The 2025 M&T Bank Vermont City Marathon & Relay returns to Burlington’s streets and waterfront this weekend with an impressive group of championship-caliber runners headlined by last year’s men’s open champion.

The 35th edition of the Vermont City Marathon, and 34th on Memorial Day Weekend, is slated for Sunday, May 25. Event organizer RunVermont will use its 13.1-mile looped course through the Queen City for marathoners, relay runners and handcyclists.

Michael Kobotov still holds the men’s event record of 2 hours, 17 minutes and 3 seconds set back in 2001. The women’s record was reset in 2023 by Maegan Krifchin in 2:33:40.

More: Your guide to the 2025 Vermont City Marathon & Relay in Burlington’s streets

Courtesy of RunVermont, here’s the invited field and information on each runner slated to compete Sunday:

WOMEN’S OPEN FIELD

Hayley Collins

A elementary school special education teacher in Connecticut, Hayley Collins competed in cross-country running and track and field while at Marist College. She made her marathon debut in 2023, posting a time of 2:56 at Hartford. The following year she lowered that performance to 2:41.

Eliza Kerschner

A 35-year-old occupational therapist from Old Town, Maine, Eliza Kerschner was the VCM runner-up last spring. She also placed sixth at the 2019 VCM and fifth in 2013. Her marathon personal-best time is 2:48:45, set at the 2019 California International Marathon.

Sarah Shiman

A South Burlington native, Sarah Shiman played soccer and basketball in high school before picking up running while living in Utah. She ran her first half-marathon in 2024 (1:32:32) and posted a half-marathon PB of 1:24:42 at the 2025 Half-Marathon Unplugged this year. VCM will be Shiman’s second full marathon (she previously ran 3:37:59), but expects to make significant improvements on her time.

PAST RESULTS: Search our database for Vermont City Marathon results

Emma Spencer

A Massachusetts native, Emma Spencers owns a PB of 2:36, which she ran at the 2021 Boston Marathon, finishing 18th overall. She also competed at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials for the marathon.

Margaret Vido

Margaret Vido, who hails from Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, is back at VCM for the first time since 2014 when she placed fourth overall. Vido ran at the Olympic Trials in 2016 and 2020, and placed 15th at the Boston Marathon in 2018.

MEN’S OPEN FIELD

Ryan Eiler

Ryan Eiler started competitive running in his early 30s. In 2023, Eiler finished second at VCM. In 2024, he posted a 2:14 at the Boston Marathon and then a 2:13 at the New York City Marathon.

Matthew Fick

In fall 2024, Matthew Fick won the Atlantic City Marathon in 2:34 and, just three weeks later, posted a 2:29:55 for second place at the Harrisburg Marathon.

Dan Forry

The native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Dan Forry won the One City Half Marathon in Virginia with a time of 1:06:14.

Jackson Friesth

A record-setting runner for Regis University in Denver, Colorado, Jackson Friesth is coming off a PB of 2:20:55 at the Houston Marathon in January.

Chris Gish

A Sharon Academy and University of Vermont graduate, Chris Gish is back at VCM for the first time since 2022. Last fall, he took third at the Maine Marathon in 2:23:18.

More: ‘My homeland’: Former local high school star powers to win at 2024 Vermont City Marathon

Hiro Kawakatsu

Originally from Tokyo, Hiro Kawakatsu is a high school physics teacher and cross-country/track coach in Greenwich, Connecticut. This year’s VCM will be Kawakatsu’s fifth marathon. He has a PB of 2:27:34.

Jack Leitch

Born and raised in Worthing, England, Jack Leitch competed collegiately for Boise State University. This is Leitch’s second straight trip to run at the VCM.

Sam Montclair

Sam Montclair, who lives in Cary, North Carolina, owns a 2:22:39 PB for the full marathon and 1:05:51 for the half-marathon. Montclair competed for Southern Connecticut State University.

Tommy O’Gorman

Tommy O’Gorman, of West Hartford, Connecticut, is racing in his third marathon when he makes the trip to Vermont. In 2022, he finished the Boston Marathon, and he has a half-marathon PB of 1:08.

Chase Pizzonia

Chase Pizzonia helped Iona College to the runner-up finish at the 2007 NCAA cross-country championships, and he was the 2008 IC4A champion in the 10K. The 39-year-old currently lives in New York City and has a PB of 2:20:25 set at the 2019 Philadelphia Marathon.

