Boston Bound
Brad Box has reached the pinnacle of competitive racing. “Qualifying for Boston is like the holy grail of running,” said Box. The Decatur County native will compete on Monday in the Boston Marathon for the second time in three years. “It‘s the Super Bowl for the running community. Celebrities sing the national anthem; jet fighters fly over,” said Box. “You have the greatest runners on earth all around you,” Box said. Running 26.2 miles isn’t something you just decided to do. It takes training. “I ran 18, 19, 22, 23 miles sequentially as part of the process,” Box said. It also takes a high tolerance for pain. “If you’re a distance runner, you‘ve got to expect you’ll have some injuries,” Box said. More than anything – it takes a team – and a willingness to start. “A lawyer I work with, Jonathan Stewart, invited me to sign up for a 5k run and I got beat by people I work with. That competitive spirit took hold of me,” said Box. “The next thing I knew I ran another 5k, and another and another,” Box said. The two attorneys have logged more than eight hundred miles through nine marathons including the Chicago Marathon and the Memphis St. Jude. “And it was at that point at the end of the Memphis race, I really wanted to give Boston a shot,” Box said. “I had to go from 3:45 to 3:19 and that‘s a dramatic change,” Box said. Box, 42, knows what to expect on his second trip to Hopkinton, the little town outside Boston where the marathon actually starts.. “The hills in the second half of the race, they’re brutal. It is part of what makes the race so mysterious,” said Box. Box has achieved goals that are more tangible than medals. He‘s lost 30 pounds since running and he has even inspired his wife to run competitively. “It‘s unbelievable what you can achieve through hard work,” said Box. He joked that he would run with his wife, if he could find someone to watch their four kids. “Maybe we’ll run the New York Marathon someday.”
