Boston, Twice

I ran the Boston Marathon for the first time in 2002. I was 22 years old, a month from graduating the Naval Academy, and I thought I’d be back any time I wanted. I didn’t return for 21 years.

At the race expo in 2023.

My sharpest memory of that first Boston is the logistics. Midshipmen on a budget with long weekend plans. Our company officer, a no-nonsense Marine Corps captain, had already approved our request to miss a day of class for the race.¹ Asking to skip Friday’s dress parade for an early start was pushing our luck. We marched in the parade and drove straight through to a friend of a friend’s place, arriving after midnight.

I spent Saturday night with my good friend from high school, who was finishing up at MIT. Sunday I slept in my cousin’s guest room. Three nights, three locations, living out of a backpack. We didn’t have wearables tracking our sleep back then. That was probably for the best.

I was no stranger to Boston. I grew up in a running family and knew the race’s lore well. My dad started marathoning in his forties and first qualified for the 1995 edition. My whole family made the trip to support him. I was a freshman in high school, just beginning to run competitively. While I understood Boston’s significance, I couldn’t yet understand the commitment required to get there.

The morning before the race, after breakfast at a diner, my dad and I went to find Heartbreak Hill. He’d heard the stories and wanted to see it for himself ahead of the race. We jogged out there on a chilly, cloudy morning. It didn’t look like much to someone who hasn’t already been running for two or more hours. I filed the morning away without fully understanding what I was filing.

Seven years later I was on the start line myself. 2002 was an aberration in some ways. I was running on residual fitness from a collegiate running career I’d stepped away from the previous spring. I had qualified for Boston a couple months after September 11th, and the world was changing fast. Running was an anchor. The marathon didn’t feel too difficult.² Just another day doing something I loved. I kept under control and ended up with a slightly negative split. I left thinking Boston was mine whenever I wanted it.

My splits during the 2002 Boston Marathon. Manually captured by my Timex watch and then plotted in MATLAB. Official time 2:47:50.

Life moved on. First the submarine. I don’t like treadmills and running fell away. Then law school and a legal career, neither of which made it easy to stay consistent if you didn’t fight for it. More than a decade passed before I thought seriously about running again. My son was a baby at the time. I was woefully unfit. Like a lot of fathers, I was unsettled by the thought of struggling to keep up with him in the years ahead. So I started again, slowly.

The sport had changed during my time away. In 2002, I took my first ever gel at mile 18, at the only aid station that offered them. In 2023, I was taking one every three to four miles. The entry process had tightened too. A BQ is no longer enough. You need to beat the standard by about five minutes, and your qualifying race is often a year or more in the past. No more fall qualifier and spring Boston. Super shoes, running “experts” at our fingertips, and social media have made their mark as well.

The 2023 logistics were more predictable, and considerably more expensive. My wife and son had never been to Boston. We stayed in the Seaport District and did it right: Freedom Trail, USS Constitution, Red Sox game, New England Aquarium. My son was ten and loved every bit of it. He has a serious interest in history, colonial history especially, and the city rewarded that.

It was also the 10th anniversary of the bombing. The organizers handled it with care throughout the weekend, recognizing victims and survivors. This wasn’t just a quiet backdrop. It added weight and meaning to being there.

Race morning I walked from the hotel to the bus before sunrise. The city was still quiet. With the holiday, it was mostly marathoners moving through the streets. The bus carried us out to Hopkinton, which is a long ride for an anxious runner who knows he’ll be running back.

The weather turned. Low 50s, rain and headwind intensifying as the day wore on. I went out too fast on the early downhills, a classic Boston mistake, and the Newton hills collected their toll. By mile 22 I was beat up, miserable, and feeling sorry for myself.

Then I saw them.

My wife and son, standing in the cold rain, holding hand-made signs. Nervous about the crowds given the anniversary, they had walked several miles from the hotel rather than taking the train. They stood there for hours in weather that got worse as it went on.

That moment cut through everything. The fatigue. The frustration. The self-doubt. Just a few more miles. I finished slower than my first Boston, with the second half being about ten minutes slower than the first. Not the race I hoped for, but I wasn’t 22 and sleepless and indifferent anymore.

My splits during the 2023 Boston Marathon as shown in Garmin Connect. Official time 3:02:41.

I understood what it meant to be there. As I turned right on Hereford, left on Boylston, I wasn’t thinking about my finish time. I was thinking about how long it had taken to get back. And what had changed along the way.

Afterwards I thought about that morning with my dad in 1995. He’d wanted to see something he’d heard about his whole running life and brought his son along to look. I was too young to understand what I was absorbing. I just ran alongside him on a gray morning and trusted that it mattered.

Twenty-eight years later, my son stood in the rain for hours to watch me finish that same race. He may never run Boston. His passion may take him somewhere else entirely. But he was there, soaking something in, the way a ten-year-old absorbs the things that matter to the people he loves.

That’s what Boston gave me the second time. Not just the race. The example. My dad showed me what it looks like to care deeply about something and pursue it. I hope my son saw the same thing spectating along the course in the rain.

Me and my son in Boston Public Garden after the race.

1. The Boston Marathon is held on Patriot’s Day, the third Monday in April. It’s not recognized as a holiday outside of Massachusetts.

2. Looking back, this is a sign I didn’t run it correctly.