Nathan Stine

Nathan Stine, an University of Vermont alum, is making his marathon debut. At UVM, he was a captain of the 2022 and 2023 cross-country teams and a captain of the 2023 track and field squad.

Kiplangat Terer

Kenyan Kiplangat Terer returns to Burlington to attempt the second of back-to-back VCM crowns. The 39-year-old owns five other marathon victories and has a PB of 2:13:29 for 26.2 miles.

WOMEN’S MASTERS

Christine Hagan

A Burlington resident who hails from Salem, Massachusetts, the 43-year-old Christine Hagan is a physical therapist who is set for her seventh marathon and fourth VCM. The former two-sport athlete at Colby College, Hagan has a marathon PB of 3:04, set at the 2012 VCM.

Katie Kissane

A native of Essex, Katie Kissane competed for the University of Colorado-Boulder. After graduation, she ran her first marathon, the 2007 VCM. Three years later, she posted a PB of 2:59:02 at VCM. And last fall, Kissane ran a 3:00:15 at the New York City Marathon.

MEN’S MASTERS

Michael Anis

Michael Anis has competed in 20 marathons in his career, with a personal-best time of 2:34:18 at the 2014 Boston Marathon. In 2022, he came out of racing retirement: Last year he ran 2:36:43 at the Hartford Marathon.

Dan McGrath

New York attorney Dan McGrath, 42, claimed the 2005 Atlantic 10 title in the 10,000 when he competed for the LaSalle University track and field team. He raced to his best time at the 2008 New York Marathon (2:23:04), where he finished 25th overall. Recently, McGrath ran a 2:30:27 at the 2023 California International Marathon.

NON-BINARY

Bryan Morseman

Bryan Morseman has run 123 marathons in a career that started in 2008, with an average finish time of under 2:30. Morseman will make their VCM debut this weekend.

Matt Powers

Born and raised in South Burlington, Matt Powers is a faculty member at South Burlington High School. Powers has a PB time of 2:54:54 at the 2023 Boston Marathon, where Powers placed third in the non-binary division.

Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @aabrami5.

Daydream Believer

Saturday 24

Local singer-songwriter Samantha Mae performs original works from her evocative debut album, reverie, at the District VT (formerly ArtsRiot) in Burlington. With the warmth and poise of Joan Baez and the lyrical prowess of Joni Mitchell, Mae forges an immediate bond with listeners from all walks of life — and inspires other budding artists to take the leap and pursue their dreams.

A Delicate Balance

Wednesday 21

The Silo Sessions concert series continues with introspective indie sensation Henry Jamison at Bread & Butter Farm in Shelburne. The Vermont singer-songwriter effortlessly marries the simplicity of acoustic playing with the modernity of synthesizers for a result that Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker describes as “songs that sing me through mazes of my own sensuality and sadness.”

Buzzworthy

Thursday 22

As the Jackson 5 once declared, A-B-C is easy as one, two, three and as simple as do-re-mi … or is it? Attendees find out at the Burlington Rotary Spelling Bee at Champlain College, where friendly academic feuds take flight. Dictionary diehards in corporate, Rotarian and high school levels get their wings — or get eliminated — as they race the clock to untangle labyrinthine multisyllables.

Animal Instinct

Thursday 22

Author and ecologist Christie Green shares her deeply felt new memoir, Moonlight Elk: One Woman’s Hunt for Food and Freedom, at the Norwich Bookstore. Green’s engrossing meditation on finding sustenance — for body and soul — weaves her personal journey with natural history into a narrative that implores readers to contemplate what it means to be human in a more-than-human world.

Wingin’ It

Sunday 25

Cottagecore, flowers and fays abound at the Secret Garden Roller Disco at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction. Guests sport their finest toadstool helmets, gnome beards and diaphanous wings at two spritely skate sessions — one family friendly, one adults only — to benefit local nonprofit Outright Vermont, supporting LGBTQ+ youths in the region.

Pace Makers

Sunday 25

Runners and spectators find sole-ful bliss at the annual M&T Bank Vermont City Marathon & Relay in Burlington, the largest single-day sporting event in the state. More than 5,000 participants and 20,000 onlookers are expected to flood the Queen City, backed by the beat of taiko drummers and succulent smells from local food trucks.

