When runners crossed the finish line of the 106th Boston Marathon on Monday, Tufts was well represented. Fletcher student Lance McAdams qualified for, and ran in the marathon, while the top two finishers, Kenyans Rodgers Rop and Christopher Cheboiboch, used Tufts' Gantcher Center last week to do some last minute training. Several Tufts undergraduate students also competed in the race as unofficial entrants including seniors Kristin Girasa and Jesse Levey, and sophomore Kate Anderson.
Rop and his coach, Rainer Wagner, along with Cheboiboch, spent last Thursday afternoon doing laps around the Gantcher Center track in preparation for Monday's marathon. Rop, who took first place in the marathon with a time of two hours, nine minutes and two seconds, was the reigning world champion and world record holder in the 25 kilometer, finishing third in last year's New York Marathon, his first ever. The 26-year-old from Kenya's Nandi District qualified in 14th place for the marathon. Cheboiboch, who hails from Iten, Kenya, qualified in 16th place for the marathon, and went home with second place, part of a Kenyan sweep of six of the top seven spots.
Prior to Monday's race, Rop had run most recently in a 10K in Puerto Rico, and a 5K in Lisbon as part of his marathon training. "Each marathon is a highlight and the rest of the smaller races are all part of the training," Wagner said. "For Boston, they took a break over Christmas and started training again in February. But they are exceptional athletes so they are always in good condition."
Both runners proved their outstanding athleticism with the 1-2 finish on Monday. Despite their grueling training and athletic prowess, however, the runners were reluctant to offer predictions of any sort for the race.
When asked how he thought he would finish, Cheboiboch smiled and said, "I don't know, marathons are unpredictable."
While McAdams was not up at the front of the pack with Rop and Cheboiboch, he turned in an impressive performance, finishing in 2:55:09, and landing in the top 800 of a field of 9,394 men who started the race. Last year, in Atlanta, after qualifying for Boston in his first ever marathon with a time of 3:05:31, McAdams went into Monday's marathon with the goal of finishing in under three hours.
"It went well, and I did what I wanted to do," McAdams said. "I think the Atlanta course might have been a little bit harder, but that might have been because it was my first one. I think I kinda missed Heartbreak Hill, which everyone says is the hardest part (of Boston), because before I knew it we were already past it. So maybe being kind of na??ve and stupid helped a little bit."
Although many marathoners train for most of their lives, often at high altitudes, in order to prepare their bodies for the grueling 26.2 mile test of a marathon, McAdams' story is somewhat different. The Brigham Young University graduate never ran competitively in college, and has competed in only a handful of races throughout his life, including a couple five and ten kilometer races.
"I ran a year of track in high school, and started running recreationally in college," McAdams said. "I know it sounds a little bit like Forrest Gump, but I just like to run. I like how it makes me feel."
So it was with almost no competitive experience that McAdams decided to run in his first marathon last Thanksgiving in Atlanta.
"It was one of those things that I've always wanted to do," McAdams said. "It's physically grueling, so I can't really say I enjoyed it, but my whole family was there cheering me on and taking pictures, so it was kind of fun. It's more a sense of accomplishment that anything else."
His accomplishment was certainly something to be proud of, as he qualified for the Boston Marathon by more than five minutes. The qualifying time for men is three hours and ten minutes, a feat not easily accomplished.
"They try to cap the race at 15,000, so it's hard to qualify" Fletcher student and marathon runner Frank Nocito said. "I've run in two marathons, one in Honolulu and one in Vermont, and my best finish is 3:29:00."
While the physical experience of running in Atlanta may have been similar to that of Boston for McAdams, all other aspects were certainly very different.
"In Atlanta there weren't a lot of people running or watching," McAdams said. "In Boston there were people lined up along every single mile of the course."
Having completed the marathon while achieving his goal, McAdams was very pleased with the whole experience.
"It was great," he said. "It was as fun as running 26 miles can be."
The unofficial entrants also felt that the marathon was a great experience. Levey, who finished in 4:17:20, ran in his first marathon and felt that the people involved were an important part of the race.
"It was a great experience, and a lot of my friends came out and cheered me on," Levey said. "It was a really supportive atmosphere, and everybody was trying to help each other finish. Crossing the finish line was just an exhilarating experience."
Anderson, a former member of the Tufts crew team who finished the race in 3:56, singled out the crowd as the pinnacle of her experience. "The excitement of the event was really what made me finish," she said. "I'm convinced that if it wasn't for the people there I never would have made it to the finish line. That's what I liked most about it. There's so much energy, so much excitement radiating, that you're able to block out the pain and the fact that you're running for as long as you are."
Anderson also plans to run several more marathons in the future. "I'm going abroad next year, but the next opportunity I have I want to run another one," she said. "This is what I want to do for my life, run marathons."
Lisa Rothlein contributed to this article.
