Warm Race; Secret Strategy - Jack Mahurin (April 21, 1973)

Jack Mahurin

Running marathons, I have never had a great day on a good course in good weather. Of my two fastest races, one was plagued by heat and the other by rain and a sloppy track. But certainly Boston 1973 was my best marathon effort.

In the late 1960s, I was in the Air Force stationed at Pope Air Force Base. Wanting to continue running competitively, I had written to several nearby North Carolina universities looking for possible running contacts. I thus met up with a small group of fellow post-collegiate runners who trained and raced under the banner of the “North Carolina Track Club.”

The ‘70s were a great time for amateur racing, and NCTC was right there in the mix, winning three national team titles: the National 30K in 1970 and 1972, and the National One Hour Run in 1971. I ran 2:25:54 at the 1970 Atlanta marathon, then used that time to join four other NCTC sub-2:30 marathoners at the ’72 Olympic Trials. Three teammates finished in the top 21: Eddie Hereford, Gareth Hayes, and Marshall Adams. By 1973, my Ph.D. work in exercise physiology at the University of Maryland carried me to the D.C. area, and I decided it was time to set my sights on Boston. That year I had been consistently training 80 to 90 miles a week.

Friendly Rivalry: Practicing German drinking songs
after a North Carolina Track Club - Washington Sports Club race

Travel expenses were always an issue in those days. Fortunately, guys from the Baltimore running club had worked out a deal for area racers with one of the airlines. Basically, the plane was full of runners who had really cheap seats. I think we got tickets for about half price.

In 1972, the Boston field had topped 1,000 runners for the first time. Now a year later, those numbers were up another 40%. Joining the mob scene in Hopkinton, I was not on the front row. Instead, I stood just back in a gap between guys on the front row. I had enough gumption not to try to horn in on guys I knew were top runners, guys I had previously run against who had kicked my butt. For example, I recognized track star Jon Anderson, and knew I wasn’t going to take off with him. (A good move on my part, as Jon would be almost ten minutes faster in his impressive ’73 Boston win.) I remember Jack Fultz was one of the guys on the front row. Of course, Jack and I raced against each other in DC. I felt it was pretty much a pitch up, though he probably had the advantage in longer races.

Waiting for the starting gun, there was no shortage of talent on the front row; plus a number of publicity seeking sprinters of dubious pedigree, ready to take off like scalded dogs. So, I was content to stand a little further back. Then the starter fired his gun, and not only did this row of runners take off down the street, it seemed like everybody who’d been standing nearby on the damn sidewalk joined them!

One problem with the Boston start back then was a 90-degree right hand turn almost immediately after gun. I purposely set myself over on the left, because I wasn’t going out with those sprinters: No way; I didn’t come here to run eight miles and quit. I figured, way over on the left side, I could stay out of trouble. I swung wide, and took the longer route. After the sharp turn, I was still on my feet, but already fifty yards in the hole distance wise. You just hoped you don’t lose a place at the end by not joining in the sprint at the beginning.

Crowded Corner: The tricky first turn in Hopkinton (HCAM)

After that turn, I’m still surrounded by lots of runners just getting in the way. The first five or six miles, it’s like you’d just run into a maze. Each mile, you probably ran a hundred yards out of the way, just getting around people. The congestion really slowed you down. However, I felt my early pace was quick enough to put me where I wanted to be.

I wanted to run a good race in a good time at Boston. But that afternoon, I pulled one out of my kazoo. Based on the competition, there’s no way I should have finished 12th. However, as can often happen in Massachusetts in April, this Patriots Day was very hot. And, the thing of it was, I had been assigned of one of those “special projects” where I had researched heat acclimatization. Back then, a lot of research on the subject had been done by the army, and a lot of that stuff was classified “Top Secret.” I’d had access to information on racing in the heat not available to the average runner.

Most of today’s modern synthetic fabrics were not around. However, those loose fitting, floppy running shirts allowed for ventilation, and I’d gotten several of those. Also, I’d started wearing white running shorts (of course back then, they were so skimpy, they didn’t cover enough of your body to reflect much heat!).

I’d even gotten a short haircut to help with heat dissipation. In the midst of a hot race, I’d read 13% of heat dissipation came from my head. Guys with mop heads, they took a beating. I knew a guy who’d been involved in the study of football, looking at body core temperatures of football players with burr haircuts versus football players with mop heads, guys trying to look like the Beatles. In warm early season games, the difference was significant. [Ron Hill was an example of a big time racer who understood this tactic: in hot conditions, he always showed up with his head clipped.]

