*Nafij and I during the 2025 Boston Marathon*

I was sitting on my couch on January 28th, probably trying to convince myself not to eat another cookie when I got the text: “Hey, checking in to see how you’re doing….also, you wouldn’t be interested in running Boston Marathon would you?”

The last time I thought about running the Boston Marathon was in 2016. I was training for the New York Marathon and putting in the work to go for a BQ at the race. I was doing my long runs with the DC Road Runners each weekend, getting in hill workouts and speed workouts. I was faster than I ever had been. And then, I fractured my pelvis on my last long run before the race. That ended my dreams of qualifying for Boston, and until more recently, completely ended my interest in running marathons.

I texted back immediately. Yes, I said, I was interested. BUT. I was pretty out of shape, stressed out at work, and wouldn’t be able to run the race very fast – 10 minute pace was probably what I could train up to in the time we had. Turns out, that was totally fine.

I immediately wrote myself an abridged 12-week training plan.

The Training

Nafij and I have been running together on and off for about four years now. We connected through United in Stride, a website that pairs blind and visually impaired athletes with sighted guides. I signed up for the site many years ago, after hearing about it through Mike Wardian’s social media posts.

Back in 2023, we trained for and ran the New York Marathon together – running with the Achilles International team. In the fall of 2024, we trained for the Honolulu Marathon together, before Nafij hopped on a plane and ran with a local guide in Hawaii. Now it was February 2025, I had been couch rotting since Honolulu training ended.

We had a lot of considerations to account for in this training block. A big one: Ramadan. We had 5 long runs before Ramadan started, then it was 40 days of solo training for me, while Nafij did long walks on the weekend during his fast.

Throughout March and early April, I was on my own to train. Weekend long runs went well – but my mid-week runs suffered. Work has been … challenging. And some days, it took every ounce of my energy just to get out and walk my dog. I was pretty inconsistent in my weekly mileage – some weeks hitting my goals, other weeks only getting in my long run.

Some long runs, like my longest run of 19 miles in late March – were absolute trash. Why I chose to run on one of the hottest days of the year, on a course that got me ~1,600 feet of elevation gain is anyone’s guess (I ran loops at the National Arboretum). My body hated me that day, and put me in a tough mental space. My last long run before the race – 14 miles one week out from race day – went really well though. The weather was perfect, the course I chose was perfect. It was exactly what I needed to mentally lock into gear.

Race Weekend

I took off work Friday through Tuesday of Race Weekend. These were the first days I’ve taken off work since July of last year when I started a new role at work. For me to take time off work, I have to train someone to cover my role while I’m away. I was lucky to find someone, and it took a big mental load off of me, knowing someone was monitoring the incoming actions at work, and major items wouldn’t slip through the cracks.

I used Friday to pack and prep the house. We had a house sitter coming for the very first time. We were waitlisted at the boarding facility we usually use, and were thankfully connected to Jimmys Park by our fabulous trainer Joe at Force Free DC. Another mental load was released knowing Kai was going to be very well taken care of while we were away.

*Spirit Airlines, a true gamble every time.*

Saturday morning, we woke at 3am to get to BWI airport for our 5:45am flight. I gambled on Spirit Airlines because it was, of course, cheap. With two of us flying up, plus rate hikes on hotels in Boston due to the race, I was trying to save what I could where I could. Flight ended up going great, and we landed around 7am in Boston.

We headed to the hotel to drop our bags, knowing we couldn’t check in until 4pm. After a bit of a rest and some breakfast at the hotel, we called an uber and went out for a bit of Boston history.

I’ve been to Boston a few times, and Chris has for work as well. But the last time I was in the city was over 13 years ago, when I visited my friend Liss. We had studied abroad in Australia together – she still lived there (and does to this day!) – but she was home for the holidays and I was coming up to ring in the New Year with her.

I figured Chris and I could do a bit of a walking tour. I downloaded the Freedom Trail map, and had us start at the Paul Revere statue, and end in Boston Common. We had a great time, and Chris loved that we could just follow the brick pathway the whole way – easy to avoid getting lost!

We sat in the garden for a little while watching ducks before we headed over to get some brunch nearby. We then went and sat on a park bench for a few hours, people watching. I texted with Nafij, who was nearby in Chinatown with a friend of his. I sent him our location, and they met up with us around 12:30/1pm.

I navigated us to the expo – we got to jump the line (thanks Nafij!) and grabbed our bibs, did a bit of shopping, and sent Nafij’s friend off while we hopped in an uber back to the hotel. After about an hour of waiting in the hotel, Chris and I finally got into our room. We rested for about an hour, and then met Nafij in the lobby to head to the team dinner.

We were running Boston Marathon with Team With A Vision through the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. They had set up all these fantastic events for the team – from a happy hour on Friday night, to a great dinner at Maggianos on Saturday, and even some post-race benefits.

We had a great time at the dinner, sitting with a handful of athletes and guides from the Houston Area who run with Catapult. Team Catapult assists individuals with physical disabilities through funding, training, education, and access to the endurance sports community. I gained significant respect for this organization through my interactions with their athletes all weekend. I hope to meet them again at another race.

On Sunday, we just chilled. Nafij and I went out for a shakeout run. We hoped to run a few laps at the Boston University track, but it was closed. Not knowing the area, and with challenges associated with running on busy streets, he and I opted to do a few back and forth laps on the street of a quiet neighborhood nearby. We got about 2 miles of running in, then walked back to the hotel. We said our goodbyes until the morning.

