I ran the 1969 and 1970 Boston Marathons, plus several other races, with Bennett Beach, my friend on the college paper. But he had started a year before that, and he has finished every single Boston Marathon since then.
Today was #44, and once again he finished -- more of an accomplishment in recent years because he has developed a strange leg disorder. From the online results just now:
The Washington Post has a great story about Ben this morning, talking about his "other" life as a writer, lawyer, environmentalist, and political staffer, and his long determination to be at the Hopkinton start line every Patriots' Day. It also describes the longevity hunt: Johnny Kelley has the record of running 61 Boston Marathons and finishing 58. So Ben -- and a rival who started one year earlier and like him is still going -- work against time and injury toward that goal. Picture of Ben from the Post story.In other news, Geoffrey Mutai won today's race with the fastest marathon time ever. Congrats! But I was mainly looking to see how Ben Beach had done.
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James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best-seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.