Even in the sun, I didn’t wear a hat. Again, you wear a hat to keep your head warm. You might wear a visor to keep the sun out of your eyes, but you don’t wear a cap to keep cool. (That was a time before many people ran in caps. Now you see people out at four o’clock in the morning, running in a baseball cap. Turned around backwards. Like a disguise. 47 year old’s, old enough to know better. Why are you wearing a cap in the summer? It’s 87 degrees before daylight. How crazy!)

In 1972, I honed my hot weather running skills at the national AAU marathon in Rochester.
[Bob Fitts (91) and John Vitale (1)  finished 22nd and 9th  the following year at Boston.]

The big thing was many guys were intolerant to heat. That’s one reason I was so far back for so long at the beginning of the 1973 race. I started taking water early in the race: Gatorade, Gatorade, Gatorade; water, water, water. And I started taking ice cubes, and carrying them in my hands, to help the circulation.

In ’73, Boston’s distance check points were another item that hadn’t yet entered the 20th century. Funky splits like 6 ¾, 10 ½, and 13 ¾ miles. Yeah, that made a lot of sense! But I carried a stopwatch at the start, and had done the calculations ahead of time. That was probably the most studied race I ever ran in my life. At the time, I really didn’t know how many years more I’d be running competitively, so I’d really done my homework. I had sort of figured out what I wanted to be at each place. I was pretty close to being on schedule at the half way point, and pleased with my performance so far.

At ten miles it seemed like I was between 800th and 1,000th place! Because between 10 and 15 miles, I began passing groups, big groups of people, non-stop. You’d have groups and stragglers, groups and stragglers. You’d go by them, and think, “Now we know why you are suffering, because you were sprinting a mile ahead of me at eight miles!”

By then I’d really started noticing the crowds along the way. They were wall to wall, wall to wall. Some of the places, maybe not that thick, but still, the sidewalk was full, the road was full.

I’d heard all the horror stories about Heartbreak Hill. Of course, Ed Plowman, NCTC’s local contact during his grad school days at Boston University, had driven us out there to take a look beforehand. We didn’t see anything intimidating. You stop and think about it. Back when Heartbreak Hill got its name, Boston runners were trained with such low mileage, they were going to run out of gas at 17 miles, uphill or downhill. A twelve mile run might have been their long run. They might have gotten in one 20 mile run and then rested for four days afterwards. And that was at a minute or two a mile slower than race pace.

Anyway, I scampered over all of the Newton Hills. I really didn’t start getting fatigued until after the crest at Boston College. Going down that last hill, that’s when my poor old quads started begging for mercy. (It seems like my best racing distance was under 30K, maybe a half marathon. I tell people, “I got a two hour body and a two hour brain. Beyond that, I’m suffering.”)

I’m not sure I fully appreciated this fact during the race, but I was fortunate the weather had turned hot. Probably the only person I was seriously concerned about outperforming me in the heat was Jack Fultz. When I saw him at the end of the race, he had this spiffy looking purple outfit. It was nylon, high dollar designer stuff some company had given him. Basically he overheated: that dark outfit probably cost him fifteen minutes. Jack was in better shape than that. I think Jack learned from the experience as he turned around in ’76 and won Boston on another warm day. But in ’73 as I went by, he looked terrible.

From the top of Heartbreak Hill on in, there were just waves of spectators. Not inching in enough to make you feel claustrophobic, but a continuous large crowd. There were a lot of trees on Commonwealth Avenue, where the course ran from west to east. Running on the right hand side of the road, particularly at that time of the year, the south side provided some shade. I remember purposely running on the right side for the shade, though most of us always trained running on the left side of the road. Sort of an awkward sensation, running too far on the opposite camber of the road, but of course the shade was worth it.

I didn’t start falling apart until I got over the last hills, at 22 or 23 miles. When I made that right hand turn after the Citgo sign, I was hanging by a damn thread. But nobody passed me. Steve Hoag from Minnesota was right behind me. Afterwards, he said “I had my eyes on you. I kept bearing down on you, but you wouldn’t relent!” Steve finished sixth in 1974 and then ran 2:11:54 behind Bill Rodgers in 1975.

Jon Anderson - American winner

At the end, I wasn’t close enough to see track speedster Anderson or roadrunner Tom Fleming go one-two. Turning on Boylston Street, Germany’s Lutz Philipp (who had posted the world’s best marathon time in 1972) was about 150 yards ahead of me. Before the heat took its toll, Philipp had challenged for the lead, and run through both Natick and Wellesley in first place. Of course, I’d never seen him, so I didn’t recognize him until after we finished.

