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n the morning of April 15, 2013, I packed a bag of bagels, a Gatorade, a water bottle, five bananas, a few GU gels, my running watch, and my race bib, and I boarded a bus to Hopkinton, Mass. The drive took about an hour, and every minute on the bus carried with it the unfathomable fact that the only way back to Boston was by foot. I was about to run the Boston Marathon. As I sat on the bus with my fellow marathoners, we listened to the radio to hear the wave of elite athletes take off at 10 a.m. Discussions about nutrition, hydration, anxiety, bathroom necessities, and family buzzed through tiny Hopkinton. 27,000 runners descended on the town that morning, all to run the 26.2 miles through Massachusetts into Boston. I am an unlikely marathoner. In 2013, I had only been running for about a year. Twelve months earlier, as a high school senior, I had embarked on a semi-insane journey to train for a half marathon in the midst of a New England winter. I didn’t have a valorous reason for taking on the challenge—I needed to satisfy an athletic requirement. After the first few weeks of painful walk-runs, I finally completed a run without walking, a simple four-miler with one hill. I was so proud of myself. I remember later excitedly reporting to friends when I had completed my first 10-mile run, a massive feat for a girl who had only ever run a mile—under duress—during middle school P.E. classes. When the day of the half marathon arrived, I had never actually run a race before. But I chugged along for 13.1 miles with one of my friends, finishing with a final sprint and a huge smile on my face. I wore the finisher’s medal all day, and I wore the race t-shirt to school the day after. I fell in love with running. During my freshman fall at college, I turned to running as a solace from the difficult transition to a new place. I ran until I was tired. Six to 10 miles became a normal distance for a daily run that fall. My times dropped, and I signed up for another half marathon. I cut my time by almost 10 minutes from my first race, not by training particularly hard, but just by running four or five times a week without a real plan. I learned to appreciate the challenge of increasing distances and training for a race. I decided to test this romance with running by signing up for a marathon. *** The shape of marathoners has changed over the past few decades, allowing less ostensibly athletic people like me a chance to experience the glory of running. The formation of charity running programs has contributed significantly to this popular shift. Instead of running in major races by qualifying, which requires having run a prior marathon at an elite pace, runners can raise money for a nonprofit in order to enter the racing field. Susan Hurley, the founder of Charity Teams, was on the forefront of this movement. A former Ironman triathlete, she switched to marathons and wanted to share her love of athleticism with everyone. The director of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), which hosts the Boston Marathon, asked her to organize and train a group running the 2008 race for charity,
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and she then founded Charity Teams. Over nine years, Charity Teams has grown from coordinating one charity with 15 runners to 24 charities with over 300 runners, raising almost $3 million for various nonprofits each year. The success of marathons for charity is staggering. Hurley has expanded her business on the assumption that anybody can run a marathon. “When you look at some of the individuals who succeed at running marathons, whether it’s amputees or blind people, you see that people can do this, it is an achievable goal,” she explained to the HPR. Hurley encourages anyone who is thinking about running to try it. “It’s going to take hard work, commitment, responsibility to yourself, and responsibility to your charities,” she said. “I think it makes you be a stronger human being, physically and mentally.” On her website, Hurley is already recruiting runners and charities for the 2016 race. At Harvard, this charity running movement gained momentum in the past decade, too. Craig Rodgers, a counselor at the Bureau of Study Counsel, started the Harvard College Marathon Challenge (HCMC) in 2006, modeled after a program at Tufts University. Every year, he and others encourage non-runners to train for the Boston Marathon and raise money for the Phillips Brooks House Association, a Harvard student-run nonprofit organization. Rodgers ran his first marathon in 1996; his longest run before training had been 11 miles, a far cry from the 26.2 needed. He understands what it means to undertake a marathon feeling completely under-qualified, as many students do. Rodgers cites the importance of non-competitive running for fostering relationships and maintaining a healthy attitude. “Most things on campus have a threshold, some minimum bar, to participate,” he said, but in an effort to combat that mentality HCMC “promote[s] community running in general among students, faculty, and staff.” There is a waitlist every year to run with an HCMC bib, which speaks to the success of the program. The only prize HCMC offers is for the “officially-registered undergraduate runner who crosses the finish line as close as possible to the 6-hour time limit without exceeding it,” which encourages inexperienced marathoners to participate, no matter the pace. This type of program has enabled many non-runners to take a shot at a marathon, myself included. I ran the 2013 Boston Marathon for the New England Patriots Charitable Foundation, part of Charity Teams, and I raised over $5,000. The commitment to fundraising is as ambitious a goal as the commitment to training, and both prongs are crucial to success in the marathon. Fundraising adds a level of dedication, and it is an extra hurdle to clear. Charity runners are a special breed. *** While running is certainly a physical exercise, marathons require a unique mental capacity as well. When your body is tired, you have to be able to keep going. Susan Hurley repeated a mantra to me and my fellow marathoners, which Craig Rodgers has also used to encourage his runners: one foot in front of the