Several other runners echoed praises for the crowd.
“The crowd was incredible, the whole length. It was nuts,” said Jeff W. Helfrich ’03, who has run on Harvard’s varsity track and cross country teams for the past three years and took the spring off to train for the marathon.
Helfrich, who qualified in races over the summer, officially placed 129th overall, completing the course in approximately two hours and 46 minutes.
Harvard alumni also turned out for the race.
Sporting a DHA sweatshirt, Bill Madden ’94, said he felt supported as he ran.
“It’s fun to come down here with friends and family. This is what Boston is all about,” he said, beaming.
Madden, who now attends the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, started training in the beginning of March and said that it was difficult to fit marathon training into his busy schedule.
“I was hoping for a 3:10, but I finished in 3:25,” he said. “My best time is 3:01.” While Madden said he did not train as much as he would have liked, some current undergraduates didn’t train at all.
“I definitely had zero training,” said Luke R. Long ’03, who decided to run as an unregistered “bandit” runner with three friends at 10 p.m. Sunday night.
“It was definitely a spur of the moment thing,” he said.
Others crossed the finished line after much more preparation.
Julia H. Fawcett ’04 said she began training in November and ran an average of eight miles a day, six days a week.
“I was going to run last year, but I was injured,” she said. “I didn’t think it was going to be as painful as it was, but I made it.”
Long also experienced some pain, “Muscles I didn’t know I had are now cramping,” he said, “but it was incredible.”
“It’s the farthest I’ve ever run in a sustained period,” he said. “Everything hurts.”
Would he run it again?
“Never again,” he said. “But it was a great experience. It was awesome that we survived. I recommend everyone doing it before graduation, just to say you did it.”
—Staff writer Faryl W. Ury contributed to the reporting of this article.
—Staff writer Wendy D. Widman can be reached widman@fas.harvard.edu.