Dennis Spencer from the University of Georgia in sixth place had also run much better than expected. Talk about pulling one out of your kazoo! He ran 2:22:31 on Monday and was supposed to run in his conference championship 10,000 the following Saturday. I remember him saying later “Race 10K? I can’t even walk!”

I finished 12th, and was happy as a clam: just pleased with the time under those conditions, and more than pleased with my finishing position. At the last two turns, I knew I was in the small numbers. I didn’t think I’d be in the top ten, but thought I’d be somewhere close. I got a little medal about an inch tall, tied on a ribbon, presented to me afterwards upstairs at the Prudential Center, after we’d choked down a little beef stew.

NCTC at 1974 Yonkers: Eddie Hereford, Marshall Adams,
Woody Harrell, Jack Mahurin, and Doug McElroy

The next year I skipped Boston to concentrate on the AAU National Championship Marathon at Yonkers. I was trained for another good effort, but once again encountered less than ideal weather conditions. It rained the whole race, and on each of three loops, we had to deal with the slop of the Yonkers Raceway horse track. Running in the mud, it was not what you would describe as a “fast track.” I managed a 2:23:24, which remains my marathon PR. This time around, I was 21 seconds slower than Steve Hoag and right behind him in ninth place. We each finished behind four runners we had bested in Boston the year before: Winner Ron Wayne, Carl Hatfield, Justin Gubbins, and Marty Sudzina. You might say that PR at Yonkers both solidified my reputation as “NOT A MUDDER!” and made me appreciate even more my sole appearance at Boston.

Jack Mahurin
Greenbelt, Maryland

Six years as “the Flying Parson” – Ed Plowman (April 19, 1967)

Ed Plowman

Although I was more of a plugger and a plodder than a natural speedster, from an early age I always enjoyed long distance running. While in college during the mid 1960s, I ran cross country for North Carolina State University. However, my first experience running in, or even seeing, a marathon was a new event where I served as both Race Director and official time keeper, the inaugural Greensboro to Winston-Salem Marathon in August 1966. I started this race with the help and encouragement of my friend Fred Hurd, who pointed out those two cities were about 26 miles apart. It was just the second marathon held south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I had to scrape together our $100 budget and then personally recruit all of the runners. When participants questioned how I would be able to both run in the race and be the timekeeper, I told them with a smile “Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you at the finish line!”

The weather was brutal. I don’t remember ever being so cold. - Mark Davidhizar (April 20, 2015)

Mark Davidhizar

Weather-wise this was one of the most miserable experiences of my life; but at the same time, Boston 2015 was one of the best experiences of my life.

But before talking about race day, what a great weekend it was in Boston! So much to do, no doubt about it, though we didn’t do or see it all. First off, I would like to say “thank you” to Meghan Irvine and her family for allowing us to stay at their house. Despite the fact we had to stay in a boy’s room with a bunch of Red Sox/Patriots stuff, it was comfortable and a lot cheaper than a hotel.

After a late arriving flight into Boston Friday night, Tina and I woke up early and drove a little over an hour into Boston for the BAA 5k. The weather was a perfect day for the 5k. Wish we got the same weather on Marathon Monday, but that’s another story… I was able to see Tina at a couple of locations on the course.  I also saw Sean Astin running the 5k. After Tina completed her impressive PR 5k, we made our way to the expo, stopping on the way for some quick pictures taken at the finish line.

April 21, 2014 - #863 at the Start, # 865 at the End

Grant Stieglitz

The first time I ran Boston was back in 2013, and I was 28 at the time. I had a qualifying time of 2:46:46 when I ran the Kona Marathon on June 24, 2012. I then ran a marathon on October 7th in Findlay, Ohio, called Red, White, and Blue 26.2, which I also won with a new best time of 2:45:31. I used that improved time to qualify for Boston. My goals are usually to not only improve my times, but also run a marathon under three hours in all 50 States plus the District of Columbia. Massachusetts became State #8 for me on my marathon journey.

I was a bit nervous as we were getting ready to start, but I told myself, “Stay calm, take one mile at a time, and to use your head.” As soon as the gun went off and I crossed the starting line, I told myself the same exact quote over and over again so my nerves won’t act up. After crossing the first few miles, I felt pretty good and kept my rhythm going. I even told myself to be patient; this wasn’t a sprint, this was a marathon.

April 21, 2014 - Nothing in my life will ever come close to this marathon!

Tim Kowols

“So, how was Boston?”

I have been asked that question by just about everyone since we got back home from Massachusetts. It only makes sense. I had not run Boston since 2008. Outside of the Marine Corps Marathon and the Walt Disney Marathon, I had done nothing under the current 3:05 qualifying standard. I registered for the race in September and became an official competitor by October. Then followed six months of waiting and training. Waiting for a dream to come true again, and training in the worst weather I have ever experienced.

