Every year, a number of Boston University students take on the long and challenging process of training for, qualifying for and ultimately running the Boston Marathon. We spoke to two BU students who took the 26.2-mile trek on Monday about why they ran and how they got to be student marathoners.
Ben Garcia
Ben Garcia, a junior in the College of Communication, ran his first Boston Marathon and his second marathon ever on Monday after qualifying for the race back in September. He finished with a time of 3:23:59.
Garcia said running a marathon has always been a goal for him.
“I’ve kind of always looked up to the marathon,” Garcia said. “My dad used to do marathons, so yeah, kind of got that in my head. And then it just came down to training and stuff.”
Garcia said that, in a way, his marathon training started his freshman year of high school — when he first started running. He said his most intensive training came as he approached his qualifying run in September.
Qualifying for the Boston Marathon gets tougher every year, and for the sixth year in a row, runners who met qualifying times were turned away due to too many athletes meeting the time, according to Runner’s World.
For this year’s race, runners had to be almost five minutes faster than the qualifying time — 3:05:00 for men aged 18-34 and 3:35:00 for women within that age range — to make it into the race.
His training for the Boston Marathon was atypical, he added.
“For the qualifying one, it was pretty consistent [for] a few months, running like 50 miles a week,” Garcia said. “Just like a couple of days a week for the past, like, six weeks, I’ve been doing marathon-type training, like long runs and stuff.”
Garcia’s plan for after the marathon is to get a lot of well-deserved rest.“After a marathon the name of the game is just to relax and not moving,” Garcia said. “I’m sure it’ll be tough to walk, so just basically relaxing, probably for the next week. Ubering everywhere I go, probably.”
Melissa Stuart
Melissa Stuart, a junior in the Questrom School of Business, ran her first Boston Marathon on Monday, finishing with a time of 3:49:47. This was the third marathon she has run, the first two being in the hopes of qualifying for Boston — a goal she’s had since first coming to BU.
“My senior year when I got into BU I was like, OK, maybe I’ll run the Boston Marathon before I graduate, that’d be a fun thing,” Stuart said. “Then after my freshman year, watching the marathon, I was sold. I was like, I have to do it, this is happening.”
Immediately after her first Marathon Monday at BU, Stuart signed up for a marathon in October of the following year. After not having a fast enough time to qualify, she signed up for another race in May of her sophomore year.
“I was dead set on qualifying that time. It was my second try, and I thought I had it in me,” Stuart said. “And that was a really, really good race, so that was the race that I qualified, which was amazing. And yeah, the rest is history, and here I am today.”
Stuart said her training for the marathon involved slowly increasing her running distance until about a month before the race.
“You start with a warm run of like 10 to 12 miles, and slowly you build that up so that your longest run is anywhere between 18 to 22 miles. My longest run for this is 21 miles,” Stuart said. “After about a month to three weeks before the race, you start to taper, which is where you cut back on mileage a lot because you really want fresh legs on race day.”
Stuart said that, overall, the Boston Marathon was an amazing experience.
“The whole time I was thinking about how these amazing runners like Des Linden and Jordan Hasay were on the same ground that I was on, just you know, a couple hours before me,” Stuart said. “… I just did the same thing they did. I’m so proud that I finished, and I am so honored to have been a part of such a historic and prestigious race.”
