My first Boston was in 1997. I had tried hard to qualify so I could run the 100th anniversary Boston Marathon in 1996. I did three marathons in December 1995, trying to qualify, and missed by several minutes each time.…
I was so lucky to be able to participate in the 100th running of the Boston Marathon. What made it so meaningful to me was I was able to run with my buddies, Judy Sohl and Sue Box. Judy had…
I ran my first marathon in Chicago in 1992. That race started me on an addiction that would last through 17 marathons over five years. I was never a speed demon, so the marathon seemed to be my race. Everybody…
On April 15, 1996, the world’s oldest marathon was about to become the world’s largest marathon. But it wasn’t going to be easy. The northeastern United States had experienced its snowiest winter on record, and simply because the calendar read…
Ah, Boston on Patriot’s Day… You can see most anything, like that man on stilts I caught on camera next to Fenway. The morning begins with the Marathon way out of town, even beyond Ashland, and certainly a long way…
My eleven siblings and I were raised on a dairy farm in Reedsville, Wisconsin, by awesome, hard-working parents. Quite often instead of us taking the bus home, our Mom or Pa would pick us up from school in our old Ford…
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…
I began running in 1977, just after returning from a trip where I met a guy who had “run a marathon.” That sounded like a neat thing to do, so I decided I’d like to try it. I had no…
My running career began in 1987, when at the age of 35, I decided it was time to lose a little weight. I ran my first race that May (the Coca-Cola Classic 10K in Corinth, MS), and found a new addiction. Over…
I first started running in the mid 1980s. I had gained a lot of weight, and determined it was time to take action on that matter. I went to the track at the high school, and a few of my…
The Fenway Hotel was about a mile from the finish line, but it may as well have been a thousand miles away. On blistered feet, space blanket covering my body, which was caked with dried sweat, I shuffled back to…
“One of the few other parts of the race I remember clearly is running up Heartbreak Hill. I looked up and literally couldn’t see where I was supposed to run. The hot weather brought out everyone with their BBQ’s and…