Shelby Zehnder, Student Animal Attendant in the large animal hospital, completed her first marathon.
Shelby Zehnder has been working at the OSU large animal hospital for four years as a Student Animal Attendant. She helps Farm Manager Lionel Snyder take care of the teaching herds. “I truly enjoy spending time with the fourth year students, learning from the doctors, and taking care of the patients,” says Zehnder. “The technicians, animal attendants, and my boss, Lionel, are some of the kindest, hard working, and dedicated people I have ever had the pleasure to be around.”
In addition to work and school, Zehnder spent most of this year training to run her first marathon. “Training for the marathon was probably harder than the marathon itself,” she says. “It is a lot of mental preparation, as well as physical determination of crossing the finish line. My training program was an intermediate 18 week program that trained up the 20 mile mark and then tapered back down. I was lucky enough to meet a friend that was also running the marathon, so the training was much more rewarding being able to conquer the pain and distance with someone.”
All that hard work paid off on the last Sunday in September when Zehnder ran 26.2 miles through the streets of Portland and crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 30 minutes. “I will do more marathons in the future,” she says, “and hopefully one day be as good a runner as Liz Harbert!”
