A 30-time Boston Marathon runner will be memorialized near her favorite part of the route
Nona Cerveny, who died in October, held the longest Boston Marathon running streak for women at the time of her last race.
Tara Moscaritolo will be back along the Boston Marathon course this June—it’s a route she knows well from both a childhood spent cheering for her mom and from running it herself. She’ll be revisiting the Wellesley leg to dedicate a bench to her mother, Nona Cerveny, who died from cancer this past October at 66 years old.
“When your legs get tired, run with your heart.”
That’s what the bench will read, along with Cerveny’s name and her Boston Marathon count: 30, all consecutive. At the time of her last Marathon, Cerveny held the longest Boston Marathon running streak for women. (Patricia Hung, 69, completed the 2016 Boston Marathon to also bring her streak up to 30, according to the Boston Athletic Association.)
“We had seen that [quote] in posters throughout the Marathon over a couple of years,” Moscaritolo said. “Especially last year… She got a little teary-eyed when she saw that.”
2015 was Cerveny’s last Boston. She and Moscaritolo ran it together, though they mostly walked and clocked in at about eight hours. In August 2014, Cerveny had brain surgery to remove a golf ball-sized brain tumor. Between October 2014 and February 2015—just months before Boston—she underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
Nona Cerveny and her daughter Tara after running the Boston Marathon in 2014.
“I guess I just didn’t think that anything would stop her. I kind of thought it was a bump in the road when she was first diagnosed,” Moscaritolo said. “When [my husband and I] went to visit… I cried after seeing her, because I said, ‘That’s not my mom.’”
Ever since Moscaritolo was around eight years old, she said she’s seen her mom as a runner, meeting her running groups every weekend and watching her cross the finish line at countless races. They lived in Rhode Island at the time, and Moscaritolo remembers that her mom was running on Providence Boulevard one evening when someone asked her if she was planning to run Boston.
“I can’t even remember how she got her first number, but from there on through all of her training, I would just laugh, because every year [she’d say], ‘Oh, that’s my last one,’” Moscaritolo said. “She would just keep on going, every year.”
Nona Cerveny and her daughter Tara with their Boston Marathon medals in 2015.
Cerveny got really fast, Moscaritolo said; she guessed that her mom ran Boston as quickly as three hours and 21 minutes one year. Eventually, she didn’t even have to qualify anymore. She became part of the Boston Marathon’s Quarter Century Club, a self-named club for those who have completed the race for 25 or more years.
Cerveny and her family used to live about 45 minutes outside of the city, and experiencing the Marathon was just what they did—they had off for Patriot’s Day and traveled into Boston. Moscaritolo, her brother, and her dad would meet Cerveny at the Marathon’s 10-kilometer mark and then again at the finish line.
“Amazingly, every single year we’ve gone out to find her on the course, we always found her,” Moscaritolo said. “Thousands of people, and just like that.”
Even when Cerveny moved to Arizona—to follow Moscaritolo, who had moved to Colorado—she came back to run Boston every year. She would have to run early while training, before it got too hot; Moscaritolo remembers her mom calling her around 7 a.m. when she would be out.
Moscaritolo picked Wellesley for the memorial bench because that was Cerveny’s favorite part of the course, the section with the screaming girls.
“She always joked around—before we even knew she was sick—saying, ‘Someday, I want my ashes spread along the Boston Marathon route,’” Moscaritolo said. “She did give me the word that it didn’t have to be along the entire route; I didn’t have to run it. So my brother and my cousin and I all discussed what would be a lasting tribute to her, and looked at getting a memorial bench.”
Nona Cerveny with her Boston Marathon quilt.
In late June, Cerveny’s loved ones, including family, friends, old running buddies, and a group of women she kept in touch with since high school, will meet at Morton Park near Wellesley College to dedicate the bench in her honor.
“Her drive for wanting to do it every year—I don’t even know what to say—it was just part of her,” Moscaritolo said. “She just wanted to show that she could pull through another year.”
The Wellesley bench won’t be the only memorial for Cerveny. Moscaritolo has her mom’s Marathon medals, a quilt Cerveny stitched out of Boston shirts, scrapbooks of ribbons and race numbers, and, soon, Moscaritolo’s own daughter, who will be named Josie—Cerveny’s middle name.
Nona Cerveny running through Wellesley’s “Scream Tunnel” in her last Boston Marathon in 2015.
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