Unless there was a ball involved, Bill Spittler of Norwich said he used to avoid running. Harry Gardner, also of Norwich, has had an off and on friendship with running most of his life
Spittler, 54, and Gardner, 58, each completed their first Boston Marathon Monday, April 21. The Norwich residents earned spots in the 25,000-runner field with qualifying times at the Mohawk-Hudson Marathon last fall.
For Spittler, it was his seventh marathon since taking up running about six or seven years ago. “I kind of started running when my son Steven was in the eighth grade,” Spittler said. “I started with Pete Anderson, and just ran with him. He had hurt his back and got back into running, and he talked me into running my first marathon.”
Gardner competed in track and field throughout his childhood, and was a state meet qualifier as a high school student living in Hingham, Mass. on the south shore of Boston. He ran the mile and two-mile races on the track team, was involved in indoor track and field, and ran cross country in the fall. “I did pretty well in high school, and I’ve stopped and started (running) several times since then,” Gardner said, who says he would often grow tired of running, and move away from it for a bit before returning to the sport.
While Gardner has had much more experience with running, Spittler already had a half-dozen marathons under his belt before running Boston for the first time. He bettered the 3 hours and 35 minutes qualifying time in his age group – by two minutes – but had to prepare a little differently for Boston’s hilly course.
“Boston was definitely tougher (than Mohawk-Hudson),” Spittler said. “The first 15 miles are mostly downhill, and miles 16 through 21 are uphill. Going downhill so much, my thighs are so chewed up right now, and at about the 20-mile point, I started to cramp.”
Also at the 20-mile mark, Spittler met a friendly face, who accompanied him the final six miles. “Steven goes to school in Bentley (located in Boston),” Spittler said. “He ran the last six miles with me, and I was pretty much hurting at that point. It was nice to see his face.”
Gardner attempted his first Marathon about 25 years ago, and the experience was so bad, he swore off running another one. In his first attempt, he did not have an outlined plan for training, and hit the wall about eight miles from the finish.
About two years ago, Gardner said something clicked in his mind, and decided it was time to try another marathon. “A lot of my friends from the Boston area had ran the marathon, and I decided I would only run it if I could qualify,” Gardner said.
Using a 16-week program that he found in Runner’s World Magazine, Gardner met the cut-off time in his age group – six minutes under the prescribed time. He says the training through the winter months for Boston was much more difficult, and as a result, he finished a few minutes slower. “I finished, and that was the primary goal,” Gardner said. “I was very happy with that, but it wasn’t fast enough to automatically qualify for next year’s race.”
Will Gardner attempt to run another marathon? “Definitely not this weekend,” he said. “I’ll have to run another marathon later this year to qualify, and I’m thinking about it. I was so impressed with how the whole event (in Boston) was run and organized...we’ll see what happens with Albany again.”
Spittler had nothing but good things to say about his entire Boston experience, and after earning an automatic qualifying time of 3 hours, 45 minutes, will likely run it next year. “The crowd was so amazing with everyone cheering everyone else on,” Spittler said. “It was so upbeat. It was like running into a football stadium loaded with people.”