Then, all of sudden, it's April: Hotel is booked, flight is booked, bags are packed. The only mishap was the USPS not handling my Runner's Welcome Packet properly, causing my Passport to fall out somewhere between the B.A.A. and Green Bay.

During this time, the hype begins to build. Expectations begin to rise. With most, if not all races, you hope the race gets within shouting distance of those expectations. Maybe it's because I love the Boston Marathon so much, but two times completed, two times absolutely blown out of the water with everything that is part of the marathon weekend in the city of Boston.

April 21, 2014 - Taking part in the most important marathon of the century

Kyle Durham

Below is the account of my journey to qualify to run my very first Boston Marathon. I was so excited by my first qualifying time in the spring of 2013 that I completed five more marathons before the year was over. In November at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, I got my marathon time down to 2:47:09. Not surprisingly, the cumulative damage from those races was more than my body could handle. By February 2014, I was lucky to string together two days of running without injury. All of my Boston preparation efforts from 2013 left me with nothing left for Boston itself!

If this had been any other marathon, I hope I would have done the sensible thing and dropped out. But this was BOSTON. I had literally spent a decade dreaming about competing in the legendary Boston Marathon. I wasn't willing to abandon that dream when I was so close. And so I pushed onward. I took lots of rest days, I slowed to 8-minute pace, and my longest run was eight miles. I might not arrive in top condition, but I was going to make it to that starting line.

April 15, 2013 - Give This Man a Medal!

Nick Laganas,
with Pat Cook

[Our thanks to Pat Cook of Middlesex Community College for sharing his story of a 2013 marathon hero.]

This is a story about my friend and fellow “E Streeter,” Lowell Massachusetts Police Officer Nick Laganas, and his first Boston Marathon. Nick and I are part of the PT team at the Lowell Police Academy that helps train police officers to run.

Nick is already a running machine, but this was his first venture onto the vaunted Boston course. Nick impressively made it across the finish line in 3:57:27, and was at the first water station in the finish chute, grabbing a water, when the first bomb blast went off. Instead of continuing down the finish chute, Nick did what law enforcement officers nationwide do - HE RAN TOWARD THE DANGER, even after just logging 26.2 miles of running!

2013 - A text message suggests it would be a good idea to go on Facebook and tell everyone I am OK

Jonathan Hanson

My journey as a runner began in 2010, when a co-worker shared information on the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program. She was going to be mentoring runners for the 2011 Maratona di Roma. Prior to this, I had never done distance running, but something about this struck me. I went to the information session and before I knew it, I was training for my first marathon. It was such a life-changing experience for me that I continued with the program in 2012; this time venturing out to Spain for Madrid's first Rock & Roll Marathon.

Later in 2012, I received information on Team BMC, the charity program that benefits the various patient programs at Boston Medical Center (where I happen to be an employee and a patient). They were recruiting runners for the 2013 Boston Marathon. I knew Boston was one of the most prestigious marathons in the world; one people from around the world trained long and hard (and traveled across the globe) to run; the one practically in my backyard. As rewarding as my international marathon experiences were, I had also longed to be able to invite family and friends to share the day with me - to actually watch me cross the finish line. This was my chance. Before I knew it, I was preparing myself for my first Boston Marathon.

2013 - Keep Calm and Marath-On

Andrew Cook

Preparation: Here we are… After a long time coming, the Boston Marathon is finally only a week away. For those of you starting to get worn down by the constant talk of it from us deranged people who find these kinds of things fun, just bear with us: it’s almost all over!

Without a single iota of sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek here, I want to tell you that training these six months has been one of the highlights of my athletic life so far, with the jewel on the crown looking to come right about this time next week as one sweaty, aching, dehydrated, disorientated mess of a 19 year old crosses the finish line on Boylston Street. Bring your camera, I know. Now, I know it’s still very pre-mature to be making my Sally Field acceptance speeches here (“You really really like me!”), but finish or no, at the back of the pack or a with surprise upset of the Kenyans, I want to send out a huge thank you to quite a lot of people.

2013 - 'There was one more person I met that day who helped get me through it.'

Ed Harms

My first and only marathon happened on April 15th, 2013. Boston had been a goal of mine since graduating from the University of Delaware in 2008. I had lived in Somerville, Massachusetts, ever since then, and seeing 25,000 people running the streets of Boston with hundreds of thousands cheering them on was an experience I knew I needed to have some day.

