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At Rochambeau, Boston Marathon runners met with applause and cowbells
Cheering on runners isn't just for the course. At restaurants around Boston, runners get ovations when they walk in.
From the course to inside restaurants, Marathon Monday is a day full of cheering and ovations for the runners who compete in the world’s oldest road race.
The scene at Rochambeau, a French restaurant in Back Bay, was no exception.
Runners and their guests were piling into the two-level restaurant on Monday, and around 3:30 p.m., several of them were greeted with the sounds of cowbells and applause from celebratory spectators.
Tad Beuchert, a 33-year-old charity runner from Beverly who ran for Team Mass Eye and Ear, walked into a boisterous ground floor of Rochambeau, with cheers largely coming from his family and friends, about 20 of them. In true Marathon Monday fashion, the rest of the diners inside Rochambeau joined in.
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“This is the spot to be,” Beuchert said about Rochambeau, located conveniently on Boylston Street. “They treat the runners really well.”
But it’s also the spectators that make Boston Marathon what it is, Beuchert added.
“They’re here to support [us], truly. I don’t think you’ll find this anywhere else.”
Beuchert had to make his way through multiple photo ops with family and friends before he finally made his way to a post-Marathon beer.
Another runner in his family group, Greg Gagne, a 43-year-old charity runner from Boxford who ran for Boston Children’s Hospital, also felt some love from applauding family and strangers alike upon his arrival at Rochambeau.
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He and his family — his wife Megan, daughters Bellamy, 11, and Bryn, 9, and others — have made it a tradition to come to Rochambeau for the last several years. After all, you can’t beat the proximity to the course.
The day of eating and drinking is mostly for spectators, while fresh-off-the-course runners like Gagne slowly sip on margaritas and cautiously eat spare fries off of plates.
But despite being tired from running 26 miles, Gagne said it’s worth it to stay out, at least for a little bit longer, to be part of the city’s energetic buzz that only comes on Marathon Monday.
“It’s the best day in the city,” Gagne said. “Everyone comes together. It’s positive. It’s electric.”
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