I saw a spectator with a sign that may be my all-time favorite. It read, “High five if you’re just doing this for the pizza.” I gave her a high five. It’s like she knows me.
After two miles, we reached an aid station. I was so thirsty my throat felt bone dry. I drank both water and Gatorade. After that, there were aid stations every mile. I drank more than one cup at several of them, but I always felt thirsty. It was that kind of day… At seven miles, […]
A Year Like No Other
As I rode the bus from the Boston Common out the starting line for the 118th running of the Boston Marathon on the third Monday in April 2014, I thought how this journey had actually begun a full eight years earlier. I ran my first Boston Marathon in 2007, having qualified the prior May in […]
Homeless In Hopkinton
The first person I spoke to from Hopkinton, Massachusetts the eve of the Boston Marathon was a cop. My good friend and running mate, Greg Heilers, had just dropped me off at the corner of Main and Grove Street in Hopkinton at about 6:30 PM. As I opened the passenger door to his rental Kia, […]
A redheaded Wellesley girl said “Go for it!” The experience was energizing!
I really haven’t been running very long. When I turned 50, in 2005, I started thinking more about my health, and joined a fitness center. I ran on the treadmill, used the elliptical, and regularly went to fitness classes. In 2010, a buddy talked me into running a 5k with him. This was the first […]
In the cold, wet, and wind, my engine was working fine, but the transmission was broken.
About a month before the marathon, I started to taper down my caffeine intake so I’d have had a caffeine-free diet for the last couple of weeks before the marathon, and on marathon morning, I’d be able to take a big jolt of it to improve my running. I went from full-caffeine coffee to half-caff […]
My Boston #16: Calmly, the waitress asked, “Was that thunder?”
After a bounce-back effort that erased the previous year’s “epic failure” in the heat plagued race of 2012, and posted a satisfying 3:04:13, Joe Muldowney and his wife settled into the nearby Legal Sea Foods restaurant for a celebratory meal. In Running Shorts – The Blog: A near-daily running blog from a veteran runner, the Veteran […]
Enjoying the Doug White Special
I can run? For the first 55 years of my life, I had no idea why people would want to run along roads when bikes and cars were available. OK, I admit it, I am a science geek. In grade school I was absolutely useless at sports. While classmates focused on ball games, a lazy […]
Spectators felt as strongly as the runners about reclaiming the race
I last ran Boston (my second time) in 2009, and had no plans to return any time soon. But when the bombs went off in 2013, so did something inside just about anybody who cares about running and the Boston Marathon. The thought of the pain inflicted on innocent bystanders, the sport of distance running, […]
Still paying back for a race just under the wire…
I crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon in 2013. It wasn’t the way I wanted to. I was wearing a white volunteer jacket with blue strips, pushing the yellow stretcher in the top right corner of the picture below, with three other volunteers. We were stopped briefly because the volunteer riding the rail […]
This Boston Was “Tutu” Memorable To Ever Forget
Glance at my photos from the 118th Boston Marathon and you might mistake the smiling runner in the frilly outfit for a crazy old man who slipped on the getup as a last-minute stunt to simply gain publicity. But the deafening cheers I received during my 26.2-mile race from the hallowed grounds of Hopkinton to […]
“Thank you so much for helping our city heal!”
The Boston Marathon is special for its steep history, its fabled point-to-point course, the many well-known landmarks along the route and the great runners who have worn the champion’s olive wreath. This Boston though, will be remembered for those who never ran a step. Spring was slow returning to Boston for the 118th running of […]
After the rain chased my family from the finish line, I finished alone, but elated!
I only began running at age 51. I ran my first Marathon after 21 months as a runner. It was the Memphis Express Marathon, and I ran in 3:58:07 at age 53. Over the next eleven years, I ran a total of 17 Marathons, until after knee surgery, I followed the doctor’s advice and cut […]