Mayor Richard Ireland, one of three Jasper runners who headed down to Beantown two weekends ago to race in the 113th annual Boston Marathon, said he’s never been as welcomed in any place as he was there.

Though Ireland had never really planned on taking part in the marathon, after a while his mind changed, as it’s the grandfather of all marathons, as he called it.

“It’s an entirely new set of challenges,” he said. For instance, the 23,211 runners at the starting line make the race a huge logistical undertaking. (Of those, 22,898 runners finished the race)

Early in the day, runners are bused out on yellow school buses, which stretch for miles, to the athlete’s village where everyone gets in and organized. Runners are permitted to put their warm up clothes back on a numbered bus on a numbered seat, so they can be collected later.

From there it’s a long walk down to the starting line, where runners line up in what are called corals – traffic control barriers tied off with ropes – of 1,000 people each. 

“Just before the start of the race, they remove the ropes and everyone squishes up a little,” Ireland said. “The gun goes off and you hear the start of the race, but you don’t move for quite a while.” Ireland, who was in the 7th of 22 corals, said it took him four minutes to get to the start of the race.

For the rest of the 26-mile run, Ireland didn’t see any open ground. “The whole race, you’re surrounded by runners,” he said.

Ireland, a well-known runner in Jasper, said he hasn’t yet decided what his next race will be. Jasperites Lisa Wilson and Todd Wolansky also ran the Boston Marathon on April 20.