By Jason Gabak
When news came that due to the coronavirus the Boston Marathon would be postponed until September, a lot of runners were not going to let that stop them from putting all their training and hard work to use.
Fayetteville-Manlius algebra and geometry teacher C.J. Alvarez was among the people who qualified to take part in this year’s Boston Marathon after qualifying during the Buffalo Marathon last spring.
“Just to be able to qualify, that is the goal for a lot of longer distance runners,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez spent 18 weeks preparing for the marathon and decided to run his own virtual marathon April 18 in lieu of the postponed Boston event.
Alvarez’s wife, Jamie, alerted friends and family and many gathered, respecting social distancing practices, along Alvarez’s path from East Syracuse to Oneida, covering 26.2 miles to cheer him on.
“I thought I’d see a few people along the way on the Erie Canal,” Alvarez said. “But as I started to see my family I started to put it together.”
Alvarez said this was a pleasant surprise to have so many people supporting him along the way.
While his run was different than what the marathon course would have offered, Alvarez said he wanted to keep active with the training program he had started in anticipation of running in Boston, maintaining his training goals.
“It was definitely different,” Alvarez said. “There were not a lot of hills at the end, in Boston there are a lot more hills. But I told my wife I thought maybe it would take me three and a half hours. But I was pleased with my time. It took me about three hours and 20 seconds. So I was actually down a little and was very happy with my time.”
Alvarez and his wife have been into marathon running since around 2018 when Alvarez ran his first marathon, the Marine Corps marathon held in Washington D.C.
He said this was also his wife’s first marathon on 2019 and an event his father took part in in the early 2000s.
As Alvarez learned more about the world of marathon running, he began to hear from others runners that his times were impressive.
“People would say that is a BQ time,” Alvarez said. “I didn’t know what the meant. But when you are round other runners more and you learn that that means a Boston qualifying time.”
Through his performance in other events, Alvarez has not only qualified to run in the Boston Marathon this year but also qualified for next year as well as this fall’s New York Marathon.
Alvarez said he plans to take part in the Boston Marathon in September and will be in New York for the November marathon as well.
“That is going to be a busy few months,” Alvarez said.
The marathons on the horizon at least in part inspired his own personal marathon run.
Alvarez said at this time, while running allows for a certain degree of isolation, it is not always so easy to stay motivated and active. But he ran to stay on course with his training and to finish out the cycle he had prepared for weeks before he started his next round of training.
Seeing the support along the way as he made his way to the designated finish at Boston Street in Oneida was just the motivation he needed to finish strong.
“When you are running you’re running on your own and you know it isn’t for a qualifier or anything, you think maybe you can slow down here for a little bit,” Alvarez said. “But it helped to see everyone and it helped keep me going.”
This is a message Alvarez also hopes his students can be inspired by even under the difficult circumstances everyone is facing right now. That message is to finish what you’ve started.
“That is something I hope students can take to heart,” Alvarez said. “We started something and we can end in good spirits even if we aren’t able to be together right now we can finish this together.”
