A Winklerite realized a dream in recently completing the Boston Marathon.
Dwight Suderman joined 30,000 fellow runners in the 130th edition of the event April 30. It was an ultimate achievement for the 68-year-old.
Dwight Suderman ran the Boston Marathon last month in four hours and 10 minutes, fulfilling a lifelong dream
“Ever since I started running when I was young, I looked at the Boston Marathon as something I would maybe some day do when I finished my accounting career and could spare the time, and now I got there,” said Suderman. “It was really an amazing experience overall.”
Even just getting to qualify for a chance to compete in the marathon itself was a major thing, as it’s based on your time in a previous race. Suderman qualified at the Twin Cities Marathon in 2024. For his age category he had to run a four hour, five minute time to make the cut. He did it in three hours and 56 minutes.
Suderman went on to put in a lot of time to train for the big day, training on local hills to prepare for what he’d face in Boston. Still, it proved to be a challenging race.
“It’s a hilly course overall, mostly downhill actually from start to finish, but there’s also enough uphills to make it very interesting,” he said.
“The downhills are actually quite punishing on your quads in your legs as well, and that’s something that surprised me more than I thought,” Suderman observed. “I had trained for some hills … here the downhill was fairly relentless in the first half of the race.”
He feels he managed to keep up a good pace.
“Then I realized that as I started some of the big uphills at mile 16 that my quads were really hurting. It was like, wow, I’ve never felt them like that before, and I still had three major uphills to do,” said Suderman. “There wasn’t much gas left in the tank after that.
“Neither way is really your friend. You would think downhill is easy, and in a way it is, as you’re not braking as hard, but you’re braking all the time. I guess it depends how steep it is,” he said. “I would approach them a little bit more gingerly if I were to run the Boston marathon again or if I were to give advice to another marathoner. You respect those downhills.”
He enjoyed the experience overall.
“The crowds were spectacular. They say there were perhaps up to a half a million people … and oh my goodness they were loud. When they congregated in large bunches, it was deafening … it’s very energizing.”
In the end, he was satisfied with his time. He had been hoping for a four-hour run but still managed to do it in four hours and 10 minutes.
“I was going fairly slowly in those last six miles, and a lot of folks ran past me,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve learned a few things if I go back, and maybe some day I will.”
