04/23/2026
It was an honor to be part of the medical team at this year’s 130th Boston Marathon! My awesome ‘family’ for the day consisted of 15 kind and dedicated individuals. Lynn was our ham radio operator and our team leader was Gabriela, a cardio-thoracic nurse who has volunteered on the med team the last 7 years. She had a good sense of humor and was very situationally aware. A huge thank you to Dr. Karson Mui and the teambaa for this opportunity!
During our pre-marathon medical volunteers meeting at the , I learned some interesting facts:
🔹There were only 15 participants in the 1st and 5 didn’t finish
🔸The Boston Marathon medical systems and team are the standard for marathons around the world for endurance/race medicine
🔹In 2013, the year of the bombing, the team was able to treat 97 people in less than 30 minutes, saving many lives under the lead Dr. Lyle Micheli
🔸It’s a living, breathing system that is making improvements every year to keep the athletes safe
We had an early lunch at the St. James tent and began our assignment. My zone was from Berkeley to down to Newberry. Once the first excited wave of runners came through the finish line shortly past noon, they never stopped coming. Wave after wave after wave of runners.
It hit me just how many emotions they were all expressing on their faces. The marathon makes you let go and let be. People are processing a lot during the course of 26.2 miles: joy, pride, pain, disappointment, contentment, confusion, elation, relief, ecstasy, exhaustion…all the feels. But one feeling I believe they all exhibited beyond everything else. was gratitude. They expressed gratitude towards the volunteers, yes, but I think it was deeper than that; gratitude for just being alive - experiencing this moment after enduring the challenges of a marathon.
A finisher walked back from Newberry just to say thank you for helping him stand up earlier when he was brought to tears and dropped to the ground to gather his emotions.
There’s more than running happening out on that course. There are breakthroughs and insights into what it means to be alive.
Palm Beach Roadrunners