Byline: Larry Tye Boston Globe
They're doing it in Hawaii, on the big island and the little ones.
They're doing it in the bayous of Baton Rouge, in Gainesville gator country and in New York's Central Park.
And they were doing it here in Washington over Presidents Day weekend, from the White House to Capitol Hill and back again.
Training for the Boston Marathon, that is. April's 100th rendition has inspired runners all across America, pumping up attendance at other marathons where people sought to qualify for Boston and sparking a boom in all levels of running the likes of which hasn't been seen in America in a decade or more.
'For me, it's something I have to do, pure and simple,' explains Joe Ector, who did a 12-mile training run on Washington's ice-crusted streets Sunday.
'Boston is the mecca of running,' adds Ector, an Argentine-born commodities trader who has run Boston twice and qualified for this year's run with a 2:55 in the New York City Marathon. 'I'm in love with Boston, everything about the Boston race, from the city to the weather to race organizers to the people who cheer for you.'
Ector isn't alone in his anticipation and adulation. Linda Honikman, who tracks road race attendance at USA Track & Field's Road Running Information Center, says, 'There's no question that Boston's 100th running has spurred interest in marathons all over the country. It's also had a positive impact on products related to running and on races of all distances.
'The key is whether we can sustain this after Boston and the Olympics, but right now it's fantastic.'
Bostonians have always prided themselves on having the nation's oldest marathon, and have always assumed it was the best. What has become clear the last several months is that much of the running world agrees.
Take the Club South Runners in Baton Rouge, a part of the country not known to relish things Yankee.
'The 100th Boston is an event none of us feel we can afford to miss - it's the run of the century,' says club president Brent Bruser, who is leading a delegation to Boston that will include at least 50 runners and another 25 or so family and friends.
'We'll want to reflect on it 20 years from now. We'll want to say we were there,' adds Bruser, who started his planning 18 months ago, blocking out 50 hotel rooms in Boston, reserving 100 airline seats and planning for his group's four-day stay in the city.
Beverly Browning also is coming to Boston to run, and bringing a lot of others. Her group from Florida's Gainesville-Jacksonville-Ocala region is so big, in fact, and so fired up, that the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau is sending a representative down next month to brief them on what else to do in Boston.
'We're a traveling Visa card - we want to spend megabucks,' explains Browning. 'We not only want to party hard, we want to eat in every restaurant, visit every museum and shop in every store.'
What about the race itself? Browning (who got her Boston number through the Boston Athletic Association's lottery, a touch of luck she calls 'a gift from the gods') says she and her fellow Floridians have been training hard, 'but our problem is we don't have any hills here. Heartbreak Hill is a big deal to a Florida runner. We're in absolutely flat terrain. We have no hope of handling Heartbreak.'
Hills aren't a problem for runners in Hawaii.
'We have some wonderful hills here, deep valleys and high ridges,' says Nancy Goglia, who runs with the Faerbers Fliers Track Club in Honolulu and views her trip to Boston as a homecoming, since she went to school in Boston and taught in Newton.
In Los Angeles, meanwhile, LA Marathon coach Pat Connelly is training 25 runners bound for Boston, a substantial increase from the two or three who normally head East for the classic.
'Those who have been accepted are just ecstatic,' says Connelly. 'They say their feet don't touch the ground when they work out as they think about participating in the 100th running of Boston. All of us look up to the Boston Marathon as the genesis of our marathons.
'Most of my runners are running the LA Marathon on March 3 as a dress rehearsal for Boston. They're using that as an off-Broadway test to get ready for Boston.'
Back in Washington, runners have lots of different reasons for wanting to run Boston, having beentransformed frm a couch potato into an avid marathoner while watching the Boston Marathon nearly 20 years ago when she was at Boston College, having missed qualifying by just five minutes when she ran the Marine Corps Marathon last fall, and always having wanted to run Boston with her twin sister, Lisa, who stuck by her at the Marine Corps race when Linda experienced trouble breathing.
