But we get out there and we start talking and running, and before you know it, it’s over – which is great.”

During long runs, runners get to know each other pretty well.

“It’s really funny,” Murray said. “I feel like I know a lot about these people, but I don’t know their last names half the time.”

Fine said that she began running about seven years ago, thanks to friends who urged her to push herself little by little.

“A lot of it had to do with just meeting this group of girls,” she said. “They’d always say, if you can do two [miles], you can do three. If you can do three, you can do four. And here we are. … It’s amazing what you can do.”

The road to long-distance running that Fine has traveled has brought her to some new, good places in her life.

“I’ve lost like 25 pounds since then,” she said. “It’s like a whole different life, and to be honest, it’s a much happier existence. I’m active in all different things. It kind of spills over. Before I’d be a little weird about getting in a kayak. Now we own three kayaks. I don’t know if it helps you live longer, but it helps you live better.”