John Riordan: A quieter Boston marathon still makes a statement

CATHARTIC AFFAIR: A runner crosses the finish line during the 125th Boston Marathon on Monday, a day that was as close to perfect as it could possibly get in that sports-obsessed town. Picture: Maddie Malhotra/Getty Images

Up until they convened at the startline of Monday’s Boston Marathon, Brian Sugrue hadn’t seen Kevin McCarthy in almost three years.

Over a decade ago, the Dublin natives struck up an expat friendship, casting aside their Blackrock College/Gonzaga College rivalry and developing a shared dedication to long distance running. Like their fellow Bostonians, they had been deprived of this world famous occasion for two and a half years.

It had been even longer since they had met up for a run or any other reason whatsoever. Life and Covid got in the way.

So over the weekend Sugrue reached out to McCarthy to confirm he was indeed also running the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boylston Street.

Sugrue had drawn a slightly later start time and he playfully threatened that he would easily catch up with McCarthy to finally reconnect in person. Instead, McCarthy decided to loiter at the start line, delaying his run in order to complete the entire course with his good friend.

“We were saying to each other that if we had organised to meet up for a beer, we wouldn’t have spent four or five hours together like that,” laughed Sugrue as he recapped his 11th marathon for me on Tuesday evening.

It had been billed as a renaissance day in Boston where the 125th chapter of their beloved marathon went off without a hitch and with plenty of the joy that has always defined it.

Monday was as close to perfect as it could possibly get in that sports obsessed town.

Long after the sun set on what had been a beautiful October day, their equally beloved Red Sox stunned the erstwhile World Series favourites Tampa Bay with a ninth inning walk-off victory at baseball’s iconic old arena, Fenway Park.

Kike Hernandez was the batter who helped drive in that decisive run and, now, against all the odds, the Red Sox will take to the field tonight in Houston, Texas for Game One of the American League decider.

It’s all coming up roses in Beantown where the race and the Red Sox are traditional bedfellows, especially in recent decades.

There is an annual custom with the Boston Marathon that it takes place on the third Monday in April as part of a very New England celebration called Patriots’ Day. The long weekend is a joyous final farewell to winter with the oldest marathon in the world coinciding always with a Red Sox home game at the nation’s oldest Major League ballpark.

Normally slated second in the calendar of the six so-called World Marathon Majors, the 2020 edition was an early high-profile postponement and subsequent cancellation as the pandemic rushed through Massachusetts.

This one-off October shift was a little jarring to the Bostonian body clock and, controversially, the Boston Athletic Association chose clumsily to host their comeback on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which the city was officially celebrating for the first time. (It will be a nationwide official public holiday from 2022 onwards, President Biden declared Monday morning.)

The BAA apologised for the oversight and rightfully decided to meet with tribal representatives to find out how to pay their respects.

Meanwhile, at the business end of proceedings, Kenyan runners Benson Kipruto and Diana Chemtai Kipyogei won the men’s and women’s races respectively. It was the eighth time since 2000 that a Kenyan duo outran their fields.

The last time I spoke with Brian Sugrue, I was reporting for this newspaper from the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013.

The resulting account of that terrible week is in the Irish Examiner archives but to sum it up, Sugrue was approaching the finish line when the bombs detonated. He had committed to a casual pace and he had given himself enough time to pull out his phone and record some video. He accidentally captured the horror unfurling in front of him.

His chilling eyewitness account of the dreadful scene has always stayed with me.

“There are terrible sights on that video,” he told me at the time. “I’m not really sure people want to hear about it or read about it. I’ve handed it over to the authorities and I want nothing more to do with it.”

He also described his steely resolve to run the marathon again the following year. It was an instinct shared by so many in the city.

“2014 was a mixture of sad emotion and wild partying,” he remembered this week.

That’s not at all surprising. When the city’s lockdown was lifted after the manhunt ended, the citywide release of emotion was dramatic. It was inevitable that the chance to run a safer and more joyful event a year later would be seized with open arms.

A total of 12,000 runners from 2013 were readmitted for 2014 and they all seemed to have been placed by race organisers on buses together headed to the start line.

“Everybody had their story,” Sugrue recalls. “In one corner of the bus, you had a runner talking about being stuck at mile 18 when they stopped the race, another runner from Colorado whose phone died and they ended up staying at some random person’s house.

“The whole experience was intense. There was a lot of security and a lot of national media focus. It was just such a relief for people after a long overhang from the arrests and the trials and the trauma of that whole week. There was a wildness to it.”

2014 was McCarthy’s first ever marathon. Sugrue paced him through it until Heartbreak Hill but McCarthy knew that his running mate had unfinished business from the year before.

“We never had a conversation about this until Monday,” says McCarthy who insisted to Sugrue as they embarked on that final section in 2014 that he should go ahead if he’s feeling strong. “I felt like I was holding him back.”

Sugrue blitzed through the final six miles in just over half an hour, an incredible pace of six minutes a mile.

This past Monday was similarly cathartic although in a slightly more muted way than 2014. Not since 1897 had anything prevented the marathon taking place. With over a third less runners admitted as a precautionary measure, the sheer drop in volume ensured a tamer affair. It was similar in tone to so many events these days — everyone happy and relieved simply to be involved, be they runners or onlookers.

“The atmosphere was great,” said Sugrue. “There was a great buzz in the buses on the way out, people that didn’t know each other chatting and sharing tips with newcomers.”

The dramatic difference from previous years was the lack of crowds at the start line. As soon as they got off their assigned bus, they basically started running. A long drawn out series of rolling starts.

“It was a little bit of a pity to miss that buzz but it helped with the nerves,” said Sugrue. “The roads were much quieter at the start because everyone was so spread out but once we got going into the route, the crowds were great.

“The security was noticeably higher but everyone was in good form. We kept reminding each other that we were there to enjoy the day and raise money for our respective causes.”

For Sugrue, whose day job is at AllianceBernstein, the cause pushing him onwards was the Irish American Partnership which supports education and community programs in Ireland. With two newborns arriving since February 2020, training was never the highest of priorities.

“I wasn’t in the market for heroics. I ran it just to enjoy it and revel in the fact that it was in-person again.”

The last six miles from Boston College and Heartbreak Hill through to the finish line brings the peak of the party atmosphere, just when the majority of runners are starting to hit their wall. This is not a place for the faint of heart and if you entered the race hoping for adequate amounts of social distancing throughout, this is where all hope of that fades dramatically.

“There are loads of people trying to hand you beers, chatting with you, running alongside you, waving funny support signs. It’s a cliché to say it was a celebration but it really was.”

One of McCarthy’s favourite marathon traditions while running is to enjoy the over-representation of Irish marathon runners who travel to Boston from clubs like Dunmore East, Athlone Harriers and Cork AC. “We realised what was missing halfway through the race.”

In just over three weeks, New York will have its turn. Larger in size but dwarfed by Boston in terms of its longevity, November 7 will usher in the 50th New York City Marathon. It promises to be a similar opportunity for a traumatised population to collectively enjoy their streets again.

And McCarthy, who ran Boston in memory of his Aunt Chris and the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, will be hoping another reconnection can happen in Manhattan.

The brother he hasn’t seen in almost two years, Seán Mac Cárthaigh, has booked a flight from Ireland to New York for early November and now both are wondering which exact day the EU travel ban will officially lift.

As are all those running clubs back home.

@JohnWRiordan