Imagine: The horses you’d planned to show have been scratched and you unexpectedly have a free weekend morning in December in Florida. What would you do?

If you’re Laena Romond, one of the trainers at Heritage Farm, you might just sign up for a half-marathon at the last minute. Romond is not just a professional rider but also an avid marathoner. She has to balance her horse show schedule with the races she wants to do, but when circumstances change—as they often do with horses—she’ll try to fit in a race.

On Sunday, her last-minute decision led to a lot of unexpected fanfare, as Romond won the women’s division of the Garden Of Life Palm Beaches Half Marathon on Dec. 15 with a time of 1:24:10 for the 13.1 miles. She was interviewed by local ABC television affiliate WPBF, and Heritage Farm shared the clip to its social media pages.

“Andre [Dignelli, head trainer at Heritage] would joke that I’m the person who hides from social media the most out of our group. Andre does promote our social media a lot, and I always managed to not be included, because I’m not someone who wants to be in front of the camera,” she said, adding with a laugh, “So [the television reporter] basically caught me off guard with that at the last minute. I didn’t have any anywhere to run from them, so I got on TV.”

Romond, 42, Brookfield, Connecticut, ran track and cross-country in high school but didn’t run competitively in college. “I kind of was a casual runner for a bunch of years, and then I decided at one point that I wanted to run some longer races,” she said. “A marathon seemed very out of reach, so I started with a half, and I worked my way up to a full, and I’ve been kind of doing them pretty consistently for, I want to say, like, six years now.”

Romond started working at Heritage in 2007, not long after graduating from Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts).

“It was one of those things that the running kind of fit in around the riding and the work, whatever time would allow for,” she said. “And it always was kind of one of those things—like, ‘I don’t know if I could train for a marathon; this lifestyle so crazy, I don’t know that that’s something that’s ever really gonna work for me.’ And I kind of decided I wanted to do it, and I figured out how to make it work. And it turns out getting up earlier was the way to do that!”

Romond generally runs five or six days a week, although she might take more days off when she’s not actively training.

“When it’s a marathon training block and I’m trying to really be consistent, mornings are definitely the way to go. Anything you save for the end of the day is always at risk of not getting done,” she said. “Florida season tends to be the hardest because we’re showing constantly throughout the winter, so I give myself a couple of days a week where I just get up ridiculously early and get it done before I start riding. That typically means a 3 a.m. wake-up and I’m out the door at like 3:45 [to run]. I’m usually on my first horse by 6, so that gives me a good chunk of time to get some miles.”

Romond has done the Boston Marathon several times. “That’s my absolute favorite race,” she said. “I went to college in Massachusetts, so it was kind of a race that I always had a little bit of a connection with, and growing up in New England as well.”  

But she’s also done destination marathons: the Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris in 2019 and, this past summer, the TCS Sydney Marathon in Australia.

“I went both times with my parents, and we did it as sort of family vacation and then at the end of the week, I did the marathon,” she said. “It’s such a cool way to experience a city; I had such an awesome, awesome experience both times.“

Romond hopes to eventually run all of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. (In 2025, Sydney will be added to the group, which also includes races in Boston, Chicago, London and Tokyo.)

And because 26.2 miles isn’t quite enough of a challenge, Romond did her first ultra marathon—a 50-kilometer (31-mile) race—in November at the Roxbury Marathon (Connecticut). That race also, as it turns out, was a last-minute decision.

“I had a bib for [the New York marathon] this fall, which is always the same day as Maclay Finals. Andre jokingly, but not jokingly, told me I get one weekend during final season to run a marathon, and I had already used it up in September,” she said with a laugh. “But in actuality, it’s hard to miss the championships too; I am so invested in what we do with the kids and the equitation, so that is a real challenge for me. At the same time, the running does mean a lot to me personally. That’s a real push and pull, trying to prioritize what gets my attention on a given weekend during October. So I signed up for New York, but I didn’t do it, so the 50k the following weekend was sort of the consolation.”

Although fitting running in around a physically demanding job can be a challenge, logging all those miles has its benefits too. 

“I grew to really love the training; like, I really do. I love long runs. The rest of the year I live in Connecticut, and I like the idea that my run can actually take me somewhere—like, I run from one town to another, I run to the next town and back. There’s something about the adventure in that that I like,” she said. “I have never been a fan of real speed work in running, but I do really appreciate the process and the progress that goes along with it. A run that felt really hard two weeks ago, if I’m consistent, now it feels totally different and I feel so much better. I just love that process of it. And then race day, it’s a cliché, but it’s really a celebration of everything you’ve done to get up to that point. I just love that.”

And although the two sports—running marathons and competing in horse shows—wouldn’t seem to have much in common, Romond feels they complement each other well.

“I spend a lot of time at the hunter ring, which is obviously very subjective. It always feels like there are so many variables that are out of your control—the horse, the course, the way the class is judged, the weather … you know, all the variables that can make or break your day. And it feels political at times; there are just so many things that can throw a wrench in your day,” she explained. “Running is completely the opposite. It’s so not political, it’s so not subjective. It’s literally one foot in front of the other. 

“But there are a lot of parallels or truths that apply to both sports—the universal truths in sport, like what you get out of it is what you put into it,” she continued. “As much as anyone would like to say, ‘Oh, the judging was bad,’ on any given day that you don’t think you got the right ribbon, there’s probably another day that you got a better ribbon than you thought you deserved. I think that all kind of evens itself out. So in those moments where it can feel like showing hunters is complicated, I think having running also in my back pocket just kind of reminds me to control what’s in your control and everything else will be what it is, and my job is just to basically try my best on the day.”

Romond’s next race will be a much shorter distance—the Strides For Hope 5K in Wellington, Florida, in February, which benefits the Equestrian Aid Foundation.

“That’s a race they’ve been putting on for a few years now, and they get great support from the equestrian community in Wellington, and it’s a really fun, awesome race,” she said. 

As for her recent victory, while Romond said it’s always a thrill to win and be the runner to break the tape, she focuses more on improving her own performance. “I think no matter what your pace is or where you finish in the race, you’re basically competing against yourself. Whether I’m running Boston and I’m going to come in 100th out of the women, or I’m running a race like Palm Beach and I have an opportunity to win, you’re basically just trying to get the most out of yourself on the day and see what you’re capable of,” she said.

And, fittingly, after winning her race, Romond dove right back into the other part of her life and headed off to ride a few horses. “I was just schooling some horses at home, but I was like, ‘I’m  scratching any horse that might spin off my list, because if they turn around too fast, I’m gonna fall right off… my legs feel like Jell-o!” she said with a laugh.