A cold beer and an ice bath are what awaited a New Westminster man after he completed the Boston Marathon on Monday.
Mark Alexander finished the 42-kilometre race with a time of 3:07:34, four minutes shy of his personal best.
“It was such a cool experience,” he told the Record in a phone interview from Fenway Park, the scene of the after-party. “We went by all the colleges, which is just amazing because all the kids are out there, just screaming and cheering everybody on. There wasn’t one point in the course where it wasn’t packed with people.”
Alexander, who didn’t stop once to walk, added he felt confident when the gun went off. But as the weather began to turn for the worse, he started to see it affect his performance.
“Halfway through, my time was good. I was at 1:31, thought I could improve on that and keep going, but then the rain and wind came, and it just got so cold that my legs got stiff,” he said. “It was hard to keep that pace up, so I had to give up on my goal and just enjoy the experience.”
When asked about other challenges along the way, Alexander said it was the last hill dubbed “heartbreak hill” where he could really “feel it.”
“My legs are really tender. Getting down to the subway after was a challenge. I was definitely using the hand rails.”
The Boston race was a first for the local, who qualified last year during the Vancouver BMO Marathon.
The first male athlete to cross the finish line on Monday was 25-year-old Lelisa Desisa, the Ethiopian who won the honour in 2013, the year of the bombings. Three spectators were killed and more than 100 others were wounded after two bombs detonated near the end of the route. The only other racer from the Royal City was Peter Scoates (3:54:10).
So what’s next for Alexander? He’ll be running in the Vancouver BMO Marathon on May 3, but this time, in the 21-kilometre category.
