Runner Stories

Here's a surprising thing to feel when someone breaks your record: relief. Flori Davis of Hermon held the women's course record at the Bangor Marathon, set in 2025. This June, she watched another runner pass her — and what she felt wasn't disappointment. It was relief. Because Flori has never really been racing the woman next to her. She's been racing herself for more than twenty years.

And here's the part that tells you who she is: she still beat her own previous time by minutes.

"She has never really been racing the woman next to her. She's been racing herself for more than twenty years."

One of the originals at the Bangor Marathon — she ran the half the first year, the full the second, and came back again this June — Flori trains on Hermon hills that make the Broadway stretch feel gentle. Her advice for anyone lacing up is the kind that only comes from experience: listen to your body, keep your shoes under five hundred miles, taper properly, and above all, enjoy it. Running has been her outlet through every season of life — the one thing that belongs entirely to her, between work and family. She tells the whole story — the record, the Boston near-misses, the husband waiting at the wrong finish line — in her conversation on Maine Thrive Voices. Listen below.