Seasoned runners, first timers go from start to finish

By Tim Healey, Maggie Quick and Jaclyn Reiss | GL OBE CORRESPONDENTS |APRIL 20, 2014

MICHELE MCDONALD FOR THE GLOBE Leah Stearns, Brookline Sterns, 33, is running to finish the 2013 RUNNING IS a family affair for Brian Herr, a Hopkinton selectman and Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge founding participant. He met his wife, Mary Murphy, at a social for Dana-Farber runners years ago. They ran the Boston Marathon together that year, and the next. Then the first of their five children was born, and Murphy took a break from racing. Last April, two of their daughters were running the last 6 miles of the race by Herr’s side when the bombs went off, and the three of them were forced to stop at mile 25.5.

This year, which marks the 25th anniversary of the first Dana-Farber Challenge, Herr, 51, and Murphy, 46, will be running together again. It will be Murphy’s fifth Boston and Herr’s 27th (he ran the course as a “bandit” for two years before the fund-raiser for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was started). Their children will be cheering them on.

Herr is the only Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF member who has run every year since its launch. Brian Herr The 51-year-old One year, he even ran after a skiing accident that selectman, who will be running with resulted in broken ribs and a collapsed lung eight his wife, is the only person who has weeks before Patriots Day. Boston is also the only run the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge every year since its marathon Herr has ever run — he’s trained for founding 25 years ago. others, but never made it to the starting line.

It is no surprise, then, that last year’s tragedy is not going to stop him from taking part in the long-anticipated anniversary race. Even though he started shaking with emotion at a recent Board of Selectmen meeting with the Boston Athletic Association, and when he runs his thoughts drift toward those who lost legs in last year’s bombings, he’s ready to cross the finish line this year.

“I’m excited to stand up and say ‘I’m doing it; get out of my way,’ ” Herr said.Maggie Quick

THIS YEAR’S MARATHON is going to be, in the words of Kristina Burkey, “the best date ever” for herself and her husband, Rob . The Ashland couple have been training with the Dana- Farber Marathon Challenge group for months, and they are itching to cross the finish line together after years of doing almost everything, except running the Marathon, as a pair. “Our pastor said we should teach a marriage class because we can survive a trip to Target together,” Kristina, 32, said.

“Marriage is a team effort,” added Rob and Kristina Burkey, AshlandThis 30-something couple’s wedded bliss might include a few more blisters Rob, 33. “It becomes even more so than most, but the two are looking forward to running when you’re training together.” the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge together.

The Burkeys, who will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary in September, had watched the elite runners cross the finish line and then gone to Kenmore Square to grab a bite to eat when the bombs exploded last year.

On their way home, Kristina started to work on persuading Rob to run the Marathon with her this year.

“If we’re going to run it together, this is the year to do it,” Rob said.

Training together means 18- and 20-mile runs aren’t lonely, and also eliminates the “runner’s widow” dilemma, which can lead to the nonrunner “picking up the slack and running errands” during training, according to Rob. They also don’t have to worry about one spouse having more energy than the other.

“We’ll run together, we’ll both go to the grocery store and complain the entire time we’re there, and then we’ll sit on the couch for five hours,” Rob said.

Rob was introduced to running as a patient in the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge’s partner program, where his runner encouraged him to run the Marathon someday.

Monday’s installment will be his third Boston Marathon, and Kristina’s second. They’re looking forward to creating shared memories together on race day, rather than having one standing in the crowd and the other darting past in the street.

“It will just be nice to have an experience like this together that we won’t have to try to describe to each other,” Kristen said. Maggie Quick

AT 77, HANS THAMHAIN will be the oldest runner from Framingham to compete in the Boston Marathon. But the Bentley University professor is no stranger to Heartbreak Hill: Thamhain said he has run every Boston Marathon since 1981, barring three.

