Many runners and non-runners alike have heard of the Boston Marathon.
The event, which has taken place annually for the past 129 years, hosts athletes from around the world in an unforgettable run.
The scale is immense—each year, approximately 30,000 runners put on their running shoes and take to the pavement.
This year, the marathon had some representation from the Pembina Valley in the form of Kevin Harder.
Not only did he take part in the grand event, but he also finished the marathon with his personal best time.
It was an experience of such a scale that it will likely be unforgettable for the runner. In a word, he calls it “unbelievable.”
How does one end up in Boston running a marathon?
One might wonder how a person from Manitoba finds themselves in Boston running a marathon in the first place.
Harder calls it “logical progression.”
He says it all began just before 2016, when he decided to do a marathon relay in Winnipeg, in which his portion of the running was “around 10K.”
For some people, this would be achievement enough, but for Harder, it raised some questions.
“You start thinking, ‘What if I did twice the distance, roughly a half marathon? What kind of pace would I need to run? Could I do it?’”
The answer was a resounding yes for the Winkler runner, and it didn’t stop there. Now, nearly a decade later, Harder is a seasoned marathon runner whose events transcend borders.
His participation in the marathon on April 21st was his seventh event abroad.
What was Boston like?
When it comes to the scene in Boston, while the event seems impressive in writing, according to Harder, it is even more so in person.
“It was unbelievable,” he says. “Everything to do with the race is just on a much bigger scale than anything I'd ever experienced.”
Although the pressure and scale of the situation could have negatively affected Harder’s marathon performance, it was quite the opposite.
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Harder ran his personal best — he completed the marathon in 2:52:09, which was not exactly his expectation for the day.
“One of my goals was to run under 3 hours, but not necessarily to set a new personal best,” he says. “It was just to go there, have fun, and enjoy the experience.”
Harder says that his training for the marathon went well, so he took it from there.
Goal-driven
One of the secrets to Harder’s impressive achievement is his goal-oriented nature.
He says that his university career was benchmarked by achievements along the way, and his running career is the same, just in a different form.
“This was kind of new to me, pushing myself in a physical sense — seeing what I could do, seeing what kind of potential I had,” he says. “Some of that really intrigued me.”
‘Wondering if...?’
Of course, as any athlete knows, the physical battle is only half of it. Along the way, Harder has also encountered some daunting sights.
Namely, other runners, against whom there is always the temptation to compare.
“Especially [in that] first marathon, you look at the people who are running the really fast times,” he says. “One part of your head says, ‘There's no way,’ and the other part of your head says, ‘I wonder if...?’”
For Harder, the “wondering if” portion of the mental process is the part of him that asks just how far he can go.
He says it leads him to break the matter down into “bite-sized” pieces in his mind, which begins with finishing the run at hand and then working on the rest (including areas of improvement) step-by-step later.
Experiencing highs and lows in the desert
The Boston Marathon isn’t the only elaborate event that Harder has tackled.
In February, he also ran a 100K Ultramarathon in a unique setting — the desert. He says he finished this one in 12 hours and 21 minutes.
His experience with this marathon could be a testament to the overall value of running for anyone.
“That was a unique experience,” he says. “It's the longest I've ever gone before, and the race always, especially in ultramarathons, comes with a lot of highs and lows.”
For Harder, a low looks like nausea and running out of steam, but for his ultramarathon, he also had a remarkable experience at the end, when, after a full day of running through the desert and dealing with the warm temperatures, he felt a moment of renewal that would be miraculous to most.
“I've never experienced this before, but I felt it as the sun went down,” he says.
“Things are cooling off, my energy's coming back, and I'm feeling better, and my legs are coming back to me, and then for the last two hours or so, [I was actually] running at a decent clip again.”
While for some, running long distances is the stuff of nightmares, one might also see the beauty and significance in the highs and lows of a difficult journey that rewards the people who take it.
What’s next?
For Harder, the Boston Marathon had been a goal of his for the better part of his running career, so now that it’s finished, he says he needs to give “more thought” to what’s next.
He says one possibility (in a trend that continues his career of challenging himself to increase distances) is pushing past the 100k mark.
With files from Ty Hildebrand