KEENE — Clarence DeMar Marathon winner David Herr of Canaan, Vt., turned onto the Keene State College campus on Appian Way. He ran towards the finish line Sunday morning to the sounds of hundreds cow bells ringing.

Children who had just run the last 1.2 miles of the 26.2-mile event lined the street with their parents and rang the 380 bells that were passed out by marathon volunteers.

The 360 children joined the 35th annual Clarence DeMar Marathon runners Sunday by participating in the first Kids DeMar Marathon.

This past spring, area school children grades 1 through 5 were told they could run the last 1.2 miles of the marathon and cross the finish line if they could log 25 miles of running or walking over the summer.

The Keene Elm City Rotary Club, which organized the marathon, saw the kids' race as an opportunity to encourage children and families to be more active and healthy. The club was the first community partner with the Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene's Vision 2020 project, which is a community-wide health initiative designed to actively engage the citizens of Cheshire County in the process of becoming the nation's healthiest community by 2020.

Volunteers coordinated the children's 1.2-mile run so that they could cross the finish line, receive their medals and cowbells, learn a dance routine from a MoCo Arts instructor on Fiske Quad, then cheer the marathon runners as they came finished.

After crossing the finish line, Fuller Elementary School fourth-grader Elizabeth Fisher said, “It felt like you were going to faint at the finish line.”

“I couldn't feel my legs when I was running into the finish line,” said Tiana White, another Fuller fourth-grader. Fisher said she is glad she ran the Kids DeMar. Now she has bragging rights.

“You have accomplished something no other kids have done,” she said.

Parents at the event either cheered their children across the finish line or ran the 1.2 miles with them. She added the Kids DeMar has also encouraged children to be healthy and active.

Parent and marathon volunteer Ted McGreer of Keene said the Kids DeMar was a much bigger success than organizers thought it would be.

“Historically, we've had 20 people at the finish line,” he said, but with the children and their parents he estimated there was 1,000 people cheering for the marathon runners. “These kids got to run down this finish line. These kids coming change the game,” McGreer said.

mpierce@newstote.com