Drawing From the Past

Ongoing

Montpelier multidisciplinary artist Mary Admasian shuttles viewers back in time with her “Past Is Present” exhibit at the Phoenix’s Waterbury Studios. The curated collection showcases previous bodies of work — “The Y-Con Series” (1983-1989) and “Peering Through” (2007-2013) — and exemplifies how earlier expressions can shape an artist’s evolution and oeuvre.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., joined a group of state legislators, health care officials and advocates in Burlington Monday morning to raise the alarm on what they called Vermont’s health care affordability crisis.

“Everyone knows that our health care system, nationally and in the state of Vermont, is broken. It is dysfunctional, and it is wildly expensive,” Sanders said. 

The press conference at Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport was set against the backdrop of Congress’s attempts to push through a mega spending bill that is expected to include work requirements for Medicaid recipients and limit the extent to which state governments can use health care provider taxes to cover their portion of Medicaid funding.

Back at home, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont sits in financial jeopardy, having lost $152 million over the past three years. The nonprofit insurer has asked the Green Mountain Care Board to approve double-digit percentage increases to the premiums of plans sold in 2026 on the Vermont Health Connect — the state-run federal Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

“I’m not sure how anybody is going to be able to afford that,” Sanders said. 

While he did not touch on the specifics of how the state or federal governments can support the state’s only Vermont-based health insurer and protect it from insolvency, Sanders outlined areas where he thinks further investment can lead to lower health care costs for Vermont in the long term. Those included expansions of primary health care facilities and of nursing education programs that allow the state to rely less on traveling nurses, as well as increased support for home health care and nursing homes. He cited efforts to reduce the cost of prescription drugs as a key area that can lower costs for hospitals, and thus, reduce the costs that get passed onto insurers and individuals.

All of this falls under a need for a broader cultural change, Sanders said, from a health care system that is focused on profit to one that supports health care as a human right. 

“It’s a culture that says (if) we want people to stay in Vermont, we’re going to work day and night to lower the cost of health care, provide health care to all of our people. It’s a different culture,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to radically reorient our priorities.”

Lisa Ventriss, co-chair of the newly formed advocacy group Vermont Health Care 911, put a finer point on it at the press conference: She suggested that shifting spending to patient care, rather than to administration or management, would open up “ample room for savings in Vermont,” while curbing the “gobsmacking” premium rate hikes the state has seen.

Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, and Rep. Alyssa Black, D-Essex Town, who chair the health care committees in their respective chambers, also touted the bills that lawmakers are trying to pass this session to reduce health care costs in Vermont. 

Namely, the legislators highlighted S.162, which seeks to keep hospital charges in line with Medicare reimbursement rates (called “reference pricing”), and H.482, which would give the Green Mountain Care Board the ability to lower reimbursement rates paid to health care providers by an insurer in danger of insolvency. 

“We’re saving our Blue Cross and Blue Shield domestic insurer from insolvency. We’re stabilizing access to primary care, family medicine,” Lyons said. “We are now working to allow people to access food, rent and health care without having to make choices for one over the other.”

Still, progress at the state level is quickly dwarfed by the potential threat of federal changes to Medicaid. Most worrisome, Black added in an interview following the press conference, is the threats from President Donald Trump’s administration to undo the so-called 1115 waiver program. That waiver gives states the ability to cover services beyond what federal statute outlines as required coverage under Medicaid. Vermont has become a particular leader on finding innovative ways to use this waiver. 

“It’s a huge amount of our Medicaid spending,” Black said. 

Sanders said he and Senate Democrats are trying to do “everything that we possibly can, in every possible way, to defeat this awful piece of legislation,” with regard to the spending bill’s impact on Medicaid in Vermont.

He called the congressional bill a “Robin Hood proposal in reverse.”

“You take from the poor and you give to the very rich. This is a disastrous piece of legislation, we’ve got to defeat,” he explained. The real solution, he suggested, is guaranteed health care for all, but for now he lauded the state’s efforts in “trying to begin to address this crisis.”

“What we’re doing today is trying, at least to develop a sense of urgency in the state of Vermont. The status quo cannot continue. It is failing — failing small business. It’s failing patients. It’s failing everyone,” Sanders said.