Unfortunately, though, I was not nearly fast enough to qualify. For my age group, 3:05 is the standard, and though I have a “runner’s body,” I never started running consistently until college. I didn’t run my first 5k until my junior year, and ran my first half-marathon in 2011 with roughly a month of ‘training” (hard to even call it that now, looking back). The standards seemed so high I knew it would literally be years from the time I began training for 3:05 to the time I would be able to run Boston, so I never started. It seemed very intimidating.

2010 - Easier than hunting game in Zimbabwe...

Aaron Ford

I would consider myself a rookie compared to many other guys and gals on this site, but I'll tell my story as well. Boston was only my second marathon. I had qualified with my first 26.2 mile race, even though barely making it in after running a 3:09:50! But for Boston, I had set a goal of a sub-three hour race and had been training hard in order to achieve that target.

At that time, my future wife and I were engaged to be married a couple of weeks later, and we were meeting an old college roommate now living in the Boston area. I was still in school at the time, but was able to take a couple days off to make the trip. Needless to say, I wasn't going to miss this race for anything!

We met up out in Medford (as poor college students, we couldn't afford to stay in town), and my friend showed up with his co-worker, a veteran marathoner from Zimbabwe! It was so cool to meet him. He told me how back in Africa, he would eat a big dinner and then join other hunters who would basically go out and run all night after their following day's supper (antelope, deer, etc.). They would race until the animal gave out, and they could butcher it. He said they would run close to 30 miles in a night without eating, and might bring only a small amount of water on the hunt. When I asked him if the Boston Marathon would be hard, he said it would be nothing compared to the hunting he had done in Zimbabwe!

1983 - Someone steals my thunder.

Joe Muldowney

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 the hotel, spent and exhausted having completed my first Boston Marathon. The unicorn medal, bearing the number ‘82,’ signifying the number of annual Boston Marathon races, hung from my neck. It was the third Monday of April, 1978.

With sunken eyes, and a salt-covered face, I entered the small lobby, where a pleasant desk clerk smiled at me. She gazed with pity at the decrepit figure who stood before her. I knew that all I needed to do was pick up a key and I could hobble to my room, where a hot shower and a cozy bed awaited me. It was at that moment, out of nowhere, a pair of pliers gripped my right hamstring. In reality it was a cramp. The kind that strikes in the middle of the night. A painful, silent grimace crossed my face, sweat beaded on my forehead, and the concerned clerk implored, “May I help you?” At that moment, the pain was white-hot. I gripped the marble desk top. Before I could reply, however, a middle-aged man, who simply could not grasp the mentality of those who run 26.2-miles for fun, emerged. He glanced at the pained figure on the other side of the counter and drawled in his thick Boston accent, “Not unless yaw name is Gawd!”

1975 – A Spot on the Second Row

Woody Harrell

There are days when everything just seems to fall in place. For me, Monday, April 21, 1975, was one such day, although there was a good bit of worrying on my part as it was unfolding.

After the debacle that was my first Boston race, I bounced back pretty quickly. Six weeks later I was out of the army and, aided by the GI Bill, heading back to grad school to resume life as a "professional student." Six months later, I cut over 20 minutes off my previous best, good enough for tenth place in the first marathon ever run in the nation’s capital.

I decided to skip Boston in ’74 and concentrate on the AAU Championship, held in early June at the Yonkers NY Raceway. Most of that race was run in the rain, and as the marathon course was laid out to include four loops of the half mile standardbred harness racing dirt surface, there was quite a bite of sloppy track involved. I don’t know which I enjoyed more, knocking another five minutes off my marathon PR, or the honor of competing on the same track where Seabiscuit and automobile driver Barney Oldfield had previously raced.

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.

1973 - 1st, 2nd, and 358th place for the USA

Woody Harrell

First, a little background: My so-called road racing career began in fits and starts; but the initial date is easy to pin down: the day I read an article in the June 01, 1964, issue of Sports Illustrated about American expatriate Buddy Edelen. Unnoticed by most Americans, Edelen had run the first- and third-fastest marathons of all time, and had just returned from England to win the US Olympic marathon trial at Yonkers, New York, by over 20 minutes.

I was amazed. I was fascinated! I was inspired! So much so that I put on my tennis shoes (literally my tennis shoes; who had a pair of running shoes back in 1964?), and headed out the door to run five miles for the first time. In fact, to run further than 100 yards for the first time ever…

When I made the half way turn around at the extreme edge of my hometown, both the excitement and the adrenalin were already long gone; and by the time I got back home, I was dehydrated, physically spent, and had two feet that looked like raw meat, with blisters on top of blisters. I collapsed into bed and didn’t try to crawl out again until it was time to go back to school on Monday. But in spite of the experience, the running bug had bitten…