Pounding away on the dirt coating of Green River Road, Nick Roosa prepared himself well for the 112th Boston Marathon.
The results spoke for themselves.
The Greenfield resident and Stoneleigh Burnham School chemistry teacher was the top local finisher at Monday’s race. Roosa’s time of 2 hours, 35 minutes and 59 seconds put him 61st overall, quite a feat for someone running Boston for the very first time.
“It was my slowest marathon time ever, but with the conditions the way they were, I was really happy with the place I finished,” said Roosa.
Rain, cold and wind kept times modest across the field. Roosa, running his fourth marathon overall, had hoped to break the 2:30 mark. But when the forecast firmed up leading into Monday’s race, he knew that number was out of the question.
“It was really bad,” he began of the conditions. “I’ve been running a long time, run some tough races, but I don’t think it can get worse than what we were dealing with. The wind was pretty much right in our faces the whole time.”
The 32-year old New York native moved to Greenfield for the 2017-18 school year. He qualified for Boston thanks to his performance at the New York City Marathon, and signed up in September after moving to the area.
“I knew I had to do it at some point,” explained Roosa of the decision to run Boston. “It’s Boston and I’m not getting any younger.”
While Monday’s race was the fourth marathon for him, knee surgeries in 2013 and 2014 slowed his running schedule down a bit. Roosa said this training cycle was really the first time since those surgeries that he felt fully healthy and able to train at the level he used to.
“In the winter when the roads were bad, I’d run into town from Stoneleigh and on weekends, I tried to get out to Green River Road and run on the dirt roads there,” he said of his training regime. “And I joined the Western Mass. Distance Project club and had some people show me some good spots.”
In the fall, Roosa acclimated to SBS as the assistant coach on the cross country team. He’s coaching the track team in the spring as well, and he said the response from the school and community to his race Monday was nice to see.
“I don’t talk about it too much, didn’t make a big deal of running Boston at school,” he explained. “Some of the teacher knew I was running and they held a little viewing party on TV. They had my Tracker up and kept tabs on my mile times. It was pretty cool to see all of them cheering and excited about it. It’s a small, supportive school like that.”
Monday’s race certainly wasn’t easy for Roosa, despite the impressive finish. He said he spent the first hour struggling to get comfortable, wondering what the second half of the race had in store for him.
“Usually when it’s like that in a race, it kind of sucks until the gun goes off and then you forget it,” he said. “I was still shivering while running for a good chunk of the race. I was really just trying to keep moving forward as best as I could.”
The boisterous crowds that make Boston such an iconic race worked in Roosa’s favor. He said his race hit a rough patch around Mile 12, but once he reached notorious Wellesley College, he received a burst of energy.
“Everyone’s screaming there and singling you out and encouraging you,” he said of that portion of the race. “I came out of there and felt totally different.”
Having run the New York City Marathon twice, Roosa said the environment in Boston, although subdued by Monday’s weather, was at a different level.
“The crowds are huge in New York, but everyone in Boston cheers specifically for you,” he offered. “Having not run it before, you could tell what makes it Boston, why the race is what it is.”
After picking off runners on the hills over the second half of the race, Roosa crossed in what wound up being 61st position. Although he had difficulty walking afterward, his family had rented an AirBnB only about a block away. That meant a quick commute to get a hot shower and a postrace meal of a box of cereal.
He was back at SBS Tuesday, teaching classes at 8 a.m.