Ten years ago, Gerald (Jerry) Brown was picking up his gear check bag on Berkeley Street after finishing the 2013 Boston Marathon when the first bomb went off.
His immediate thoughts were about his wife and three daughters who cheered for him as he crossed the finish line. They had planned a post-race meet up close to the Boston Public Garden but Jerry wasn’t sure where they were as chaos descended upon the finish area.
After Jerry finished the race, his wife, Tami, and daughters Heather (24), Xandra (21), and Trilby (14) made their way towards the Public Garden. They stopped at a restaurant on Boylston Street to grab some take-out before meeting Jerry.
Upon leaving the restaurant, they heard the explosion. As Xandra turned around and headed back towards the center of the tragedy, the second bomb went off.
When he tells me his story, Jerry is overcome with emotion. His eyes tear up and his chin quivers. He needs a little time before he can speak again. I place my hand on his shoulder and tell him that he doesn’t have to continue. He shakes his head and goes on.
Jerry recalls how immediate and efficient the Boston first responders were. Within minutes the scene was in full medical and emergency support mode. He made it back to his hotel near the Public Garden and waited. Staff was checking everyone entering the lobby to verify that they all were current hotel guests. The city was now on high alert for any suspicious activity.
All cellular networks were taken off line for fear that phones might be used to trigger additional explosives. But just before his phone went dead Jerry received a text from his family that they are all safe.
His family had come to Boston solely to support him during the race. It’s overwhelming to think of the danger he nearly put them in.
On April 21, 2013, six days after the bombing, runners in the London Marathon wore black ribbons in solidarity with Boston and its citizens, the victims and the heroes.
There was constant activity near the finish line on Boylston Street on the weekend leading up to the Boston Marathon. This is normally the case for the world’s oldest marathon but this year was special and more hectic than usual.
Several observances took place with respect to the tenth anniversary of the bombing. Also, the current marathon world record holder, Eliud Kipchoge, had entered the race. It was his first time in Boston and he was highly favored to win. As befitting a star of his magnitude, there was much ado surrounding everything he did and, especially, what he didn’t do which was win. He finished a disappointing sixth.
I attended some of the events but decided to invest a lot of my time into resting up for the race.
Nevertheless, my favorite thing to do at marathons is to reconnect with runners I have met over the past few years and to establish new contacts. In 2021, I met Suzanne Barron in Berlin and Carita Wegner in Boston.
Suzanne always finishes near the top of her age group, which usually nets her an invite to the AbbottWMM Wanda Age World Championships. This time was no different as she came in at 29th in her cohort (4:44:24).
When I met Carita, she was living with sarcoidosis that makes breathing difficult. As is the case for me, running is medicinal for her. However, she has had a host of other issues recently (neck pain, nausea, asthma) and she wasn’t sure that she would be able to run this year. Miraculously, she felt very good at the start and ended up running well beyond what she expected finishing in 3:48:49 thus qualifying for Boston next year.
Runner’s World (RW) magazine held some pre-race events as they had done the prior year and at the New York City Marathon in November, all of which I attended. A great group of folks (Runner-in-chief Jeff, Coach Jess, Pat, Andrew, Theo, Pavlina, Amanda, among others) most of whom know my name by now.
I met Jerry Brown at their pre-race “Coffee with Coaches” session. He and I swapped pacing strategies and contact info. He had a tough day on the course fighting through hip flexor pain. He finished but well off his usual time. I think that RW plans to do a feature on him given that 2023 was his 19th consecutive Boston Marathon and because of his experience with the race in 2013 I mentioned above.
RW also invited their subscribers to a pre-race shakeout run. I met Heather McCarthy at the one in New York City in November and we have followed each other on Strava since. This time she came with her father, Bill, and introduced him to me. Bill and I are both advocates for people who suffer our ailments. In Bill’s case, it is a rare congenital liver disease that forced him to get an emergency transplant recently. You wouldn’t know it from looking at him — he appears robust and cheerful — but the disease nearly killed him. Bill’s an athlete but not a runner and came to Boston to cheer for Heather who ran a very strong 3:43:12.
I qualified to run in Boston this year and so this time out I did not run for Team Fox of the Michael J. Fox Foundation. However, the folks at Team Fox (Katie, Jess, Courtney, and Abigail came to Boston this time around) seem to like me enough to invite me to all their events whether I am running for them or not.
Katie even went out of her way to give me a commemorative pint glass depicting the Tokyo Marathon in recognition of my completing that race in March and earning my Six Star Medal. Katie is headed to London after Boston and I will see her there again when I run for Team Fox in the London Marathon.
At the Team Fox pre-race dinner I met the Bell family. Madeline (Maddy) was running for Team Fox in her first ever marathon. Her parents, Ed and Denise (Ed’s father suffered from PD), and her partner, Brendan Glyn, came to cheer her on. Also joining us at the table was Jan Pruszak, a Parkinson’s researcher now living in Austria. We had a lively time. Denise did a fantastic job of keeping the conversation going and drawing all of those at the table into it. Regretfully, the Bell’s didn’t join us at the post-race dinner. Maddy had a very good marathon debut finishing at 4:36:31.
