Word: marathonic
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...wasn't exactly the Boston Marathon I was priming for, but to hell with your Jerome Draytons, your 26-mile-and-then-some jogs, your beef stew. This was far more important...
This would undoubtedly be a better account of the Boston Marathon if there were space to tell the story of Bob Hall, who conquered the difficult course on a wheelchair in a time of about 2:40. Or that of Will Rodgers, a former winner and Boston's beloved All-American boy who, after leading in the early going, dropped out of the race in Newton with a leg problem. Or that of the hectic start at Hopkinton, where the record field of over 3000 runners vied with Paul Newman (making a movie on the race) for the overflow crowd...
...hardly a Mexican emblem. To be charitable, one could say the mistake was made because no one could believe the unheralded Bally had run a 2:15.44. After all, Veli Bally is not a household word, even if he was the only Turk entered in this year's BAA Marathon. (Try saying that name three times fast...
After the race, Bill Berkeley sat on a cot in the basement of the Prudential and talked quietly of what the Marathon had meant to him. Berkeley was no stranger to the 26 miles and 385 yards between Hopkinton's town green and the recovery room he and hundreds of others like him were resting in--he had tried the year before in the near-intolerable heat. He didn't make it in 1976, stopping after 17 miles. So Berkeley had hoped his second shot would erase that memory. "I didn't do anything but pass people...
Certainly Bally and Berkeley are worlds apart, in upbringing and education, in language and athletic ability. But their stories illustrate the variety of experience and the alwaysfresh quality of the Boston Marathon. There is enough space, by the way, to mention that Johnny Kelley the elder, the Marathon's 69-year-old institution, trotted across the yellow finish line roughly three hours and 30 minutes after he started. And the gray-haired runner was smiling...