Hans Thamhain of Framingham Stopped several blocks And he doesn’t see himself stopping from the finish line on Hereford Street a year ago, the 77- anytime soon. year-old takes pride in being the oldest runner from his adopted hometown.

“If I can still walk up to the starting line, I’m going to try again next year,” he said. “I’m taking it one year at a time.”

Last April, Thamhain was on Hereford Street, ready to turn onto Boylston and run the last few blocks to the finish line, when he was stopped short.

“I was only a half-mile from the finish,” he said. “We didn’t know what was happening. There was confusion from the sidewalk — people told us there was an explosion, but I didn’t realize until I got home the extent of the whole tragedy.”

Thamhain said he is confident that Monday’s event, with the second largest field in the race’s history, behind only the 100th anniversary running in 1996, will likely be “the safest marathon I ever ran, given all the precautions for this year’s run.” He said finishing this year’s race will also prove to be “a little more emotional,” but said he does not fixate on last year’s violent events.

“At my age, I have weathered many storms, and this is not the thing that keeps me up at night,” he said.

Born in Germany at the dawn of World War II, Thamhain spent his first quarter-century in his native country. However, he said, he sees Greater Boston as his true hometown.

“I consider myself a Bostonian,” he said, after living in the area for 40-plus years. “Germany is my background, but I work here. I have friends here. This is where my home is.”

As for this year, Thamhain said, his main goal is to simply make the Marathon’s qualifying time of 4 hours 40 minutes so that he has a fair shot of running the race again at age 78.

“It’s kind of a dubious honor, to be the oldest running from Framingham,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’ll take it.”JACLYN REISS

IF NOT FOR the bombings at last year’s Marathon finish line, Amy Miller might not have made the leap to begin training for her first 26.2-mile run.

Miller, who turned 47 on Wednesday, will run the route from Hopkinton to Boston for the YMCA’s MetroWest branch in Framingham.

Before February, the longest distance Miller had run was 5 miles. But when she found out the MetroWest Y had an official Marathon number to dole out, she jumped at the chance to be part of this spring’s race, with all of its emotional significance.

“I don’t think I would have done it if it hadn’t been this year,” the Natick resident said. “The Y is all about community, and strength. That’s why I’m running for them, and running in a year when showing strength is so important. That goes full circle for me.”

Miller uprooted her life in Connecticut, where she had lived her whole life, to move to Natick a few years ago to be with her partner.

Feeling like an outsider, Miller said, she found Amy Miller, NatickThe 47-year-old the Y served as a place of both solitude and mother of one is running for the belonging. MetroWest YMCA in Framingham; to date, she has raised $4,400 with a goal of $5,000 “For someone who was feeling disconnected to the community, it was a place to go and feel like I knew what was going on,” she said.

By day, Miller is a grant writer for Screening for Mental Health Inc., a nonprofit organization. By night, she is a mom with a 2-year-old son. But in between work, family life, and training, Miller has been gathering donations for the YMCA: Last week, she was just $100 shy of her $4,500 goal.

“I had to train intensively quickly for it,” Miller said of the Marathon. “But I thought, it has to be this year. This is the motivation I need to finish this Marathon.” JACLYN REISS

MELANIE CAMPBELL has no relation to Krystle Campbell , one of three people killed when two homemade bombs went off near the Marathon finish line last Patriots Day. Melanie, a New Jersey native who now lives in Wellesley, was working at her office in Natick during last year’s race.

But when her father-in-law, University of trustee Richard Campbell, started a scholarship fund in honor of Krystle, who had attended UMass Boston, it was easy for Melanie to decide to join the team running in this year’s event to raise money for it.

“For me, I could see myself in her shoes,” said Melanie, a 37-year-old mother of three. “I have watched many Boston standing right there on Boylston Street. I saw pictures of her, her smile, and I just felt it really could’ve been me, or any of my friends, or any of my family that would’ve been there cheering on the Marathon runners.”

