Will Geoghegan, left, Alec Troxell center, and Colin Cernik have been training together, along with Aaron Willingham, in an attempt to break the course record for Maine residents at the Beach to Beacon 10K. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

PORTLAND — It’s been nearly two decades since Ben True turned in the best time for a Maine resident at the Beach to Beacon 10K, finishing the 6.2-mile course in a record 29 minutes, 10 seconds.

For 17 years, no runner living in the state has beaten that mark. A quartet of Mainers is locked in on changing that.

“Maybe it’s time Ben True gets knocked off the throne,” Aaron Willingham said.

If Will Geoghegan, Alec Troxell, Colin Cernik and Willingham have their way, the Maine record of 29:10 True set in 2009 will be under siege Saturday. The four have been training together for months with the shared, outspoken goal of lowering the mark held by the North Yarmouth native and Maine racing icon.

Aaron Willingham runs in the Last Man Standing, Back Cove Backyard Ultra on July 13. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer)<?xml version="1.0"?> Purchase this image

Geoghegan calls True “ one of the two best male distance runners ever to come out of Maine,” citing former Olympian Bruce Bickford as the other.

“He’s set a high bar, and it would be very, very special to be able to hit that,” said Geoghegan, 34.

Geoghegan, a Brunswick native, Portland resident and former professional runner has led the group. He’s posted weekly running videos on his Instagram account, each documenting his “training to break the Maine course record.”

Over time, his goal has become the group’s goal.

“Our work has been specifically focusing on getting under this old record,” said Cernik, 32, a Portland resident and former Division II college runner. “We all know we can do it. We all feel pretty confident about it.”

Matt Rand, who won the Maine men’s race in 2023 and now serves as the race’s pro athlete coordinator, likes their chances. He called the Maine men’s field “the most talented and deepest it’s ever been.”

“It’s a tough mark to beat. … But I think it will go down,” he said. “I think definitely the winner, and possibly second place, will be under 29:10. Just the workouts these guys have done is indicative of that level of fitness, and they’re going to have each other pushing them in the race.”

Coming together

Rand said the favorite is Geoghegan, who ran collegiately at Dartmouth and the University of Oregon before turning pro and signing with Nike in 2015, the year after he won the Maine men’s race at Beach to Beacon.

Rand pointed to Geoghegan’s performance in the Valor Twilight 5K in June, which he won in 14:02.

“His talent level is unmatched by anybody in Maine,” Rand said. “(He) is now the most dangerous person in this field, I’d say.”

Geoghegan’s path to this point, however, involved a detour. After retiring in 2020, he stopped running and fell far from his competitive conditioning, as he found out in 2021 when he went for an 8-mile run with a friend while in Seattle.

“I had to walk it in for the last 2 miles. That was very humbling,” he said. “That sticks out as the point of like ‘Oh wow, the fitness really does leave you.'”

Geoghegan set his sights on reclaiming his running form and turned that into a fifth-place finish in the Maine men’s division last year. Soon after, he reached out to runners at the Valor Track Club with the idea of training together to prepare for this year’s race — and for making a run at the record.

“We should train together, work together, and see how far we can go,” Geoghegan recalled saying.

Some top runners couldn’t join — Sam Mills was focusing his training on the Boston Marathon, and two-time defending Maine men’s champion Luke Marsanskis was recovering from a foot injury — but the group became four with Willingham, Cernik and Troxell joining Geoghegan.

It’s a talented mix. Troxell, Cernik and Willingham qualified for the 2028 Olympic trials by beating the standard of 2:16 at the McKirdy marathon in late March in New York, and all four were under the course record at the Mid-Winter Classic in Cape Elizabeth in early March.

They have been training together since the start of the year. Once their March races were done, though, the focus became Beach to Beacon.

“(Will) announced (the record goal) early. … As soon as it became time for Beach to Beacon, in late spring, that became all of our goals,” said Troxell, 25, of Cumberland. “Will publicized it, and that made it really exciting.”

Marsanskis was only 2 seconds off True’s record when he won in 2024. Since then, all four runners have known the record is achievable.

“Since Luke ran 29:12, it’s been on our minds,” said Willingham, 29, a Portland resident and former runner at UMaine. “It’s been cool to see how we’re just like ‘Wow, this is pretty attainable. This is something we could shoot for.'”

Putting in the work

There’s a reason True’s time has survived for 17 years. The course is a tough one to race. Hills punish runners who start too fast. The hardest mile is the last one, causing some strong efforts to die out at the finish. The weather is often hot and humid, sapping the energy needed to make a run at history.

The runners going for the record, therefore, knew their workouts would have to be just as intense as the challenge awaiting them.

“It’s a lot less sexy than people would think,” Willingham said.

Training began in January and started ramping up during the spring and continued into summer, following the regimen Geoghegan had from his coach at the University of Oregon.

“(Will) said ‘This is what I’m going to do. If you want to hop along, I’d love to have you guys,'” Troxell said. “We just said ‘This is a formula that looks like it’s worked. … We’ll continue to do that.'”

By June, the group was running between 90 and 100 miles per week and training together three to four days a week. At their peak intensity, mornings would feature eight to 10 intervals of 3-minute runs at race pace, followed by more running at night. The weekend would feature a 14- to 18-mile run to build and maintain aerobic conditioning.

“It’s pretty terrible,” Cernik said. “It throws you into a weird psychosis. But it feels great once you get through it and you’re like ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did that.'”

Troxell had the same takeaway.

“There were days where I went home and I just laid on the couch,” Troxell said. “I don’t reach that level of pain without these guys.”

And that’s where the benefit of the team aspect factors in. For all the pain that comes with training, the runners have a friend to push them, and a friend to keep up their spirits.

“It would be pretty miserable to do all the stuff we do alone,” Cernik said. “It’s cool to have someone else there to cope with.”

Given the work they’ve put in and the results they’ve seen, Geoghegan said the record has become not just the goal, but the expectation.

“Every week, it’s felt closer to reality,” he said. “At this point, I think I would be quite disappointed if I didn’t get under the old record.”

All four said they would be just as happy to see another member of the group come away with the win and a new mark.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Those guys are fit. And I’d be elated,” Willingham said. “I will always be so, so happy and proud of whatever they do.”