Derderian - Boston Marathon: year-by-year stories of the worlds premier running event

Copyright 2017, 1996, 1994 by Tom Derderian

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Excerpts from A.E. Housmans To An Athlete Dying Young from Collected Poems, London: Jonathan Cape. Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: Victah Sailer

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2428-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2429-7

Printed in the Canada

Dedicated to those who tried and tried again

A Boston Ballad

To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early, Heres a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.

The Runner

On a flat road runs the well-traind runner,

He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,

He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,

With lightly closed fists and arms partially raisd.

Walt Whitman, By the Roadside 1854, from Leaves of Grass

Contents

Forewords

Ive enjoyed listening to Tom Derderians running stories since our first meeting at a road race in the early 1970s. As a matter of fact, I think it was Toms own story and his enthusiasm for running that in part motivated me to train for my first Boston Marathon in 1979.

It has always been a treat to run with Tom, because he can make long training runs fly by with his seemingly endless store of running and racing stories. Whether we are running, carbo-loading, or watching over our young children, Tom continues to share with me countless running tales, stories with a special emphasis on his favorite event, the Boston Marathon. His memories of runs, races, and running-related gatherings are always vivid and on the mark. Tom has truly given all of us a gift in writing Boston Marathon: The First Century of the Worlds Premier Running Event. He is a student of the sport and an authority and historian of the Boston Marathon.

Perhaps the most special memories of my first run and win at Boston in 1979 are those of having dinner at Toms house the night before the race. As he prepared plates of pastas and sauces for his running friends, Tom recounted Boston Marathon lore from the early years right up to his current prerace strategy, which he hoped would make him competitive the next day among the elite athletes in the 83rd running of the marathon. Tom Derderians knack for describing competitors personalities, styles, and careers is extraordinary. In Boston Marathon , it is almost as if Tom gives each of us our own pair of running shoes to race beside the leaders from year to year, decade to decade. After reading Toms book, everyone will want to head to Boston, to run or to cheer.

Joan Benoit Samuelson

Two-time winner of the Boston Marathon and gold medalist in the first Olympic womens marathon

It is a special honor to be writing this foreword for Boston Marathon: The First Century of the Worlds Premier Running Event , not only because I know and respect Tom Derderian as a writer and runner, but especially because of his ability to focus on what is most important in the racethe human side. This book is no dry statistical tome; it is alive in the same way the Boston Marathon is.

If you have ever been to the Boston Marathon, you know the excitement, energy, and goodwill that surround this special event. Of course, what makes Boston a unique race, different from the marathons in New York City and London and Tokyo, is its old ageit has been run every year since 1897 over nearly the same course.

Being a marathoner himself, Tom Derderian is aware that the center stage must be for the athletes themselves, and rightly so! Tom details the lives of the men and women who have made Boston the best marathon in the world. They are a particularly hardworking group. What I enjoy most in the book is seeing the similarities of the athletes of 50 and more years ago to the present-day runnershow they all became obsessed with the Boston Marathon and kept coming back year after year.

To be honest, I believe there are few sweeter victories in sport than winning Boston. When you read Toms book, you will see how hard these athletes tried to make that dream come true. There are some touching stories and some outrageous ones. Tom doesnt shy away from the real story of the Boston Marathon, noting political and social events of each decade and the trends that changed the race over time.

I have always felt that the marathon is the king of sports. And certainly Boston is the king of marathons. Toms book is unique. There is nothing like it. He makes you feel as if youre at the race itself, running for victory.

Bill Rodgers

Four-time winner of both the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon

Foreword to the 2017 Edition

By Amby Burfoot, 1968 Boston Marathon winner, Writer-at-large, Runners World

I cant prove that reading about the Boston Marathon will add some sizzle to your long runs and your marathon racing at Boston. But I think its almost a guarantee. Thats why Im so excited about Tom Derderians update of his classic Boston Marathon history book.

Ive got one year to go before the 50th anniversary of my Boston win in 1968, and I want to be as fit as a creaky 71-year-old can be on that occasion. Which means Ill have to put in a regular dose of training milesthe kind of focused effort that takes a lot of motivation.

Since the beginning of my marathon-running career in the mid-1960s, Ive used books and articles about the Boston Marathon to inspire that training. The strategy always worked well in the past, and Im counting on it to keep me going in the future.

I must have almost a dozen Boston Marathon books on my office shelves. The first I remember reading was a little pamphlet-type thing put together by famed Boston Globe writer Jerry Nason. His obvious respect for the Boston Marathon and its participants literally thrilled me. We were so unappreciated by everyone else, particularly the newspaper types, in those early days.

I would say the same about Joe Fallss classic 1977 book, The Boston Marathon , the first to find itself behind the hard covers that denote a serious book (unless youre counting Clarence DeMars autobiography, which is also in my office). Falls was a noted baseball writer, but enamored of both the super-talented and wonderfully zany marathoners who showed up every April in Hopkinton.

Three years later, a Runners World editor, Ray Hosler, gathered a series of essays, reports, and fact sheets together to provide a deeper, more technical insiders view of Boston. I remember my wonderment at seeing a topographical map of the treacherous Boston course. Really? How could such a difficult route have such a downhill inclination?