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After the Boston Marathon, the clam chowder ritual begins
“I ate that chowder in record speed ... Two personal records in one day!”
Evan Wood does things a little differently on Marathon Monday.
The 32-year-old New Yorker has developed a unique tradition to celebrate running the Marathon each year: eating a quart of clam chowder.
This year marks the third time Wood has taken on New England’s favorite soup in heaping quantities, continuing a ritual he started in 2022, and repeated in 2023. The question, of course, is how it began.
After the first two Boston Marathons, he said, “I was shivering to death and love clam chowder a little too much.”
So after finishing the 2026 Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 37 minutes and 43 seconds — a personal record — Wood was famished.
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He returned to his hotel to shower, change into normal clothes and eat a sandwich (he had to eat something, he admitted), before heading to Legal Sea Foods in Downtown Crossing.
The “light jog into Boston,” he joked, was the most unhinged part of his day, followed by the quart of clam chowder — $29.96 worth.
“I ate that chowder in record speed,” he said. “Two personal records in one day!”
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