Local mom Katie Florio wins the Philadelphia Marathon: ‘I run these streets twice a day’

On Sunday, the city of Philadelphia took to the streets to witness the Philadelphia Marathon — and the fans got to watch one of their own cross the finish line first.

With 17,000 runners lined up in the shadow of the Art Museum, an estimated 100,000 spectators lined the course to cheer on friends, elite runners, and even complete strangers who were taking on the 26.2-mile challenge.

On the women’s side, many Philadelphians found themselves cheering on a neighbor.

In a remarkable turn of events, local runner Katie Florio mounted a late comeback that saw the 30-year-old surge past her opponent en route to becoming a rare Philadelphian to win the women’s side of the Philadelphia Marathon. (Race organizers previously said they believed the last time there was a local winner was in the 1980s, but it happened most recently in 2022.)

The last Philadelphia woman to win the marathon before Amber Zimmerman in 2022 was Lori Lawson, who won in 1987 and 1988.

The feeling of a home-course advantage was not lost on Florio, who resides in Center City. After crossing the finish line, she proclaimed, “My city, my win.”

“Living in the city, I run these streets twice a day,” Florio said. “It was cool, like, I knew the tangents, I knew the course.”

In describing her favorite part of the course, the Archbishop Carroll High and Penn State graduate explained that, “there’s so many different segments, like it’s easy to chunk it up. It’s not boring. There’s a ton of fans and there’s so many people I know cheering for me.”

Florio had placed third in 2019, but a lot has changed in her life since that race. After giving birth to her first child in October 2023, Florio expected to be back running, but “not like this.”

“Coming back postpartum, that was a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, like you don’t know if you’re going to get better,” Florio said. “And this season, I’ve just gotten faster, so it’s really incredible.”

Florio, who grew up in Ardmore, finished in 2 hours, 32 minutes, 42 seconds. That was 44 seconds faster than the second-place finisher, Aberu Mekuria Zennebe.

For most of the course, Florio was knotted in a tight race with Zennebe. She overtook the Ethiopian with three miles to go.

“Coming back from Manayunk, me and [Zennebe] were right next to each other.
I knew that with three [miles] to go, I was like, ‘I got to make a move now,’” Florio said. “It just started to hurt and I was like, ‘If I save it for the last mile, she could outkick me.’ I heard them say 2:24 was her personal record, so I’m like, ‘She’s got wheels.’ So, I just took it with three to go and then held on.”

On the men’s side, Will Loevner secured first place with a time of 2:16:12. The Pittsburgh native secured a thrilling, come-from-behind finish over Mulgeta Birhanu Feyissa of Ethiopia, just narrowly grasping the lead with just over a mile to go.

“I saw [Feyissa] way up the road and I just told myself to run my own race.
I said just settle into my pace and I saw they were coming back,” Loevner said. “People started yelling at me that I could catch them. And then at about 25 miles, I passed [him] and went into first. Those last couple miles are hard to describe what I was feeling, but it was incredible.”

Loevner placed fourth in the 2023 race, which, at the time, was just his second marathon. This year, he set out to finish even higher.

“The last mile of the day I honestly felt like I was running on a cloud,” Loevner said. “There’s a lot going through my mind. I was pretty emotional just thinking about the fact that I had a big goal coming into this and then I actually pulled it off.”

Coming from behind late in the race is no easy task. The course has plenty of challenges with inclines littering the back half, but the energy that the city’s residents and other local race fans provide is something that makes the event truly special.

According to race director Kathleen Titus, this is an integral factor in the marathon’s growing popularity.

“Together, a culmination of both the sport growing and the city growing economically, this is an attractive race,” she said. “We’re one of the top 10 marathons in the country. We’re No. 8 and we’re going to keep growing, but the experience that we give runners … we’re starting to attract more and more runners, not only nationally, but globally.”

While the race’s reach may be global, it didn’t have to look very far for this year’s winners.

In the men’s wheelchair category, Jeyna Senbeta took first place in 1:47:55, making him the first racer of the day to complete the marathon.

The hilly nature of the course posed a challenge for Senbeta, but as a previous winner of the race, he was prepared. What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was when a car nearly entered the path of the race.

“On Chestnut Street, there was a car that was trying to come onto the race because they probably didn’t think a race was happening,” Senbeta said. “The police stopped [the driver] and he was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ As soon as the police passed by, [the driver] was, like, about to go again — and then the car almost hit me.

“But thank God for all the other spectators just out there yelling, ‘Stop!’ And I might have flashed on the bird as I passed by. But outside of that, you know, it was not a bad race.”

Race veteran Michelle Wheeler captured first in the women’s wheelchair category, finishing in 2:03:43.

In the masters overall category, which consists of runners 40 and older, Zennebe placed first with her time of 2:33:27.

Reed Williams finished first in the non-binary overall category with a time of 2:46:34.