For many, the Boston Marathon represents the pinnacle of personal and athletic achievement. The race starts in Hopkinton, Mass., the course winding through Wellesley, up Heartbreak Hill and across the Boston finish line. On Monday, at least seven Dartmouth students -— Isabel Caldwell ’14, Erik Fagerstrom ’14, Oscar Friedman ’16, Annie Hart ’14, Catherine Meyer ’14, C.J. Pierce ’14 and David Sinclair ’14 — will be among the thousands of runners who will participate in this year’s edition, one year after the tragic bombings that led to three deaths and hundreds of injuries in 2013.
Pierce, who ran Boston last year, was stretching at home during the bombings, having finished roughly an hour and a half beforehand. His first reaction, he said, was deep anger.
“This is a special day for a lot of people who have been training for half a year through the winter and I couldn’t believe anyone would try to taint this day,” he said.
For Pierce, a Weston, Mass., native, the events of last year have given the training process an extra sense of purpose to show the resilience of Boston and its people.
“When the mileage is getting long, it’s been good motivation to think of sticking it to the terrorists,” he said. “That’s fueled me throughout my training.”
The same has been true for Meyer, who grew up outside of Boston and ran the marathon as a high school junior and senior. The first bomb detonated where her mother had been standing when she watched her cross the finish line several years ago.
“It definitely hit home,” Meyer said. “When I saw that, that’s the point when I knew when I wanted to run the Boston the next year. Running a marathon can be tough, but watching all the support has made it easier to train.”
Meyer qualified for the race at last year’s Burlington Marathon alongside Caldwell, Fagerstrom, Friedman, Hart and Sinclair. For these five first-time Boston marathoners, the ability to run the race after the tragedy gave more importance to the achievement of qualifying.
These five members of the Dartmouth Nordic ski team had originally only planned on running the Burlington Marathon in May on a whim, building off of their fall training that includes distance running. Yet they aimed to qualify for Boston after the events of last year, Hart said.
The race also allows the skiers to show resilience in the face of another tragedy, the February passing of teammate Torin Tucker ’15. Tucker’s father, Scott Tucker, will run alongside the members of the ski team in matching uniforms.
“One of the best ways to process Torin’s passing is going to be out on that race course,” Friedman said. “I’m going to be thinking about him, and it means a lot for his dad to be running alongside us. I can bet that Torin would have been there cheering for us on the sidelines, even though he would have had class on Monday.”
Dartmouth’s marathoners will go into the race with different personal goals and expectations. Some, like Fagerstrom, have concrete achievements in mind: beating his 2:51:18 qualifying time.
“My next goal is to beat 2:45, which I think is pretty feasible,” he said. “And ideally, I want to beat 2:40, because I think that’s a huge milestone. Otherwise, it’d be fun to just beat David, he’s naturally a better runner, but I’ve had better training.”
For others, the goals are simpler.
“I just want to find my friends and my mom after the race and not get lost in Boston,” Hart said.
The marathoners all come in with different levels of training. For some members of the ski team, the late end to the ski season has led to less training time, which has changed their expectations.
“I just want to have fun, finish and not injure myself,” Caldwell said. “I’ve heard it’s amazing every other year, but there’s 36,000 people running it and thinking about the magnitude of that and how I’m just one of 36,000 people running is just incredible. To be there and participating in it is going to be such a cool experience.”
Despite their differences in mindset, Dartmouth’s marathoners will go to Boston with a shared sense of solidarity and pride. A year later, the Boston Marathon continues to serve as a monument to human strength and endurance that reaches up to Hanover.
