Runners take on Boston Marathon

Author: Sarah Luehrman

To run a marathon in itself is a truly outstanding achievement, but Middlebury seniors Lacee Patterson and Georgia Jolink didn't choose just any marathon they chose the Boston Marathon. On Monday, April 17, Patterson and Jolink were two of 20,117 runners to line up in Hopkinton, Mass., at the starting line of the 110th Boston Marathon and two of 19,688 to cross the finish line 26.2 miles east at Copley Square in downtown Boston. Over 1 million spectators were estimated to have attended the event, which has become a Patriot's Day tradition in Boston as prestigious as any.

Not only is the Boston Marathon the oldest and most exclusive in the world, requiring most runners to achieve a qualifying time in order to enter, it is hailed by many as one of the toughest, particularly notorious for its hills. Jolink finished in four hours, two minutes and 35 seconds, averaging 9:16/mile, and Patterson finished in 3 hours, 43 minutes and 29 seconds, averaging 8:32/mile. "I won't say the Boston Marathon is the hardest thing I've ever done," said Jolink, who was available for comment before and after the race, "just one of the hardest."

Marathoners train for months for the big event, and many of those who wish to run Boston must run another marathon in the preceding year in order to establish a qualifying time. Jolink and Patterson, however, ran with the Multiple Sclerosis Society and were therefore entered without having to qualify. They applied to run with the team and were accepted along with 48 other runners with a connection to MS. Invitation to run with the team requires participants to raise at least $2,500 each. Patterson and Jolink ran on behalf of Patterson's mother, Susan Patterson, a veteran marathoner who was diagnosed with MS several years ago. Susan remains, in Jolink's words, "really healthy and just an inspiring woman." She ran the New York City marathon last fall and plans to run the Chicago marathon in October. For Jolink and Patterson, Boston 2006 was the first marathon, undertaken for an important cause and for a love of running.

Jolink began running recreationally as a high school student and decided to join the cross-country team her senior year "in an attempt to stay in shape." She discovered, however, that she hated being forced to run, "especially to run fast," so she ran the bare minimum of cross-country meets necessary to get a letter. "I know, I was a slacker," she confessed. Upon her arrival at Middlebury, however, Jolink met other girls who ran recreationally, including Patterson, so she began running again, starting with three-mile runs and gradually increasing her mileage. Her sophomore year, she ran two half marathons, and "that's when I got the marathon bug," she recalled. "I thought, if I can do 13.1, I can do twice that. Admitting to that last statement puts me in a very small percentile of people that can only be classified as crazy running fanatics." To be more precise, Jolink's and Patterson's accomplishment in running Boston puts them in the .01 percent of Americans who have finished a marathon.

Two days before the race, both women were "ready to run the damn thing," in Jolink's words. Indeed, they have been training since December and persisted through the elements of a Vermont winter to get those long training runs in. Amazingly enough, though she was running 30-50 miles a week during training, Jolink reports having been driven inside to the treadmill only twice. "I guess I took every road out of Middlebury at one point or another," she said, "and somehow ended up back at home." Finding a way to sustain oneself during a distance run is always a challenge, and one that the women addressed creatively. "I used the church in Weybridge as a water stop - lots of drinking from the faucet using my hand - and I would do loops around my house for another water stop," says Jolink. She also claims that "Gatorade and Powergels have saved my life," even though she once thought of Gatorade as "an excuse to drink sugar instead of water."

Patterson and Jolink's training program provided by their MS team captain consisted of five runs a week. They acknowledge that the challenges of training in Vermont, particularly its hilly roads, prepared them well for Boston, providing a warm-up for the rapid changes in elevation that runners must endure throughout. Indeed, the physical and mental trial of the infamous hill section is one of the features that make Boston such a challenging marathon. But the prep work was done for Patterson and Jolink; they had logged the miles, they had been carbo-loading for two days, and they were as ready as they were going to be.

The course begins in Hopkinton, Mass. with runners starting in waves, fighting to avoid being trampled at the start line. After four miles of downhills, runners experience a moderately flat section of about eight miles before another downhill stretch about two miles long. Said Jolink, "I would advise anyone running Boston to start out slower than you want to at the beginning....the downhill feels so good, and then you pay for it when your quads don't work at the end of the race."

At the 16-mile mark, the course begins to climb, gradually at first, to a sharp increase in elevation between miles 19 and 21 in Newton, Mass. This is known as Heartbreak Hill, and it has earned its name from 110 years of runners struggling to conquer it, having already run 19 miles. Once they reach the top, as they cross from Newton into Brookline, the elevation drops again, and they are in the home stretch. Jolink, however, having trained through the rolling hills of Middlebury and its surrounding area, confesses that she didn't even know she had climbed Heartbreak Hill. "In fact, since your toes have been driving into your shoes from running downhill and braking constantly," she remarked, "that part feels really good on feet, butt and legs." The toughest part for Jolink was reaching mile 24, but once she was there, she knew she would make it. In those moments when she wasn't sure she could finish, "I thought how ridiculous I would feel if I dropped out after working so hard and running so far."

After crossing the finish line, being wrapped in the traditional space blanket and enduring an hour of delirium, Jolink said she refreshed herself with Gatorade, food, a shower and a massage. "I realized that anyone can run a marathon if they really want to," said Jolink, looking back on the race. "It takes a tough body and an even tougher mentality, but it can be done."