The Top Highlights of the 2019 Boston Marathon

After having to drop out of the 2018 Boston Marathon and Chicago Marathon because of injury, Jordan Hasay returned to Boston with an impressive performance of 2:25:20, which was fast enough to put her in third place overall behind Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia (2:23:31) and Edna Kiplagat of Kenya (2:24:13).

After the race, Hasay said she was prepared to return to the 26.2-mile distance after her long race layoff. She’s already announced her plans to run the 2019 Chicago Marathon. “I felt grateful to be toeing the line this year,” Hasay said. “This is what I love to do. It’s such an honor to be out there... I just wanted to get my foot in the water. It didn’t have to be exceptional, just solid results.”

A year after winning the Boston Marathon, Des Linden returned to Beantown with a fifth-place finish. Her time of 2:27 was 1 minute, 40 seconds off Hasay’s time. Lindsay Flanagan was the other American in the top 10, taking ninth in 2:30:07.

Lawrence Cherono, of Kenya, won the Boston Marathon in 2:07:57. In a race that had many lead changes throughout, he narrowly edged out his closest competitor, Lelisa Desisa, of Ethiopia, by just two-tenths of a second in a wild sprint down Boylston.

Forty years ago, Joan Benoit Samuelson won her first-ever Boston Marathon in 2:35:15, earning her place as the national and course record holder. Now at 61, she was back to the starting line again. In March, she announced she intended to complete the 2019 Boston Marathon within 40 minutes of her time for the 40th-year anniversary of her victory. She crushed that goal, finishing in 3:04:00—just under 29 minutes over her 1979 time.

[Check out how other celebrities fared running Boston.]

In October, Daniel Romanchuk made history becoming the first American man to win the wheelchair division at the New York City Marathon. That wrapped up a breakout year for Romanchuk, who finished first at Chicago and third in Boston and London. He continued to make history in Boston, becoming the youngest man ever to win the wheelchair division with a time of 1:21:36. He was also the first American man to win since 1993.

Practically from the gun, Manuela Schär of Switzerland commanded the lead in the women’s push rim race and maintained the same aggressive tactics all the way through the finish line. Through the later stages of the race in the Newton hills, Schär turned heads when she passed several competitors in the men’s competition and established a six-minute lead over her female competitors who trailed behind. Schär charged down Boylston Street for the victory in 1:34:19, about seven minutes ahead of runner-up Tatyana McFadden.

A clerical snafu voided Gene Dykes’s age-group world record of 2:54:23 in the marathon, which he ran in Jacksonville back in December. But going sub-3:00 is not a fluke for the 71-year-old. He did it once again in Boston, finishing in 2:58:50—bettering his age-group record of 3:16:20, which he set last year.

In September, Wendy Martinez was stabbed seven times and killed in a random attack while on an evening run in her Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Running Boston had been on Martinez’s bucket list, and she was training to qualify for it last fall.

Following her death, her fiance, Daniel Hincapie, who proposed just days before she was killed, teamed up with the Lingzi Foundation to get him a bib for Boston. “Although I wondered if I could do it, I also felt the calling for Wendy and me to run the race together,” he told Runner’s World before the race. And he did: Hincapie finished in 5:04:05, with a sign reading “Love wins. Wendy wins.”

Six months ago, Boston race director Dave McGillivray underwent triple bypass open heart surgery to relieve blockages in his heart’s arteries. Before his operation, he asked the doctor whether he would be able to line up at Hopkinton for his 47th-consecutive time taking on Boston. “He didn’t say no, and he didn’t say yes, but he did say, ‘I would be extremely disappointed if you couldn’t,’” McGillivray told Runner’s World before the race. Hours after the winners cross the tape, McGillivray will be running Boston once again. As he always does.

Three years ago, Garrett Fitzgerald was a new Secret Service agent on a security detail when the car he was riding in was hit head-on, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down, according to Boston.com. His supervisor Donald McGrail approached him during his recovery and suggested they run as a team, with McGrail pushing Fitzgerald in a running chair. They started with shorter distances like 5Ks and 10Ks, progressing to halfs and even a full marathon. But for the Boston natives, this race remained a far-reaching goal. They crossed that off the bucket list this year, finishing in 4:06:07.

In the week before the race, runners were freaked out about the weather, with reports suggesting that they were in for another 2018 repeat with cold temps, rain, and gusty winds. And in the morning as runners filled the buses, it certainly looked that way, as thunder rumbled and lightning struck.

But then as the day went on, the weather cleared up, there was tailwind, and the sun even peeked out. Except for a second round of showers that moved through, the weather ended up being one of the better days runners could hope for.