LI Marathon: First-timer Benjamin Tuttle cruises in men's race; Alyssa Salese claims 2nd women's title

As the 2025 Long Island Marathon showed, there’s still a ton of juice in Benjamin Tuttle’s legs.

On Sunday at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, Tuttle reigned supreme by a wide margin, as it took him only 2 hours, 35 minutes, 55.97 seconds to become Long Island’s 2025 champion. The 31-year-old East Moriches resident was a four-year varsity runner at Eastport-South Manor High School before spending four years on Cedarville University’s men’s cross country team. Now he and his wife, Kristine, 28, run an E-commerce business together called NurseInTheMaking.

Though he has a day job, that has not stopped Tuttle from competing in the sport he loves the most. He trains for roughly 30 hours a week, starting his days with several miles in the swimming pool. Later in the day, he goes for three-hour runs while pushing his 7-month-old son, Jonah, in a stroller. Tuttle’s training has allowed him to flourish in several triathlons, and in May 2023, he won the Bridgehampton Half Marathon.

It isn’t the winning he loves but the activity itself.

“Well, I’ve always loved endurance sports and my training for them,” Tuttle told Newsday after the marathon. “I’ve liked racing a little bit less than the training part, but we always have to race just to see where we’re at.”

Sunday was a change of pace for Tuttle, as he had never run a full-length marathon (26.2 miles). Because of that, his expectations entering the race were merely to gauge himself, which made the victory a welcome surprise.

“It was pretty cool,” he said. “I was definitely not expecting it. Mile 22 hit me pretty hard, but I was feeling good up until then.”

Kristine Tuttle sometimes accompanies him at his races, and that included Sunday’s marathon. After he won the race, he cooled down for a short while before hopping on his bike and riding it alongside the runners who were still going. Once he finally located his wife, he followed her and cheered her on until she finished, too.

For Kristine Tuttle, being able to compete alongside her husband allows them to keep their relationship strong.

“It’s so fun,” Kristine Tuttle said. “When you have kids, everything becomes about them — which is great, of course. But I think we’ve been really able to keep us as well. A lot of people, after their kids leave the house for college, they’ll look at each other and think, ‘We’re strangers.’ So we really just try to do things that are for us, and it’s just fun to do things together as a team.”

On the women’s side of the marathon, Huntington’s Alyssa Salese ran 3:03:56.98 to win a contested battle with the race’s defending champion, Cristin Delaney-Guille, of Long Beach.

Unlike Tuttle, Salese, 32, is not a first-time marathon runner. In fact, she’s not even a first-time Long Island Marathon champion. She won it in 2019 as well.

Since then, she’s been up to other things, both in the running world and in her professional life.

She works three jobs, with her main one being a real estate salesperson for Compass Greater NY. She also helps out at her family’s business: Junior’s Pizza in Halesite. Her third job is the newest one. She’s in her first year as an assistant coach for Huntington’s varsity girls track and field team.

“I was actually thinking about the girls today,” Salese said. “To go out with the expectation that it’s not going to be a perfect day and still give it your all is really important, so I had them in the back of my mind.”

Salese’s decision to return to Eisenhower Park this year had nothing to do with a desire to reclaim her title. Instead, she was using the marathon as a training session for the Chicago Marathon, which is scheduled for Oct. 12.

Still, it’s always cool to win, whether that was the goal or not.

“I had it in the back of my head, I’ll probably win today, which will be so much fun. It’ll be a good reason to celebrate,” Salese said. “Sounds like a good day to me. Nice to keep it local. The course is nice. It was a fun day.”