Thoughts on the Boston Marathon

This coming Monday (April 19) is the 114th running of the Boston Marathon. But what is Boston? For most runners, especially longer distance runners, Boston is a sort of Holy Grail or Mecca. To say you’ve run the Boston Marathon (or simply Boston) is to put yourself in a category separate from the rank and file. Few of us runners will ever run in the Olympics or even the Olympic trials, but qualifying for Boston is just within reach, if you work really really hard. The fact that you have to qualify is what adds the allure to the race. Plus the fact that it is the longest continually run annual marathon. Plus the well-known landmarks — the Wellesley tunnel, Heartbreak Hill, the Citgo sign. All add up to one magical race for those who can run a qualifying time. For the under 35 crowd, a qualifying time is a 3:10 marathon (3:40 for women), at age 35 the time goes up 5 minutes, and you get another at age 40, etc. etc. For me (age 43), I need to run a 3:20 marathon (which translates to a 7:38 mile).



A quote I read somewhere from a Boston Marathon finisher pretty much sums up the Boston experience (I will paraphrase): I will never be an elite runner, but for a few hours on the third Monday of April, the crowds at Boston made me feel like one.

Bill Kennedy (winner of the 1917 Boston Marathon)(in a 1932 letter to Boston Globe editor John Halloran) had this to say: “All marathon runners are dreamers; we are not practical. The hours we spend every day, every year! The strength we expend over long lonesome roads and the pot of gold we aspire to receive for it all! The end of the rainbow is a survivor’s medal.”

I will close this post with a passage from an article from Marathon & Beyond magazine, that is a wonderful distillation of why I run. The article, “See How He Runs,” is an interview with local running phenom Michael Wardian by Jeff Horowitz. In the article, Horowitz describes an ocean of running talent with two shores. On one shore are the elites: the east African runners of Kenya and Ethiopia, Ryan Hall, Kara Goucher, Paula Radcliffe, and others.

On the other shore “stands a huge group of runners. They are the ones who toe the line on race day not because they ever expect to win or because anyone else might even notice that they’re there, but simply because they love to run. These are the people who are in love with the motion of their bodies and with the pain and suffering that tell them that they’re alive, and better yet, that they are part of that small percentage of people on the planet who can cover a marathon course. They are almost equally male and female and they are in all shapes, sizes, and ages. They are the people who consider qualifying for Boston to be one of their greatest dreams, and if they are lucky enough to make the dream come true, one of their greatest achievements.”

I stand on that “other” shore, thankful that my injuries have healed enough to allow me to run again, waiting for the gun to go off at the next race or just waiting for the next lunch time hour to run on the Mall. I love to run.