For runners, physical toll of marathon is a ‘badge of honor’
There’s the marathon swag that everyone recognizes — medals, bibs, Tshirts. Then there are the other trophies, earned during the long slog of training and admired by only insiders.
Toenails so black they’d unsettle an equine podiatrist. Chafing intense enough to inspire a new shade of lipstick. Blisters as angry as Trump.
Charity runner Indu Manikkam wears her self-described “badge of honor” on her feet, in the form of hard, dead skin. With sandal season coming up, non-runner friends are urging a pedicure, but they don’t understand.
“I like calluses,” said Manikkam, who is raising money for Special Olympics Massachusetts.
Running can be so beautiful, so inspirational, so “Chariots of Fire” — graceful young men running along the water’s edge as a stirring theme song rises. In Hollywood, in poem, and often in real life, to run is to overcome adversity, to strive for your best in a harsh world, to help raise money that makes a difference in people’s lives.
But civilians be warned: the sport also has a less glamorous side. Come Boston Marathon day, if you find yourself chatting with a runner, no matter how desperate for small talk you are, do not ask about the toll training takes on the body.
I am speaking as a person who — for professional reasons — recently solicited such information, and has since been forced to absorb vivid descriptions of the things that don’t make the odes.
Hernias, shin splints, metatarsalgia, plantar fasciitis, tendinitis, ingrown toenails, IT band syndrome, ankle screws, spine screws, blood blisters, pulled hamstrings, torn meniscuses. Ears bloodied by the interaction of sunglasses, a hat, and headphones. Vomit.
I have been forced to imagine the stink of sweat so intense, no amount of washing can get it out. I have looked away from close-ups of deranged toes and clothes stained by bleeding nipples. I have had mental images of other indignities forced upon me.
“I have this incredible race photo of me finishing the London Marathon,” one runner began. The picture shows the runner — who requested anonymity
— with her arms raised in victory. Buckingham Palace is behind her and spectators are cheering. But all she can see, she said, “is that I clearly peed myself.”
Here’s a question: Who has it harder? The elite runners, who run at what looks like a grueling pace, but do get the whole thing over in a little over two hours? Or the charity runners, some of whom are going at such a (relatively) leisurely pace that they finish behind the official trail vehicle?
Boston Marathon race course director Dave McGillivray, who has experience going fast and slow, said both are “tough” — but a “different tough.”
Not only are the elite competitors running anaerobically, he said, “but they can’t even stop to tie their shoe — or shouldn’t.” (Although, he added, in 1975 when Bill Rodgers won his first Boston Marathon, he actually did stop to tie his shoe — twice.)
But as Melissa Rousselle, the founder of the 2,000-member strong Boston Charity Runners Facebook group, pointed out, “It can be almost harder to go slower.”
The sun that pokes through the clouds a few hours past start time has several extra hours to do a job on your nose and shoulders. The port-a-potty needs go on for nearly an entire work day. Five or six hours is a long time to spend on your feet.
There’s so much advice about running the marathon that considering it all becomes its own marathon. There are how-to’s on avoiding port-a-potty lines, carrying food in your bra, tuning out the cheering crowds so you don’t mistakenly exhaust yourself by going too fast, even dealing with running-induced marital tension.
But, as with the mother of all marathons — actual motherhood — you can never be forewarned enough.
“I had no idea what I signed up for,” said Alicia Gerbert a special education teacher who is running the marathon to raise money for Dana-Farber.
Her first marathon was Chicago in 2021, and since she’d already been running for a whole nine months, she asked herself, “How hard can this be?”
Oh, baby.
“The chafing was so bad I would bleed through my shirt . . . I had sore hips, back, knees, and shin splints . . . I encountered blisters on my feet from wearing either the wrong socks or wet socks from sweating . . . I also did not hydrate properly or have the best nutrition . . . so that caused me to become sick during several training runs . . .”
Life’s unfairness being what it is, of course the indignities don’t end at the finish line. Charity runner Chris DiOrio, 57, was driving home on the Southeast Expressway after the 2022 marathon — finishing time 6 hours 48 minutes — when the cramps that had been torturing him since Mile 17 struck again, starting in his left leg and moving to his right, extending from heel to thigh.
“I had to take my foot off the pedal and now I’m going 55 in a 65 [zone], and my speed is dropping,” he recalled.
He was desperate to pull over, but there was nowhere to go. His speed fell to 50, then 45.
Sure, he’d just raised thousands of dollars for Mass. General Hospital’s pediatric cancer clinic, but fellow motorists didn’t know that, and even if they did, well, “Pick a lane, buddy!”
“People were beeping,” he said, “and throwing fingers out the window.”
Alas, if there’s one thing no amount of training can help you with, it’s dealing with an aggrieved Boston driver.
‘I had no idea what I signed up for . . . . I had sore hips, back, knees, and shin splints.’ ALICIA GERBERT, a special education teacher who is running this year’s marathon to raise money for Dana-Farber