While attending the University of Scranton, Patty Fulton was a shooting guard with the Division III National Championship Basketball Team in 1985. She started running the summer before her senior year to get in shape for her final season. As a Business major specializing in management, she enrolled in an International Business course that had a profound effect on her life. The professor had worked in Kenya as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The discussion of his experiences resulted in Patty being hooked on International Development as a career and running as an avocation. After graduating from college she joined the Peace Corps and served three years in French-speaking Cameroon in west Africa. Her assignment was to establish credit union cooperatives in rural villages for coffee and cocoa farmers.

While in Africa she continued running every day and playing basketball. She organized a basketball team with high school students which played three times a week. On her runs she recalls children running along trying to keep up with her. Running is not popular in Cameroon. The respected sport is soccer. Most neighbors who saw her running thought she was peculiar and laughed and shouted at her in French.

In 1991, she moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, and is currently an International Programs specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Work assignments have included traveling to Russia, Ukraine, and South Africa. She started to run competitively at local road races and averaged five miles per day in training. In 1997, Patty met Donna Moore at a race and they became friends and training partners. Their lunchtime training group, predominately men who work near The Mall, typically runs eight miles at a sub-seven minute pace. According to Moore, ''Patty is a talented athlete and just needed some direction and to be pushed by faster runners." Moore continues to give Fulton advice as a supportive friend even though they are competitors and is occasionally beaten by her.

Patty has noticed a dramatic improvement in strength from her group runs. Last year, the Montgomery County Road Runners Club formed a Tuesday night group developed by Scott Douglas and Jim Whitnah for training at a sub-elite level. Club members who qualify for the organized interval sessions and tempo runs are able to train intelligently to step up to the next level. "Since everyone in the hardworking and talented group is supportive of each other and likes to have fun also, it makes the training enjoyable,'' says Fulton. The training group members make up the MCRRC Racing Team at local road races. Since joining the group, Fulton's times have continued to improve.

At 33 and a single mother with two daughters, Sarah (4) and Alexandra (2), Fulton's name has become familiar in local race results. She recently won the women's division at the National Race for the Cure 5K (17:09), was the second local finisher at the Ferndale-Linthicum 5K (17:10), and first local finisher at the Pike's Peek 10K (36:07) and the Colt-USO Defender's 10 Mile (1:00:14). With a good base from which to work, she will add long runs with MCRRC and the Washington Running Club. Her future plans include training for the Steamboat Marathon in October in Scranton, PA.