Book Club

Read ‘Running Home,’ our favorite reader essay about Marathon Monday

Read Anri Wheeler's winning essay about running the Boston Marathon.

April 14, 2023

3 minutes to read

There’s something special about the way Boston comes together on Marathon Monday. That energy that runs through the city inspires hundreds of thousands of people to take on the challenge of running from Hopkinton to Boylston Street every year for over a century.

We asked Boston.com’s Book Club readers to draw their own inspiration from Marathon Monday and share a piece of writing about their favorite memory of Boston’s biggest sporting event. In our favorite essay submission, Anri Wheeler writes about what it was like to fall in love with Boston while running the marathon in 2019.

“Running Home”

I was a few years shy of a decade living in Massachusetts when I ran the Boston Marathon in 2019. It was electric. As a born and bred New Yorker and long-time marathoner, I hadn’t felt the draw of the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston the way others do. But I was honored when asked to join the Boston Children’s Museum team, running to raise money for an organization that helped ease our transition to Boston when my husband, Dave, and I moved from New York with a one-year-old and our second child on the way.

As I made my way east from Hopkinton, connecting the dots between places familiar and new, I was surprised at how much it felt like I was running my hometown race, in a different way than when I ran the New York City Marathon in 2013. The New York crowds are unparalleled, but my people — Dave and my parents with two littles in tow — couldn’t squeeze onto the spectator-packed subway with a stroller and had to abandon trying to see me before I entered Central Park. In Boston, I ran by numerous friends spread out across the course, able to get close enough to give high fives and yell thank yous as I ran by.

I am a reluctant Cantabrigian and New Englander. After four years of college in Western Mass., I was ready to put the state in my rearview, returning to my beloved Manhattan after some years abroad in Hong Kong and São Paulo. But Dave’s job pulled us here in 2011 when I uttered the now laughable, “I’ll give you two years, then we’re moving back.”

I thrive in big cities. I was raised with Boston as the punchline of many a joke. I am a third-generation Yankees and Giants fan.

And yet.

I found myself tearing up as I ran by a marriage proposal in Natick and beamed as I passed through the Wellesley Scream Tunnel. I spotted a spectator in a Yankees hat and we exchanged smiles as I yelled, “Go Yankees!,” appreciative that some parts of me will never change even as I become accustomed to driving everywhere and watching my kids grow into hardy New Englanders. Soon after, I saw Dave and our three daughters standing together with the friends who have been my lifeline since moving to Cambridge. I reveled in the lightness I felt, despite my tired legs.

Putting those two moments together in quick succession, I realized that I didn’t have to choose. I will always be a New Yorker, and, with each mile that brought me closer to Boylston Street, to the finish line of my ninth marathon — the spot where so much pain and happiness have co-existed — I was running home.

Anri Wheeler is a writer, educator, and mother to three strong daughters. She is an alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Tin House, VONA, and GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator, and is the reviews editor for Pangyrus magazine. Find her work at anriwheeler.com.