May 1, 2022 2 min read

Nicole Hilton, who has a prestigious list of running accomplishments, added a big one Sunday.

Hilton won the female portion of the Pittsburgh Marathon, turning in a time of 2:49.49. The win come with a $7,000 prize.

Alvaro Abreu, a Dominican Republic native who now lives in Puerto Rico, won the Mens division with a time of 2:16:07. Second-place finisher Joseph Whelan was five minutes behind him at 2:21:08.

Hilton is the first female runner from Pittsburgh to capture the full marathon since Clara Santucci, a Dilliner resident, went back-to-back in 2014 and ’15.

Hilton, who had never run a Marathon before, won WPIAL and PIAA distance events when she ran a little more than a decade ago at South Fayette High School.

“That’s been my entire running career,” Hilton told a Pittsburgh newspaper. “I was a soccer, softball, basketball athlete my whole life. Running was something that came out of the blue for me. Before my junior year in high school, my dad said, ‘Hey, this summer we’re going to train for soccer by running.’ I was as naïve as one can get. I had no idea the talent I had. It’s the same thing with this marathon. I had no idea.”

Hilton was a WPIAL cross country champion at South Fayette and a state track champion in the 3,200-meter run as a senior in 2011 before she went on to run at Ohio State.

She is only the second Pittsburgher to win the marathon since the race was started again in 2009 after a five-year hiatus.

Second-place finisher Ann Mazur, who lives in Charlottesville, Va., attended Seton LaSalle High School in the South Hills. She ran 2:53:50 on this rainy day.