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Boston Marathon: History by the Mile
Author and marathon veteran Paul C. Clerici's inside look of the Boston Marathon route and the history it holds.
From Hopkinton to Boylston Street, the beloved 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon mark historic moments and memories dating back to 1897. Town by town and step by step, follow author, journalist, and runner Paul C. Clerici as he goes deeper into each town and city along the route with firsthand descriptions of the course from the uphill climbs to the spirited sprints. Insightful anecdotes, from the naming of Heartbreak Hill to the incorporation of women runners, reveal meaningful racing heritage along the route. This comprehensive and unique journey also explores the stories behind notable landmarks, statues, and mile markers throughout the course. Woven into the course history is expert advice on how to run each leg of the race from renowned running coach Bill Squires. Whether you're a runner, spectator, or fan, "Boston Marathon History by the Mile" has it all.
From Hopkinton to Boylston Street, the beloved 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon mark historic moments and memories dating back to 1897. Town by town and step by step, follow author, journalist, and runner Paul C. Clerici as he goes deeper into each town and city along the route with firsthand descriptions of the course from the uphill climbs to the spirited sprints. Insightful anecdotes, from the naming of Heartbreak Hill to the incorporation of women runners, reveal meaningful racing heritage along the route. This comprehensive and unique journey also explores the stories behind notable landmarks, statues, and mile markers throughout the course. Woven into the course history is expert advice on how to run each leg of the race from renowned running coach Bill Squires. Whether you're a runner, spectator, or fan, "Boston Marathon History by the Mile" has it all.
- GenresSports
144 pages, Paperback
First published March 16, 2014
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29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 21, 2023
"Boston. That’s it. That’s all you need. If you’re a runner or a fan of running, that one word is all that’s required to convey the pinnacle of the sport. The Boston Marathon is considered by many as the ultimate goal—the highest achievement—for a marathoner, especially to those who will never reach the professional ranks or the Olympics."
...
By the numbers: 27,000-plus entrants; nearly 100,000 visitors to the three-day expo; 14,000 volunteers, medical, security, police, and officials; over 1,000 media personnel (second only to the Super Bowl); and more than 500,000 spectators, one thousand portable toilets, and nearly 330 medical volunteers put in two thousand combined hours to assist runners and spectators who require attention, which on average range between 1,000 and 2,000 people per year.
...
Weather-wise, April in New England runs the gamut. The race has featured sleet (1907), snow (1908, 1925), snow squalls (1961, 1967), and mist so dense that it prevented helicopters from flying to provide the usual wire-to-wire television coverage (2002). Rain has also pelted the runners, most notably in 2007, when a strong wind-swept-rain nor’easter prompted nearly 2,500 bib numbers to go unclaimed and the elephant-in-the-room possibility of cancellation to linger into the early morning hours on race day.
The most common weather-related foe for runners, of course, is the heat. While the Boston Marathon has experienced many years in the ’70s and ’80s that were most uncomfortable and potentially dangerous to the participants, there was extreme heat in 1905 (one hundred degrees), the 1909 “Inferno” (ninety-seven degrees), 1927 (eighty-four degrees, which promptly melted newly paved portions of the course), the “Run for the Hoses” in 1976 (ninety-six degrees), 2004 (eighty-six degrees) and 2012 (eighty-nine degrees), the last of which elicited the BAA to take unprecedented measures.
...
"According to the BBA, including the 2013 race, there have been more than half a million entrants since its inception—550,436, to be precise. From 18 entrants in its first year to a record peak of 38,708 in its 100th in 1996, it took ten years before there were more than 100 entrants for Boston (105 in 1906) and seventy-two years before an entrant field cracked 1,000 (1,014 in 1968). The running boom of the 1970s provided steady growth in the thousands, with peaks of 9,629 in 1992 and 9,416 in 1995. And after the record centennial field in 1996, and a yearly average of 14,000 from 1997 to 2002, entrant numbers since 2003 have averaged 24,000 a year, with a steady annual range of over 26,000 since 2009.
...
Tips: Squires points out that the start is so dense and quick that even when the occasional entrant trips, the collective mass of the constantly moving force can keep them upright and proceeding forward. “I’ve seen it! They fell, but guess what? They were held up because [the field] was so thick!
