Meet the youngest runner in the 2023 Boston Marathon
Grant Drinkwater, of Danvers, is barely 18 and the youngest runner this year.
Runners participating in the Boston Marathon come from all over geographically and different walks of life. Their ages vary, with some runners near 18 – the minimum required for eligibility – and others tackling the course in their 70s or 80s.
The 2023 Boston Marathon:
This year, the youngest runner in the 127th marathon is just barely 18 — and he won’t have to travel far for the race.
Grant Drinkwater, of Danvers, Massachusetts, will be running the 2023 Boston Marathon just 20 days after his 18th birthday, joining the nearly 30,000 runners taking on the historic course on Monday, April 17.
Part of the decision to run, he told Boston.com, can be credited to his competitive nature.
He said when he was younger he would stay up and play video games for hours.
Now, things are different.
“I did a big shift from sort of a gaming marathon to a real marathon, which I’m really pleased with,” Drinkwater said.
The 18-year-old said he has “no formal running experience, per se.” He described himself as a bit of a hobbyist, tackling photography, coding languages, and various sports, too. His main sport is tennis, and before now, he said he wouldn’t have defined himself as a runner.
“The only thing I’d ever done was like a 5K once for Thanksgiving, maybe in middle school, but I have always really liked a good challenge,” Drinkwater said.
He’s running on behalf of the Make-A-Wish foundation.
Drinkwater said that he didn’t realize non-professional runners were allowed in the marathon until someone from his school ran for a charity last year. It was then that he decided he was going to do the same.
“I was kind of shocked, and so I felt sort of motivated to take on this challenge myself,” he said of hearing from his classmate that he could run to support a charity.
He started his training in August, and he’s raised more than $11,000 for the Make-A-Wish team, exceeding the $10,000 required.
“I just like pushing myself,” he said. “So I decided what the heck, I’m gonna go for it.”
Make-A-Wish has four runners participating in the 127th marathon, a spokesperson told Boston.com.
Drinkwater’s fundraising efforts got a boost from his grandfather, Dennis Drinkwater, a well-known Red Sox fan who owns seats behind home plate at Fenway Park. The elder Drinkwater is known for attending almost every game.
“If I ever want to reach out to him, he’s always happy to bring me to a game,” Drinkwater said.
This year, Dennis Drinkwater gave up his seats to help raise money for his grandson’s marathon fundraiser. The 18-year-old said his grandfather is planning to watch him run the race virtually on Marathon Monday.
“He apparently will be FaceTiming – which I didn’t know – but he’ll be on FaceTime with my parents to see me,” Drinkwater said.
The teen said he’s spoken to a few people who’ve run the marathon in the past and his strategy is to try and reserve energy to avoid burnout early on.
His goal is to run the race in under four hours.
“I do realize that Boston is a difficult course where the first half is all downhill, and [that’s] going to kind of feel amazing, you can kind of accomplish anything,” he said. “And then from what I’ve heard the second half, if you feed into that feeling of ‘it’s so easy, I’m feeling amazing at mile 10 or 12 ,’ then at mile 23, you might be really exhausted.”
After months of training, Drinkwater said in the week before race that he was feeling “marathon ready.” But he still has “just a little bit of butterflies.”
“Even some seasoned runners get a little bit of the jitters [because] of the crowds and things like that,” he said. “But otherwise, I’m feeling – I mean, because I’ve put in so much work into this and time that – I’m feeling quite confident.”
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