1974 - Running on Great Shrimp Scampi in Tretorn Tennis Shoes

Paul Riefberg

One day I was searching through my race results, to look over my marathon finishes. I ran sixteen marathons in the '70s. I was somewhat surprised to find I only had printed results for seven of them. Through the years and moving several times, I no longer had results for the other nine. One of those missing was Boston 1974, and it proved to be one of the most elusive to locate.

I first contacted a number of parties from the Boston Athletic Association, one of whom was Whitney Wilbur. She was able to find a results page listing my finish for both the 1975 and 1977 Boston Marathons, but she said they could not find any 1974 results.

I then checked the old Long Distance Logs publication and I found several of my missing marathons there. However, for Boston 1974, the last finisher listed in the Log was 305th place, and I finished in 347th place, thus it was missing from the printed results.