Running Boston Twice A Year

From Running Times online…

Gary Allen Loves Boston So He Runs it Twice Each Year

The 54 year-old Mainer runs it by himself on New Years and with everyone else on Patriot's Day

By Joe Wotjas

As featured in the April 2011 issue of Running Times Magazine

At 6 a.m. on Jan. 1, as most runners were still sleeping off their New Year's Eve celebration, Gary Allen was once again in Hopkinton, Mass., standing on the starting line of the Boston Marathon. And just like he's done for the last six years, the 54-year-old resident of tiny Great Cranberry Island, Maine, ran the course to kick off his year, this time in 3:19.

"It always seems like a really nice, symbolic way to start the year," he says. "It's the least crowded day of the year along a magnificent piece of road. And you can't believe you're doing it all alone."

The tradition began in 2004, when he and his family were in Boston for New Year's Eve and he had a 20-miler planned for the next day. That's when he began wondering what it would be like to run the marathon course instead. "I was pretty much done with having a few too many beers on New Year's. I wanted to do something special," he recalls.

So the next morning he was in Hopkinton, where it was clear and calm with a bit of snow on the ground. "The last time I had been there was in April for the marathon, so it seemed surreal," he says.

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