Campbell means that more literally than most people could. Her sister-in- law ran last year’s race — and finished a minute before the bombs went off — so her brother and mother were nearby.

The University of Massachusetts Krystle Campbell Scholarship will support female UMass students interested in pursuing careers in business, and the 15-runner team has raised about $60,000, according to Melanie.

And so when she makes the 26.2-mile trek Monday with a handful of other Campbells and UMass students, Melanie will remember Krystle and Melanie Campbell, Wellesley The 37-year-old others like her, shared surname or not. (second from right) is part of team running in honor of bombing victim Krystle Campbell (no “We’re all coming together and it’s relation) really been a bonding experience,” Melanie said. “This is the best day in Boston, and I really feel that way.”

TIM HEALEY

FOR THE LAST four months, Rus Lodi has been blogging while training for the 2014 Boston Marathon — about road races, about his late father, a decorated World War II veteran, about his wife Liz’s triumphant battle against breast cancer (she returned to run Boston in 2003 and 2004, raising more than $50,000 for Dana-Farber).

It’s been partly a fund-raising tool, partly a way to stay accountable for his running, partly an outlet to talk about it without bugging his family.

But until last week, he had never written about last April. “Anything I would say would sound like I’m whining, because all that happened to me was that I didn’t finish,” said Lodi, 58.

“When people lost their lives or lost their limbs, complaining about being stopped a mile from the finish seems a little bit trite.”

Like so many others, Lodi was unable to finish the race last April, forced to stop before he reached Massachusetts Avenue.

And like so many others, Lodi vowed to come back this April, turn right onto Hereford, left onto Boylston, and finish what he wasn’t allowed to last time.

This year is different for him for another reason: For the first time in 11 Marathons, Lodi is running to raise money for charity, specifically the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, which helps low- income and homeless people find someplace affordable to live.

In the past, the Newton resident participated in the Marathon as a journalist, or a bandit runner, or to help his daughter, Hannah, now 24, raise money.

This year, the two of them have collected more than $7,000 in pledges, and Rus has gained a new perspective on why the brutal training schedule is worth it.

“Given how freaking cold it was this winter,” Lodi said, “that motivation was certainly helpful.”

Describing how the race has evolved since Rus and Hannah Lodi, NewtonThe father his first Marathon in the early 1990s, he and daughter, age 58 and 24, are running to said, “You find yourself running down the raise money for the Metropolitan Boston street with someone who was raising money Housing Partnership for cancer research, or like last year running with someone who was raising money for Newtown,’’ the Connecticut community reeling from a school shooting in December 2012.

“So the back of the pack has become this really emotional place where there are a lot of fund-raisers.” TIM HEALEY LEAH STEARNS didn’t plan on running the 2014 Boston Marathon. The 33-year-old Brookline resident is a veteran of the Boston, New York, and Chicago marathons, and she had looked forward to running Boston last spring and then resting on her laurels to enjoy her family, focus on work, and maybe even take a vacation. Her daughter, Elizabeth, would be turning 3 this winter, so it was going to be nice to start teaching her to ski.

But as Stearns descended from Heartbreak Hill, made her way through Brookline, and hit a wall of people in Kenmore Square that ended her race last April, it became clear something was wrong.

“I knew instantly,” Stearns recalled, “that there was no way I could leave that unfinished.”

And so the training began anew in November.

Stearns is running with Team Brookline and raising money for the Brookline Community Mental Health Center, which provided $2 million worth of free and reduced-fee mental health services last year, including to some of those affected by the bombings. A week before the race, Stearns had raised well over $6,000.

Through all of the frigid, predawn runs — which sometimes required four layers of clothing, with the blue and yellow Marathon jacket on top — Stearns said, she kept in mind those suffering far more pain than whatever her sore knee caused her. “I haven’t finished the 2013 Marathon, and I’m excited to finish it on Monday,” Stearns said.

“I really don’t know what I’m going to feel when I cross the finish line.” TIM HEALEY