The annual Boston Marathon is a great way for runners to test themselves, support a charity or cross it off their bucket list. At Northeastern, students are doing all of these; however, it’s not an easy road to the finish line.
Erica Moore, a fourth-year bioengineering major, has qualified for the Boston Marathon through her charity with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Stepping Strong Marathon Team, which is supporting the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation. The charity is a sponsor of the official Boston Marathon charity program which allows runners to qualify for the marathon if they meet a requirement of $5,000 raised with their selected charity.
“After reading about this specific charity, especially the innovation part, that kind of appealed to the bioengineering side of me,” Moore said. “Just hearing about all of the cool research they’re doing, I found that really interesting.”
Moore may be racing the 26.2 miles on Monday, but she wasn’t always a runner.
“I danced a lot in high school,” she said. “So coming to college I was kind of burnt out [from] that, but I still wanted some way to move my body … The start of college is when I started getting more serious with [running].”
The extent of Moore’s running experience before college was playing field hockey in high school.
“I’ve always really liked running, but I did it more recreationally … Starting around a year ago, I started getting into more long-distance [running].”
Fourth-year bioengineering major Sophie Chabot has qualified another way. Chabot and her family have been long-time volunteers of the Boston Marathon, so she was lucky enough to receive a bib when she decided to run in it this year. Her mom had also run the Boston Marathon before, which Chabot attributes as part of her inspiration.
“[She] originally got me into running,” Chabot said. “There’s one yearly race in my town that I always do and I’ve been doing that since I was really young, but I really started running in high school.” Chabot has been a part of NU Club Running since her freshman year.
Jack Kelly, a third-year international business major with a concentration in finance, also qualified through his charity with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He decided to run for this charity because he worked there for his first co-op at Northeastern. Kelly doesn’t consider himself a runner, but does consider himself to be fit, having played baseball and basketball in high school.
“I try to stay in shape,” he said. “So I thought running was something I could pick up.”
Cold weather in Boston is not an ideal temperature to train in as a runner, but these athletes have made the most of it.
“At first I would go on the treadmill whenever it was under 20 degrees outside,” Moore said. “But that got boring after a while, [especially] getting up to higher mileage for over an hour. So I just started going outside more and sucked it up with lots of layers.”
Both Kelly and Chabot dislike running on treadmills, with Chabot saying, “I know some people can do it, but past five miles … I can’t. It’s so easy to stop and not keep going.”
Kelly added that while running on the treadmill, “you don’t really feel like you’re accomplishing a whole lot.”
Chabot added that this winter hasn’t been as bad as previous years, except for the occasional black ice which would cause her to slow down her pace on some runs.
The training process for a marathon is extensive, and the support of others is key to surviving. According to Moore, her charity team is made up of around 80 to 100 runners, but they’re all supporting each other along with their coach, John Furey.
“He gave us a plan to follow,” she said. “The coach organized long runs on Saturdays so I’d run with a lot of members on my team.” They’d run into Newton and then finish the last 10 miles of the marathon course, usually seeing many runners training for the marathon as well. “That definitely helps motivate [me] regardless of how tough it is or how cold it is.”
Kelly mentioned that the last six to 10 miles of the race will be fairly easy if he conserves his energy because he’s gotten used to running that route as well.
“Mentally I’ve prepared myself well,” he said. “I know what six miles feels like and I can do it comfortably.”
Running six miles almost every day has helped Kelly become comfortable with that feeling, saying he knows he can run it in an hour so that will be his goal on race day.
Chabot also usually does a long run on the weekend, starting with around 10 miles at the beginning of the training plan and gradually increasing each week, dispersing three to four-mile runs throughout the weekdays.
“It’s not a discipline,” she said. “Some days I don’t want to run at all, but you just have to push yourself out the door. I’ve noticed a lot of [the motivation and stamina] comes from fueling, like if I don’t eat as much then I’m so exhausted and don’t have any energy to get up and run.”
Moore echoed the fueling aspect, saying that while running, “your body runs out of glycogen, so you really have to make sure you’re refueling every 30 minutes during your run.” Moore and Chabot each take energy gels while they run, but there was some trial and error to find ones they liked. Kelly ignores them altogether.
“It was a bad first experience,” Kelly said. “The whole consistency was not ideal.”
All three runners do eat peanut butter on toast or an English muffin before a longer run in order to fuel themselves with enough carbs.
Fueling may be a sliver of the challenges a runner faces, and these runners have found a good amount of other difficulties during their journey. For Kelly, he missed about the whole month of February due to an injury to his IT band.
“I tried to stay in good [shape],” he said. “[During that time] I would use the stationary bike, took some time off from running for a bit which was actually helpful.”
Moore added, “It’s a huge learning curve. Being my first marathon … managing when to eat, following the training plan, all that has been really tough.”
Chabot echoed this statement, but offered some positive comments on what’s been easy to deal with.
“There’s a lot of roadblocks you get to when training where you’re like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’” she said. “But [my friends and family] have really been there for me and helped me push through.” She also touched upon the amount of work she’s had as an engineering major, but her friends have been supportive of her when she hasn’t had as much time to hang out.
Kelly emphasized that the mental part has been easy for him, saying “I’m a sucker for energy. I love doing events.” He also added that running the marathon is the “closest to ever being a professional athlete.”
“Take any opportunity you can to do it,” Kelly said. “Push yourself to do it. It’s going to be uncomfortable at times, but it’ll be worth it.”
Chabot added, “when you first sign up there’s a huge hill in front of you. But after a lot of training, you definitely feel yourself getting stronger.”
Moore echoed this when she said, “sign up because you will be able to finish it. You’ll surprise yourself with how much you’re able to increase your fitness and ability to [run the marathon].”
Come support these three runners as they put all of their hard work on display Monday, April 15.