One race, three stories for local runners at Boston

Graham Pearsall had sampled the Boston Marathon before, jumping in a few years back to accompany his high school track coach for the last 10 miles of the world’s most historic road race.

Contributed photo

BOSTON MARATHON — Monday’s run marked John Lemieux’s second Boston Marathon after a 3:52 clocking in 2003. He earned his spot in this year’s race at last May’s Sugarloaf Marathon, where he also finished in 3:52 — well under the men’s 70-74 Boston qualifying time. Warm temperatures in Boston affected his time this year. “It was really hot and we had a strong headwind,” said Lemieux, who completed his seventh career marathon in 4:17:30. 

The Dover-Foxcroft man ran the entire event for the first time Monday, and it lived up to his expectations.

“It’s exciting to be around 30,000 other people who share the same interest you do,” said Pearsall of the throng of runners in this year’s 26.2-mile race from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, to downtown Boston.

“A lot of times you’re training all winter by yourself and in Maine you lose track that this is an interest of other people, too. It’s nice to be in an environment where there’s tens of thousands of other people who share that same interest. I enjoyed that aspect.”

Pearsall, a 25-year-old director of communications and coach at Foxcroft Academy, was one of three Piscataquis County residents to finish the 120th Boston Marathon. He was joined by Henry Jao, an orthopaedic surgeon from Dover-Foxcroft, and John Lemieux, a retired woodsman and carpenter from Sangerville, among 206 Mainers registered for the race.

The full experience

Pearsall, a former distance runner at Foxcroft and Bates College, was the fourth-fastest Maine men’s finisher, overcoming temperatures in the low 70s, bright sunshine and a steady headwind to place 640th overall in 2 hours, 52 minutes and 15 seconds.

“Running Boston is a bucket-list item for any distance runner,” he said, “It’s the marquee distance race in the world, really. I was introduced to the Boston Marathon when I was a freshman in high school. My track coach at the time, Chris Almy, was running it and he invited me as well as his family to run the last 10 miles with him and I did that a couple of times and ever since that experience have wanted to run the whole thing.”

That desire to experience Boston’s full distance and atmosphere led Pearsall to run a qualifying race at the Sugarloaf Marathon in Kingfield last spring.

“It was a shock,” he said. “I had never run more than 19 miles before so those last seven miles were pretty brutal.”

He finished Sugarloaf in 2 hours, 47 minutes, and nearly matched that time in his Boston debut with a 6:35 per mile pace. Pearsall reached the midway point in 1:23:52, then ran the last half-marathon in 1:28:23 to cross the finish line just before 1 p.m.

“I ultimately hit a bit of a wall but I never let it completely go,” he said. “Considering all the factors I’m very happy with 2:52.

“This is my second marathon and I can say this one hurt a lot less,” he added. “I was pretty scared going into it because the Sugarloaf Marathon was eye-opening to say the least, but a marathon is a marathon and this was easier than expected.”

Keeping a streak alive

Jao, 59, is among a relatively elite group that has qualified for the Boston Marathon for more than 10 consecutive years — Monday marked his 11th straight appearance.

“Once I did a couple I never thought I’d do 10 in a row. Doing 11 in a row, I’m in a rut,” he joked.

Jao finished in 3:39:26, a satisfying effort because it qualified him for a 12th straight trip to Boston next spring and came despite having undergone knee surgery last August that kept him from running until February.

“I was happy with everything,” said Jao, who ran last year’s Boston Marathon with a torn posterior cruciate ligament and completed the Sugarloaf Marathon a month later while still nursing the same injury in order to qualify for Monday’s race.

“It was a beautiful day for running.”

Jao, who grew up in Greater Boston, didn’t start running seriously until after he moved back to the city from Nashville, Tennessee, more than a decade ago.

“I lived in Boston right off the Minuteman Bike Trail, the world’s busiest bike trail which goes from Cambridge all the way out to Bedford,” he said. “It was just two blocks from my house so I thought I’d just start running on the bike trail to stay in shape.

“I had never run before, but after a few months I ran my first 5K, and I thought I would never run anything more than 5K or 10K but that’s how I started.”

Jao ran his first marathon in 2003 and his first Boston Marathon two years later and now runs two or three marathons annually although he has trended more toward ironman triathlons in recent years.

Yet Boston remains a favorite destination each year.

“One thing I really enjoy is the pasta dinner the night before the race,” Jao said. “Every year we meet people from all over the world. This year we met people from southern England, and someone L.A. It’s really fun to go to that dinner and then the race and meet people from so many different places.”

Beating the heat

Lemieux, 71, ran cross country and track at Piscataquis Community High School in Guilford, then got away from the sport for two decades.

“When I was about 40 my daughter started running in high school,” he said. “I started running with her and basically have been running ever since.”

Monday’s run marked Lemieux’s second Boston Marathon after a 3:52 clocking in 2003. He earned his spot in this year’s race at last May’s Sugarloaf Marathon, where he also finished in 3:52 — well under the men’s 70-74 Boston qualifying time.

“I like the challenge of running a marathon,” said Lemieux, who does much of his training with retired teachers Gary Larson of Dover-Foxcroft and Peter Devine of Garland. “If you run a short race, a 5K or something like that, you run as hard as you can and you’re just all winded at the end. But if you run a marathon, you know you’ve got to pace yourself and keep going. You’ve got to use your head around Mile 20 to keep on going and get to the finish.”

Lemieux had hoped to finish Monday’s race in less than four hours but may have been hampered by the midday heat, which represented the warmest conditions he and the other Maine runners had experienced since last year.

“It was really hot and we had a strong headwind,” said Lemieux, who completed his seventh career marathon in 4:17:30. “I didn’t do as well as I thought I would. About Mile 13 I got some leg cramps, my hamstrings tightened up on me but I fought them off after a couple of miles. I put the liquids right to me. I don’t know if that was the problem or not, I thought I was drinking enough but evidently I wasn’t.

“After that it went pretty well. I ran every hill there was without stopping and I was passing a lot of people. A lot of people were walking. It was hot.”

Contributed photo

BOSTON MARATHON — John Lemieux, a retired woodsman and carpenter from Sangerville, among 206 Mainers registered for Monday’s Boston Marathon.