Hometown SportS Tears of joy – with just a mile to go

Part of that history is running on the 10th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, when two bombs went off at the finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three and injuring hundreds others including 16 people who lost limbs.

By Jeff Weisinger Staff Writer

When Sandee Sandbrink made the final left turn onto Boylston Street during last month’s Boston Marathon, she cried. But not in pain.

The moment was captured on camera as her 26.2-mile journey from Hopkinton to Boston was coming to its dramatic, exciting close after that final left turn.

What the camera missed was the drive, the dedication, and the determination through nearly the last decade that not only got the 37-year-old Brentwood woman around that turn, but through the finish line. Every race she ran, battling asthma as a kid, battling all of the initial self-doubt, being held back from racing during the COVID-19 pandemic and running in 10 other marathons, led to this moment.

“I’m getting choked up just thinking about that,” she said. “It was so emotional, you can see the finish line about a mile away. The crowds are like 10, 11 people deep on each side and they are just yelling, cheering for you.”

She said the Boston Marathon is the highlight of her running career . She ran her first 5K in college in 2008, but didn’t really pick up the sport until 2014.

Despite being into fitness and always involved in recreational sports, in her mind she didn’t have that typical, skinny body type she thought she needed to succeed as a marathon runner. One day, she said to herself, “Why not?”

“I basically one day said to myself, ‘Well what if you tried?” she said. “So then I went and purchased a pair of running shoes and downloaded the Couch to 5K app and that’s where I started.”

Sandbrink qualified for Boston by running a time of 3:25.18 at the California International Marathon in Sacramento, her favorite course, but finished Boston with a time of 3:47.37. The rain and her ongoing recovery from some previous injuries affected her time, but it was nothing that she was ever worried about, she said.

“My goal for Boston was just to have fun,” Sandbrink said. “It was that victory lap for all those years of hard work, training, and dreaming about this moment, then to be on this course that people have run 126 other times, here I am in being able to be a part of history and follow in the footsteps of running legends.”

“There were ‘Boston Strong’ shirts everywhere,” she recalled. “It was emotional, knowing that 10 years before three people lost their lives and hundreds were injured, the security presence, you couldn’t not notice it. Two blocks before you even got to the finish line were blocked off by the police.”

The Boston Marathon doesn’t run only through the city of Boston. It starts in Hopkinton, 26.2 miles west of Boston on Route 135, eventually passes through Boston and Wellesley colleges and ends with a pair of iconic sights like the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square outside of Fenway Park before turning right on Hereford Street for four blocks then taking the final left onto Boylston Street before crossing the finish line behind Trinity Church.

“When I saw the Hereford sign, I screamed,” Sandbrink said. “As soon as I made the turn onto Boylston, I started crying. Just seeing that finish and putting out your arms and just taking it all in. There’s no better feeling crossing the finish line of a marathon on Boylston Street. It will stand out as one of my very strong core memories.”

The Boston Marathon is always held on the third Monday of April on a local holiday called Patriots Day observed by Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, North Dakota, Florida, and Wisconsin that was set to celebrate the beginning of the American Revolution.

With the Boston Marathon now behind her, Sandbrink has now run in what she said are the three major marathons in the United States: Boston, New York City, and Chicago. She plans to return to the Boston Marathon in 2025 by earning a qualifying time later this year in the California International Marathon.

“The next time I go to Boston, I’m going to be itching to have a course PR (personal record),” she said.