Race Morning

Runners competing as para and adaptive athletes typically have their own starting corral and race morning support at the major marathons. In Boston, that meant we needed to hop on the bus to the start line by 5:30, with a shuttle from our hotel leaving at 5am. Thank goodness Nafij had figured out a hack to this last year, and him and I ended up ubering ourselves to the start line around 5:45 instead. We arrived around 6:30, ahead of the athletes on the para bus, but just in time before the streets officially closed. We were the first in the para athlete tent. We grabbed seats, and waited for everyone else to arrive.

The para athletes typically go out right after the professional runners. This makes it so much easier for everyone. It’s really difficult to navigate around crowds as a visually impaired athlete in particular. So going out right after the professionals, then letting all the other runners try and catch up with us reduces the ‘weaving’ and passing we have to do. For us, that meant a start time around 10. We hung out in the tent until about 9:30. We had some great conversations with folk sitting around us, including Issac who lives in Puerto Rico but hails from Peru, and Atsbha who moved to DC from Ethiopia a few years ago.

As we lined up to move towards the start, we spotted Nafij’s friend Anthony. Anthony was also at the New York Marathon with us, and it was great to see him again. We caught up on work and life, and learned he was running the London Marathon the next week. He’s an incredible athlete.

*Nafij and I at the start line, ready to tackle Boston!*

The Marathon

We started running at about 10:10am. With a course cutoff time of 5:30pm, I knew that even if things went really bad on course, we would be finishers. Exciting for me, because unlike in New York when I guided but didn’t count as a finisher because I was a guide, in Boston they allowed guides who had run other races with the athlete they were guiding the opportunity to be an official finisher. I had two bibs on me – my race number up front, and my guide bib on my back, helping alert folks that I was supporting an athlete.

*Nafij and I at the very start of the race, with another para athlete*

The first four miles of the race were great – steady downhill and flat, enough to wake our legs up. Our first mile was conservative – 10:30 pace – which included a bathroom stop for Nafij. Mile 2 was 9:30. We talked about how we were feeling, and agreed the 9:30 – 10:00 pace for now felt good. Not too fast as to blow ourselves up, but not too slow so that we could bank some time incase things got funny at the end. It’s a good thing we did that.

I have been working really hard on improving my race nutrition strategy over the years. During training for Boston, I bought myself the Maurten gels I knew they would have on course, and practiced consuming a gel roughly every 40-50 minutes during runs. I employed the same strategy on course. By mile 4/5 I took my first gel, and consistently throughout the race I hit those time markers as well.

By mile 10, we checked in with each other again. We were still cruising at a great pace, 9:45 per mile or so. I felt fantastic, the effort felt sustainable, and I was getting excited about what we might be able to do on course. Nafij felt good here too, and we agreed to maintain this pace as long as could. I called out our pace to him each mile, so he knew where we were and how we were doing.

Nafij held off on gels until the half marathon point, when I encouraged him to take some in as he started to show signs of fatigue. We gave it a few minutes, and the gel started to hit and his energy was returning. Around mile 17 however, things started to unravel a bit. The hilly part of the course was upon us, and Nafij started having a bit of knee pain couple with stomach issues. Nothing insurmountable, but it slowed our pace significantly.

He went into the race with a key goal – don’t walk. So when he told me around mile 18 he needed to walk, I asked him if his mind was telling him that or his body was. He said maybe his mind, so we agreed to slow our pace significantly, but keep running. We dropped down to about 13 minute miles for a bit, and used that to collect ourselves. By the time we got to heartbreak hill, he was starting to have more knee pains. We slowly jogged up heartbreak hill, and made it nearly to the top before he asked to take a beat and walk. We both agreed, and took a beat to make it to the top. I encouraged us to jog very slowly down the otherside, which he agreed.

From this point on however, our pace dropped down to around 12:30 – 13:30 per mile, and maintained that for the rest of the race. He was fighting both mental battles – likely a product of tough training cycle consumed with fasting for Ramadan, as well as some knee and hamstring pains that seemed to be worse on the uphills than the downhills. My job at that point was to keep us moving, and encourage moments of jogging interspersed with our walking moments. My own right knee started to have a bit of a twinge around mile 22, and I told Nafij that I’d be jogging slowly next to him while he walked, as I thought it was because of the walk-run strategy we were doing. My body doesn’t like drastic changes in pace, and so I just trotted along very slowly next to him, maintaining my running form while he worked out his hamstring pains during his walks.

*Photo by Chris as we passed him at mile 24.*

Mile 24 is where we saw Chris. Our hotel was right along the course and he posted up waiting for us. He got to see the professionals run by a few hours before, which is such a cool opportunity. I told Nafij we needed to move to the left side of the road to see Chris, and that we had to jog a little when we passed him 😊 We said hello as we went by, then we took another walk break. With two miles left, I knew we were on track to still meet our potential ‘lower end’ time goal, and kicked into final encouragement mode.

Mile 25, then mile 25.5 hit, and Nafij was feeling encouraged that the end was near. He started pushing through the pain, and we jogged in the last ~3/4 of a mile. I am so proud of him for pushing over the hurdles he had, and keeping up his spirits along the way.

I always get emotional and finish lines as they approach. This race was no exception. It may be the only time I ever get to run the Boston Marathon, and I was overwhelmed with emotion as we approached the end. I was so proud of us, and what we accomplished on course.

Official finish time: 4:51:09. My slowest marathon ever, but one of the most exciting races I’ve ever done. Nafij got a 15 minute PR on the Boston Course with this time, and for that, I count this as a victory for us both.

A Moment of Gratitude

I feel incredibly lucky to call Nafij my friend. We have so much fun training and racing together. Its truly an honor that he continues to call on me to support him in achieving his dreams. I can only hope to continue to run races with him in the future. This go around, he also helped me make a dream of mine come true – running the Boston Marathon – and for that, I will forever be indebted to him.