“To be able to tell my mom I’m running for cancer research was very, very cool,” Bednar said.

“I got this haircut like four days before the marathon just because the mullet won, so I was able to raise like 500 bucks which was really cool,” Schmitz, CSOM ’22, said.

“When I got to see Newton, after running all those places, it was just like, I finally made it home,” Khaghany said.

“It’s definitely a day I’ll never forget,” Grady said. “I felt a lot of love from people I did know and didn’t know.”

“There was no feeling after that, like running away from Mile 21 I was so happy that the last five miles felt like nothing,” O’Connell said. “Like I don’t remember them at all.”

“Once you get over [Heartbreak Hill] and … you see the place that you’ve been over the last four years—it just kind of was a sigh of relief,” Kacha said. “Honestly, I can’t even put into words how amazing it was to kind of just see all the people that I’ve spent my entire four years here with just there supporting me.”

“[I] wanted to stay healthy while doing something for myself,” she said. “No one cares how far or how fast I run. It is something I do for me.”

“I … boxed out an area for myself, so I could high five people,” he said. “I just came down Comm. Ave, just like high fiving everyone on the side. … It was such an adrenaline boost, and I probably ran down it too quickly. All my friends were like, ‘We waited so long for you, and you were there for like half a second.’ But I was just really excited. So yeah, it was super cool.”

“I stopped doing [marathons] because they take a lot of time and a lot of training,” Dunkle said. “But many people encouraged me to do the Boston Marathon because it’s so famous and so old, the legacy attached to it, the tradition.”