Jan, however, did make it to the post-race party. We exchanged information and expect to meet up again soon. He is doing fascinating stem cell research for PD. He is a natural runner and although he didn’t train as much as he wanted to, he ran very well with a 3:40:41.
Others I met at the Team Fox post-race dinner included Jesse Houchens and his wife Andrea. Jim’s father has PD. They also live in Seattle and therefore are likely to meet up again. Jesse is another natural, his time was 3:33:08 (he cheered for me on the course as he ran swiftly by). But major kudos go to Andrea who trundled their three young children out to cheer for Dad in the challenging weather.
Finally, there was Jim Allen and his wife Kay from Kansas City. Jim’s father also had Parkinson’s and I will see Jim again when we run in the Berlin Marathon in September. Jim is recently retired and like me, is spending a fair bit of his newfound free time running. Jim did very well to finish in 4:09:56 despite some leg cramp trouble in the latter miles.
Besides the attention paid to Eliud Kipchoge’s appearance and ceremonies marking remembrance of the bombing, the other newsworthy topic was the weather. Specifically, the forecast was for rain. Some were concerned that it could be a repeat of the 2018 race, when cold rain at high winds made for a miserable experience all around. My daughter, Kinsey, ran in Boston that year and it was awful.
I live in Seattle and therefore I train in rain. A forecast of rain doesn’t bother me. I would much rather have that than a hot day. Strong winds, however, would be a problem.
As the day approached, the forecast got progressively milder. By race time the weather had turned ideal, at least for me. Temperature was in the low 50’s, wind was on the light side and although there was rain it was of the kind that Seattleites thrive in.
Team Fox pulled some strings to allow me access to the building inside the Athlete’s Village where the charity runners hang out in Hopkinton before the race. It’s a warm and comfortable spot to pass the time before heading to the start line.
They also have a number of portable toilets there with shorter lines than in the main Athlete’s Village area. Always a plus, as I needed three trips to the toilet before getting to the start line.
One visit gave me an indelible memory. Just as I was about to sit down, there was a knock on the porta-pottie door. The previous user had come back because he had left behind his hat. We looked around and didn’t see it until I looked down into the belly of the beast. I had come very close to crapping on his hat. Not that it would have made much of a difference considering where the hat was. Nevertheless, the guy steeled himself and fished his hat out, apologized to me, and went off presumably to find some way to hose it off. Marathoners are tough folk.
The race itself was a treat this year. I had hoped that my preparation was good enough to come in under four hours, a first for me in any of the Majors. In fact, I felt strong throughout the whole race. My pacing strategy worked to near-perfection (a little more on that later) and I felt fresh enough to push myself hard through the last miles after Heartbreak Hill.
As I crossed the finish, I stopped my watch to get a first look at my (unofficial) finish time. A lady about my age who finished at the same time (I found her name later (Karen Mcgowan) through sleuthing the race photos) saw me check my watch and asked how we did. When I told her she was ecstatic for finishing in under four hours and in celebration she gave me a big, enthusiastic, muscular hug.
The finish area had some other lovely surprises. It was much better than 2022. For example, as is typical, volunteers handed out foil blankets to the chilled runners. As an added courtesy, though, runners were encouraged to turn their backs to the volunteers to allow them to drape the blankets around the runners’ shoulders. And a few steps later, another group of volunteers had the job of securing the blankets in place using tape thus freeing up the runners’ hands.
It was very sweet. And every once in a while I got spontaneously emotional, almost to tears, when I realized that I finally had a great run in a marathon and met my finish goal without feeling like crap at the end.
I employed some new toys in this race. One of them was a newly minted shoe from HOKA — the Rocket X2. It is HOKA’s latest entry into the “super shoe” category that has taken over the world of running footwear. It is very fast and my legs stay fresher for a longer time in them than any other shoe I have used.
The other new toy is my Stryd foot pod. I won’t go into the details of the technology (perhaps I will in a later post) but suffice to say that it helped me to avoid hitting the marathon wall in the latter miles. More than the Rocket X2, I credit Stryd with getting me a sub-4 hour time in this race.
My goal this year is to achieve what I wanted to do in 2021 — run all six of the Major Marathons in a single calendar year. In addition, my plan is to complete them all in a combined time of 24 hours. That is, six majors in a year and a day.
I got off to a bad start with my 4:16:38 in Tokyo six weeks ago. Finishing Boston in under four hours (3:57:47) moved the total in the right direction. Yet, to meet my goal I would have to average better than 3:56:24 in the remaining four races with the next one (London) coming up this Sunday, six days after Boston.
Should be fun.
In 2023, I will be running for Team Fox again. You can donate to my New York City Marathon campaign (click this link). I could use your support. If you share the passion that The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) and I have for finding a Parkinson’s cure please consider contributing. All donations are meaningful and greatly appreciated.
Alternatively, if you would like something tangible in exchange for a contribution, consider purchasing my book Run With It: A True Story of Parkinson’s, Marathons, the Pandemic, and Love. I’ve heard it’s a good read. Most of the reviews are coming in at four to five stars and it recently was named a Finalist in the 2022 Wishing Shelf Book Awards contest.
All profits from its sale are donated to MJFF. It can be found on my author’s website and Amazon. It’s cheaper on my author site (for domestic shipping), a larger percentage goes to MJFF than for Amazon sales, and you get the option of having it signed by the author.
