BOSTON — Sometime this evening Port Angeles native Colby Wait will bend to his one marathon eve superstition and enjoy a beer before he competes in the pinnacle of modern distance running — the Boston Marathon.
Wait, a 1993 Port Angeles High School graduate who returned to his hometown as a pharmacist, has been waiting for Monday’s race, a Patriots’ Day tradition in the Commonwealth of Massachusets since 1897.
He and his girlfriend, Lucy Flynn who ran the Boston Marathon in 2015, have been training for “the Super Bowl of marathons” for months.
“I’m incredibly excited to run this event,” Wait said. It’s kind of been the goal in mind the last couple of years. To be able to qualify and be accepted is like the graduation, and running it is like the postgrad party.”
Wait acheived a qualifying time for his 40-45 age group for the marathon previously, but unfortunately had to sit out when his mark was bumped by runners with faster finishes.
Such is the competition to be part of the throng of 30,000-plus runners traveling through a variety of Boston neighborhoods.
“That was incredibly disappointing and frustrating,” Wait said of the delay. “I thought I’d give it one more shot, train really hard and see if I could set a better time.” Wait did that in the Tacoma Marathon last May, running a personal-best time of 3:04.59.
He’s done his research on the course and said he feels prepared for its challenges.
“I get a little obsessive about that, so I’ve been scouting it out,” Wait said. “I feel like I’m in really good shape but Boston is a notoriously difficult course.
“There’s a stretch between miles 16 and 21 that is basically five miles of hills. And the last one of them is Heartbreak Hill, so it’s obviously a very tricky course with those hills in the latter stages.”
Wait ran cross country and competed in distance events on the Roughriders track and field team in high school, but the running bug didn’t bite again until he was in his 30s.
“I was doing some fairweather running in the summer on nice days or the weekends and I started getting my legs back under me and doing more and more distance,” Wait said.
“I ran the Rhody Run [in Port Townsend] a lot of times, ran the North Olympic Discovery Marathon 10K one year, and I thought I should probably just try something more since this was fun so I did the half-marathon three years a row and finally pulled the trigger on doing full marathons in 2014.”
Wait credits the area’s running scene and it’s greatest asset, the Olympic Discovery Trail, for fueling his passion for pavement pounding.
“To be quite honest, if we didn’t have the Olympic Discovery Trail and the organizations that support the NODM, and the GOAT Run and the OAT Run, having those facilities and those local races I’m not sure if I would have kept going,” Wait said.
“Definitely from my viewpoint a lot of credit goes to the PA community and the running community, like Larry and Michelle Little who started the NODM, Lorrie Mittman with the GOAT and the OAT runs and now Victoria Jones [current race director of the NODM].”
Marathon running even brought he and Flynn together.
“Our parents knew each other from college, but we met each other at the Seattle Marathon in 2015,” Wait said.
“We kind of knew who each other were before, but six months later we started dating. “We’ve done several races together and it’s fun to have a partner that has that shared interest with you because running is such a solitary sport. But on race days everybody comes together to celebrate each other and lift each other up.”
Wait and Flynn will have family on hand to cheer them on during the race.
“My parents are coming and my brother and his wife live in Brooklyn so they will come up to see us. And her mom and some other family members are coming. We haven’t talked about where they will be on the course yet.”
The pair are making a vacation out of their marathon trip, catching a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park, visiting Revolutionary War historical sites and museums and enjoying spring on the east coast.
But before they can play tourist, they have a race to run.
“Lucy has been saying she’s going to eat an entire pizza after we finish the marathon,” Wait said.
“I’ll probably join her. And yeah, I’ll probably have more than one beer in celebration.”