When you get to the start, please go to the far left of the course. Hang out there. Don’t stay on the right side because they’ll push you into the middle... The 165-foot drop over about the first three-quarters of a mile at the onset is immediate and potentially dangerous... According to the BAA, this area within the next mile or so—from the dips of Newton Lower Falls at around sixteen miles to the Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Country Club golf course at seventeen miles—is where the most people drop out of the Boston Marathon.
...
By the numbers: 27,000-plus entrants; nearly 100,000 visitors to the three-day expo; 14,000 volunteers, medical, security, police, and officials; over 1,000 media personnel (second only to the Super Bowl); and more than 500,000 spectators, one thousand portable toilets, and nearly 330 medical volunteers put in two thousand combined hours to assist runners and spectators who require attention, which on average range between 1,000 and 2,000 people per year.
...
Weather-wise, April in New England runs the gamut. The race has featured sleet (1907), snow (1908, 1925), snow squalls (1961, 1967), and mist so dense that it prevented helicopters from flying to provide the usual wire-to-wire television coverage (2002). Rain has also pelted the runners, most notably in 2007, when a strong wind-swept-rain nor’easter prompted nearly 2,500 bib numbers to go unclaimed and the elephant-in-the-room possibility of cancellation to linger into the early morning hours on race day.
The most common weather-related foe for runners, of course, is the heat. While the Boston Marathon has experienced many years in the ’70s and ’80s that were most uncomfortable and potentially dangerous to the participants, there was extreme heat in 1905 (one hundred degrees), the 1909 “Inferno” (ninety-seven degrees), 1927 (eighty-four degrees, which promptly melted newly paved portions of the course), the “Run for the Hoses” in 1976 (ninety-six degrees), 2004 (eighty-six degrees) and 2012 (eighty-nine degrees), the last of which elicited the BAA to take unprecedented measures.
...
"According to the BBA, including the 2013 race, there have been more than half a million entrants since its inception—550,436, to be precise. From 18 entrants in its first year to a record peak of 38,708 in its 100th in 1996, it took ten years before there were more than 100 entrants for Boston (105 in 1906) and seventy-two years before an entrant field cracked 1,000 (1,014 in 1968). The running boom of the 1970s provided steady growth in the thousands, with peaks of 9,629 in 1992 and 9,416 in 1995. And after the record centennial field in 1996, and a yearly average of 14,000 from 1997 to 2002, entrant numbers since 2003 have averaged 24,000 a year, with a steady annual range of over 26,000 since 2009.
...
Tips: Squires points out that the start is so dense and quick that even when the occasional entrant trips, the collective mass of the constantly moving force can keep them upright and proceeding forward. “I’ve seen it! They fell, but guess what? They were held up because [the field] was so thick!
When you get to the start, please go to the far left of the course. Hang out there. Don’t stay on the right side because they’ll push you into the middle... The 165-foot drop over about the first three-quarters of a mile at the onset is immediate and potentially dangerous... According to the BAA, this area within the next mile or so—from the dips of Newton Lower Falls at around sixteen miles to the Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Country Club golf course at seventeen miles—is where the most people drop out of the Boston Marathon.
July 23, 2017
Inspiring but not enough details
April 4, 2019
Nice, simple history of the Boston Marathon.and many points of interest along the course. Plus some good tips for running the course as well. Serves its purpose well.
March 21, 2020
Excellent take on the esteemed Boston Marathon! An inspiring read.
January 15, 2023
I've got a lot of good little tidbits but it was very long in history and somewhat repetitive.
April 3, 2016
I read this book to get in the spirit for my own upcoming Boston marathon. It's obviously not intended to be high-browed literature, but it served its purpose perfectly well. It does what it claims it will do, gives a mile-by-mile description of the course along with stories of things that happened along the course in the past. It reads very much like a journalist account and there is minimal drama and no insights into any of the better-known characters in the very long history of this most-famous race. It probably would've been better to read the actual book instead of the Kindle version so I would have been able to see the pictures better. Overall, it's good as an overview of the course, which is all I expected of it, but not exciting at all, which it never claimed to be.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews