Hollick completes Boston Marathon

After three and a half years of training and planning, Custer runner Beth Hollick can finally cross the legendary Boston Marathon off her bucket list. Hollick and a dozen or so other West River runners traveled to the East Coast earlier this month to participate in the 26.2 mile race through the streets of the historic city on Oct. 11. In doing so, Hollick accomplished one of her goals in running the marathon.
“Goal No. 1 was to just enjoy the experience,” said Hollick after arriving home over the weekend, “Goal No. 2 was to finish in under four hours. I was happy to be able to reach goal No. 1 and was just shy of goal No. 2.”
Hollick crossed the finish line in four hours, three minutes and 16 seconds, averaging nine minutes, 17 seconds per mile.
“It was the most epic race I’ve ever run,” said Hollick, “and I’ve run a lot of races in my time, from 5Ks up to 50 milers.”
Hollick said with the cancellation of the event last year because of COVID-19 it was obvious the people of Boston were excited about the marathon’s return.
“You could tell that Boston had missed having the race the year before,” said Hollick. “I mean, they were as excited as all the runners.”  
She said the huge crowds along the route made for an amazing atmosphere for running, noting that only about four or five blocks along the route did not have people yelling and screaming and holding out hands for hand slaps.
“Little kids came out from their schools to cheer us on,” she said. “People were handing out food. People were barbecuing along the route. It was like a big party for the entire area. It was just phenomenal!”
As the runners passed Boston College and Tufts University, students waved posters and banners. Kids were also along the route with hoses ready to spray water on the participants to cool them off.
“Pretty much the entire atmosphere kind of kept me moving through the entire race,” said Hollick.
An incline known as “Heartbreak Hill” between miles 21 and 22 gives many runners problems since it is situated in the last fifth of the route. Hollick said, since she lives and runs in the Black Hills, she didn’t expect the hill to be much of a problem and didn’t really feel like she “hit the wall” at that point. She credits the enthusiasm of the crowd with giving her the motivation to press on.
“With the people out there it was just amazing,” she said.
About two miles before the finish line, Hollick suffered a cramp in her calf but with the crowd’s encouragement was able to push through it and finish the race.  
In the last two-tenths of a mile of the route, which goes down Boston’s famous Boyleston Street, Hollick said people were lined five deep along the course, so thick that her husband Royed was not able to be in position to see her cross the finish line.
She learned later she had finished 10,007th out of 15,379 runners who completed the race. Among her age group she placed 253rd of 668.
A runner since the age of 12, Hollick said she gave up running marathons for seven years—“I kind of got soured on it for a while”—but then in June of 2018 started training for another marathon with the goal of qualifying for the Boston race.
She decided to do the 26.2 mile Crazy Horse Marathon that October as a kind of trial run to see how it felt.
“It turned out really well,” said Hollick, so she decided to start working toward qualifying for Boston.
In January of 2019 she ran the Rock and Roll Marathon in Phoenix, finishing in 3 hours, 41 minutes which qualified her to enter the Boston Marathon.  A runner friend had been trying to get into the Boston race for three years, so they began training together for the Run Through the Tunnel race in June 2019 in Seattle. Their finish in that race qualified them again for Boston.
“So then we set our sights on registering for the Boston Marathon,” said Hollick.
However, when COVID hit in 2020, the race was postponed from April to October. So Hollick  cancelled her transportation and lodging reservations and planned for October. By June, she learned it would be cancelled altogether for that year.
The race was tentatively scheduled to run in April this year but organizers eventually rescheduled for October 11 and cut the field to under 20,000 because of the high number of COVID cases.
So, Hollick made new travel and lodging arrangements and “kept our fingers crossed that it was actually gonna happen.”
Leaving for Boston on Sat., October 9, Hollick picked up her runner’s packet on Sunday and got a COVID screening. On Monday morning the West River runners met at the start and Hollick and four others all got into the same wave so they could start together.  
After the race the Hollicks and several other friends stayed an extra four days to see the sights around Boston and drive up the coast to Maine.
Having accomplished her goal of completing the marathon and after being in constant training over the past 3 years without a real break, Hollick said she will take some much-needed time off from training. While Boston was at the top of her list, she said she would love to someday run the New York City Marathon.
“It was a race I’ll never forget,” she concluded. “I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again but it’s definitely one for the books.”