Left on Boylston. Right Into History

STATESBORO - The final stretch is only .35 miles long, but some say it looks 3.5 miles. After nearly 26 grueling miles, Boston Marathon runners have made it through the Wellesley College Scream Tunnel, up Heartbreak Hill, past Fenway Park’s CITGO Sign, over the Mass Pike. They’ve turned right onto right on Hereford and then left on Boylston. Then they run right into history. The historic Boston Marathon takes place every Patriot’s Day as 30,000 runners from around the globe descend upon the northeast for this iconic race. After a three-year setback due to COVID, Georgia Southern athletic trainer Nick Sparacio finally got his chance last month and conquered the challenge. GSEagles.com got a chance to catch up with him about his journey to get to the race and get his thoughts on the entire race day.

Q: First of all, how many marathons have you now run and how did you get into running?
A: This would be my fourth done. There’s a marathon near my hometown near Chicago in Naperville, Illinois. My qualifying race was the Skidaway Marathon outside of Savannah and then I also did a marathon that was part of the Wisconsin Ironman. I got into endurance sport after college starting with triathlons. And then just as things got a little bit busier with work and family and everything, so I just focused more on running. I worked my way up through the different distances of triathlon, sprint Olympic, half Ironman, and then started focusing on running and trying to achieve the pinnacle of running which would be the Boston Marathon. I trained for that for a couple years. I started in 2019 and was ready to go in the spring of 2020 and COVID hit up to put the clamps on everything for about two years. I was able to hold on to a pretty good amount of fitness through there and then when things opened back up, I was able to qualify last spring. I was scheduled to run the Skidaway Marathon in the spring of 2020 and then everything shut down so I never qualified. 

Q: What do you have to do to qualify for the Boston Marathon?
A: So for the Boston Marathon, you have to qualify for it. You can’t just sign up and run. You have to meet a certain standard that’s set at the beginning of the qualifying cycle. When I did it, for my age group, I had to run under three hours. You have to do that and that allows you to apply for a slot at the Boston Marathon. Depending on how many people meet the qualifying time, they can only accept 30,000 applicants and some of those are designated for charity stuff. So it’s a little bit less than that. So they’ll do an additional cut off that’s lower than that. So typically, people will try to run three to five minutes faster than what the qualifying time is. I ran Skidaway in just under two hours and fifty-seven minutes and made the cut.

Q: Can you talk to us about the days leading up to the race?
A: The marathon is on Patriots Day, which is a holiday in Boston. Everything is shut down. It’s on Monday. Marathon Monday. And so we flew up Saturday. We got up there in the afternoon. I had my wife and two kids with us and we just kind of got settled in before I went for a little jog through the Boston Commons and saw some of the statues there like The Embrace statue and the Civil War statue. I just took it easy and got some dinner. My parents came in Sunday and we went to the Expo, which is huge. I didn’t end up buying anything but went around to every exhibit. Another really interesting thing that was there was with it being the 10th anniversary of the of the Boston bombing, there was this  area as part of the Expo that taught emergency skills like CPR, emergency first aid and such. So I just thought that was interesting. Hopefully it never happens again, but those are good just life skills for people to have.  

Q: What were your feelings leading up to and then in the  race?
A:  So the Boston Marathon is unique in that it’s a point-to-point race. It’s not a loop, so you end in Boston, but you get bused out to Hopkinton, which is 26 miles west of Boston. Rain was forecast for the day and rain came during the day. So we bussed out there at 6:30 in the morning. There are five waves and I was in the first wave based on my qualification time. They’ve got a whole little village out there that has places for you to run or go to the bathroom or stretch. You can drop your warm-up clothes off and then watch the big screen with the pros and para-athletes start before the open-age group waves start. There’s just a lot of steps getting to the starting line because it’s such a big race as opposed to just everyone gathering up at the start line and they shoot the gun. There are certain corrals you go through, and there’s probably like three phases of that before you actually get to the actual start line. And then as we’re getting to the final corral at the start line it starts sprinkling and which we expected. The weather is out of your control and you just gotta roll with it. 

So the gun goes off. It’s sprinkling. The first four miles are actually downhill. People say try to pace yourself the first half of the marathon but it’s tough to do when you’re in a herd of people going downhill. You have to go with the pace of the pack or you’ll get trampled. There’s nowhere to go, but I was fine, knowing  I could handle that pace the first couple of miles. Morgan, my wife, had planned to catch the train to meet me at the halfway point. And she said you got to make it to the halfway point at such and such time or we’re not going to be able to catch the train back to the finish line to see finish. So I said alright, I can get to the halfway point in that time, I just don’t know how much I’m going to have left for the second half of the race, which is where all the hills are. So it’s raining I’m pretty much drenched probably by mile eight. I just kept picking up nutrition and hydration at every mile and at every aid station. 

I can’t say enough about the amazing spectator support. The entire 26 miles, there wasn’t a bare spot of spectators. Like I said, it’s a holiday so everybody’s out there. You pass kids and families, and you run through Wellesley College’s Scream Tunnel and Boston College. I made it to mile 13 and see Morgan. I said hi and gave her a kiss and told her it’s gonna be a little slower second half. I made the halfway point at an hour and 37 minutes so I was making decent time. And then all the hills started. I knew about where Heartbreak Hill was, but it was a little deceiving because it kind of inclines and plateaus, inclines and plateaus and inclines of plateaus. And there’s a couple other little smaller hills before it, but I definitely knew when I got to the top of that was Heartbreak Hill. I was pretty tired after that, but the last three or four miles are pretty flat or downhill and the crowd carries you through as you go through Boston College and then in downtown and then left on Boylston. 

As you get as you get into town into Boston, where you would typically see the two yellow lines in the street that separate the directions of traffic, there’s three blue lines and that takes you in probably the last mile or so. There’s a big CITGO sign near Fenway Park and that’s about the 1.2 mile mark. And then there are a couple signs that say left on Boylston. Right into history and that’s what it is. 

Q: What was your final time?
A: I ran it in 3:39.46, which achieved my goal of going under 4 hours at this race.

Q: Is this it for you, or will you try to do another one?
A: I think my next short-term goal is to just lower my marathon time down and to try to get close to 2:50.00. Long-term, I would like to try to do all six major marathons, which are Boston, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Chicago and New York. 

Q: Finally, the marathon was right in the middle of spring ball and you had to miss a few practices. What was the support like around her to cover your job as the athletic football trainer?
A: It was great. Our staff is great with Brandy Clouse and having Ashley Allenstein on staff with football. There was no question that there wasn’t going to be an issue with me going. They did a great job while I was gone taking care of the guys. The guys were supportive too. They sent me some pictures of them tracking along on the app that I saw after the race and they were all asking about it when I got back so it was a great experience. I’m glad I got to do it and I’m glad we have a support system around here to make it possible to make it to big life events like that.