Braving chillier and windier conditions than usual, hundreds of thousands of Bostonians turned up to cheer at the 130th running of their hometown marathon on Monday.
It is an annual day of good feeling for the citizens of the Hub, as they gather to watch elite runners, celebrities and common strivers alike try to cover 26.2 miles on foot as fast as possible.
Monday is also a holiday in Massachusetts, Patriots’ Day, commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord that fired the starting gun on the American Revolution. The holiday has also taken on a somber note since 2013, when a bombing near the finish line of the marathon killed three people and set off a dayslong manhunt.
Boston is a rare marathon that admits most runners based on merit. To qualify, runners must complete another marathon during the year or so leading up to the registration under a certain time, dependent on their age and gender.
Those not hoping to actually win the race often get in costume, while others don “Boston Strong” shirts and caps that allude to the city’s resilience in the face of the bombing.
In all, 30,000 ran the race on Monday, and the crowd pushed deep into six figures.
The temperature was unseasonably low, around 35 degrees at the start of the race, but the strong winds were at the runners’ backs at least, giving many of them a chance at a personal best. However, world records cannot be set at Boston because entrants are going downhill, at least in aggregate: The finish is at an altitude more than 400 feet lower than the start.
Celebrities who planned to lace up at this year’s event included the astronaut Sunita L. Williams, Chelsea Clinton, and Bryan Arenales, a winner of the “Love Island USA” reality show.
The race is a highlight of a sports-filled stretch in Boston, a sports-crazed town. Patriots’ Day also normally brings a morning home baseball game to Boston, with the Red Sox hosting the Detroit Tigers this year. And the Boston Celtics got their playoff campaign started with a win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday.
The Boston Marathon dates to 1897, just one year after the first modern marathon was run at the first Olympic Games in Greece.
For men, at least. When Kathrine Switzer entered the all-male Boston race in 1967, an official tried to tackle her as she was running. He failed, she finished, and women were officially admitted in 1972. Boston was in the vanguard, however, in admitting wheelchair racers, with an official competition starting in 1975.
The Boston race, from Hopkinton to Copley Square, is also known for the cordon of Wellesley students who scream their support, and for a punishing sequence of four hills late in the race, capped by the brutal stretch known as Heartbreak Hill.
The notion of a marathon race was inspired by a legendary run from Marathon, Greece, to Athens in the fifth century B.C. by a messenger, Pheidippides, bringing news of a triumph in battle. After crying “We have won,” he dropped dead. Some exhausted finishers on Monday surely felt they might do the same.
Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.
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