enlarge Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

On a fall day nearly perfect for a road race, Jeremy Adler of New York City chugs along in solitude at about Mile 10 on his way to a victory Sunday in the 26.2-mile Peak Performance Maine Marathon.

enlarge Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Andrea Miracle of Illinois celebrates at the finish of the Half Marathon, with a symbol of Maine atop her head.

TOP FINISHERS

MARATHON, FEMALE

• Heather Goodfellow, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2:59:16

MARATHON, MALE

• Jeremy Adler, New York, 2:38:57

HALF MARATHON, FEMALE

• Kristin Barry, Scarborough, 1:17:53 (course record)

HALF MARATHON, MALE

• Louie Luchini, Ellsworth, 1:06:56 (course record)

PORTLAND — When fatigue is whispering in your ear to slow down, you need something to keep churning the legs, to keep pumping the arms, to keep distance between you and your pursuers.

Jeremy Adler, 28, a recent law school graduate from New York City who won the Peak Performance Maine Marathon Sunday morning, survived the final difficult miles by concentrating on an inspirational law professor battling ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Kristin Barry, 35, who set a women's course record in the Half Marathon, thought about hurrying home to Scarborough to check on the progress of friend and training partner Sheri Piers at the Twin Cities Marathon in Minnesota as Piers attempted to qualify (successfully, as it turned out) for the 2012 Olympic marathon trials.

Heather Goodfellow, 36, visiting from Nova Scotia to celebrate her brother's 40th birthday, broke three hours to win the women's marathon. What drove her? A friend told her "no lollygagging" so they would have time for shopping at the outlet stores in Kittery.

And then there was Louie Luchini, 28, a graduate of Ellsworth High and Stanford University who is gearing up for his first attempt at the 26.2-mile marathon distance. After spending most of Saturday in cold and rainy weather at the Maine XC Festival of Champions in Belfast, Luchini was simply thrilled to be running in ideal conditions Sunday morning: cool and overcast, gentle breeze and except for the damp road surface and wet leaves, no hint of the previous night's heavy downpour.

Luchini responded by breaking the half-marathon course record in a time of 1 hour, 6 minutes, 56 seconds, fast enough to earn him a $500 bonus on top of his first-place prize of $200. That gave him a bigger paycheck than either of the marathon winners, each of whom earned $500.

"I expected the weather to be a lot worse," Luchini said, "so I was going to use it as a training run. But once I got here, I discovered the weather was perfect for running."

Needing to break 1:07 for the bonus money, Luchini made it by four seconds, which is about the time he gained on the freshly paved portion of Route 88 in Falmouth after turning around and seeing hundreds of outgoing runners spurring him on.

"That was really cool," he said. "It was fun to pass them and have them all cheering. That's when I did one of my fastest miles, a 4:53."

Luchini, an assistant cross country coach at his old high school while home in Ellsworth, ran at a 5:07-per-mile pace. He's considering a December race in California for his marathon debut.

"We'll see," he said. "This was pretty hard (Sunday). I don't know if I could double that."

Sunday's record field, which included 869 runners and 89 walkers finishing the marathon, 67 teams completing the relay, 1,858 half marathoners and a 47-member military tribute march, also saw another record fall.

The men's relay mark dropped by nearly eight minutes thanks to the 2:20:57 effort put forth by Josh Zolla of Freeport and his Nor'easter Run teammates Stephen Monsulick of Kents Hill, Robert Gomez of Portland and Brendan O'Keefe of Sumner.

Barry's winning time of 1:17:53 fell short of the sub-1:17 mark required for bonus money, but it did replace the 1:18:44 run by Joan Benoit Samuelson in 2003.

"I'm pretty happy," said Barry, whose original plan of running with Piers in Minnesota was derailed by an injury in late March. "I felt the most like myself in any race since being injured, so that felt pretty good."

Both marathon winners won by comfortable margins. Adler's time of 2:38:57 was nearly 1 1/2 minutes faster than that of runner-up David MacLennan of Nova Scotia. Robert Ashby of Brunswick was third in 2:40:54, and 2003 champion Casey Carroll of Dover, N.H., was fourth in 2:42:56.

More than seven minutes passed after Goodfellow broke the tape in 2:59:16 before another woman finished. Tracy Thelen of Colorado Springs,...