Slinger, WI – Addison Elementary School Principal Joel Dziedzic has clipped off another major race in his running career as the 43-year-old finished the 26.2-mile Boston Marathon.
“My goal was to finish in three hours,” said Dziedzic. “That’s my marathon goal; it’s kind of the benchmark that everybody sets.”
Race day, Monday, April 18, was gorgeous in Boston with temps in the 50s. “There was more of a headwind than I thought; it was a northeast wind so a little bit challenging running into the wind. But all in all, it was a beautiful day.”
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Dziedzic started the race out of four waves in Wave No. 2. “The first wave went off at 10 a.m. and then my wave went off at 10:25 a.m. I was right near the front of my wave which was kind of cool because for the first eight miles, I could see the front of my wave. But then we caught up to the other waves and then it was just people everywhere.”
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Grand Canyon
The men’s overall winner was Evans Chebet, 33, of Kenya, who scored his first major marathon victory with a time of 2:06:51. For the women Peres Jepchirchir, of Kenya, beat Ababel Yeshaneh of Ethiopia, by just four seconds with a time of 2:21:01
“I was doing really well the whole race with a pace time of 6:52 per mile and then it (the time) kept creeping up,” said Dziedzic.
Mile 20 at the Boston Marathon is a dreaded mile marker for most runners as the long Heartbreak Hill tends to separate the pack. Dziedzic said he “powered through it.”
“I got over it and I was still feeling good for quite a while and then the last mile and a half….”
Dziedzic crossed the finish line in 3 hours, 11 minutes and 5 seconds.
The very long day, which started by getting on a bus at 7 a.m., was extremely rewarding, according to Dziedzic.
Some of the things Dziedzic recalled was the marathon’s recycling effort as the clothing runners shed before and during the race was all collected and donated. The logistics of 32 school buses and searching for your bib number in the window for a seat assignment to the security with police or a dump truck or semi blocking every side street, to meeting up with a former Kewaskum High School wrestler and then having his wife and three kids cheer him on.
“Everyone had a blast,” said Dziedzic. “Everybody was cheering the paralympic athletes and wheelchair racers and there was a double amputee and all kinds of things.”
Where was this on your bucket list or achievements?
“This is pretty far up there. Yeah, this was a pretty neat experience. I wasn’t a runner in high school, or college or anything. I didn’t get into distance running until after all that, but I hear everybody talks about Boston, how great it is. And I was expecting I thought I was goanna get my sub three marathon. And then some people started telling me about the hills. And I was like, Boston, like I live in the kind of moraines can’t be that bad. I got out there. I’m like, holy cow. These are definitely hills. I know why they call it heartbreak. And why they call it Newton Hills. Like they didn’t look all that intense, but they’re just long and gradual. And then you get to come down and then like even Heartbreak Hill like I run in Cedar Creek. I mean, that’s a steep hill, that’s a lot of elevation. That’s not what heartbreak was heartbreak was, it just kept going up and up and up.
I was really tired at the end. I stopped to go to the bathroom and came out of there and started jogging again. Then I got downtown, and we had to make a right turn and it was just unbelievable how many people there were. I mean, like as wide as my office along the sidewalk, packed, the whole thing full of people.
We went past Fenway Park, you can see the game was going on, there all kinds of people in Red Sox jerseys and all their fan and when you can finally see a couple of landmarks like the Citco gas station sign and then you turn on the Boylston Street, which is the very last street, and you can see the grandstand way ahead and all these people. It just took the pain out of my head and just put my head down and went as fast as I could.
As for what’s next, Dziedzic said he may be looking at a 50-mile event on Mother’s Day weekend or a 50K… but either way he has his sights set again on Boston.
“I want to finish in 3 hours,” he said. “Now that I know that course, I can strategize a little bit more and I got a running buddy that’s from out in Virginia and we’ve been talking, and I think we’re going to go together.”
