Do You Have to Run Boston Marathon to Be a Real Bostonian?

Patricia from Newton stands at mile 20 with a cup of lukewarm Dunkin’ and a handwritten sign that says “YOU’RE ALMOST THERE (YOU’RE NOT ALMOST THERE).” She hasn’t trained a day in her life for this. She also hasn’t missed a Marathon Monday in eleven years. So who exactly gets to call themselves a Boston Marathon person?

That question sits at the heart of Boston Marathon lore every April, and humorist Steve Calechman tackles it head-on in his monthly column “The Salty Cod” over at Boston Magazine. His answer, delivered with the dry warmth of a guy who grew up literally at the top of Heartbreak Hill and still never once wanted to run the thing, is basically: relax, you’re already in.

Calechman makes a point that feels obvious once someone says it out loud. Running 26.2 miles through eight cities and towns is not a personality test. It’s a choice, and not everyone’s choice. You gotta train in January. You never coast on a downhill. You lose toenails. Whole toenails. The math on the suffering is real.

But here’s what the crowd brings.

Think about the sidewalk crew along Commonwealth Avenue or the screaming stretch through Wellesley. They stand, or honestly mostly sit, for three and four hours in whatever April decides to throw at New England, which in 2026 means there’s a genuine chance it’s 38 degrees and spitting. They memorize your shirt so they can call you by name. They hold their chili steady through all of it. Not a drop spilled. That takes something.

“It’s not rocket science,” said Jeff Brown, psychologist for the Boston Marathon’s medical team and author of “The Runner’s Brain,” in the column. Brown points out that we keep coming back to the things that make us feel good. Simple as that. It’s the engine behind most traditions anywhere, but Boston’s version of it has a particular stubbornness. The Boston Athletic Association has been putting on this race since 1897. The crowds have been loud basically the whole time.

Still, there’s something worth sitting with here. New England has a habit of building identity around suffering, around doing the hard thing, around the guy who shoveled his own roof at 5 a.m. The marathon, with its brutal Newton hills and its legendary wall, fits that story perfectly. So the idea that you can belong to it without the suffering feels almost radical.

Calechman grew up on the course and watched pretty much every race as a kid. Even eating a lot of pasta and running past his own house wasn’t enough to get him to sign up. And he’s made peace with that. Not everyone who grows up in Winthrop becomes a pilot, as he puts it.

What the column nudges you toward is a wider definition of participation. Traditions don’t belong only to the people doing the hardest version of the thing. They belong to whoever keeps showing up, in whatever form that takes.

For Patricia and her sign and her lukewarm coffee, that’s enough.

Marathon Monday lands on April 20 this year. Whether you’re on the course or planted on a curb in Brookline with a blanket and something warm to drink, it counts. Show up, holler someone’s name, mean it.

That’s the whole job.