Long Islander Robert Fried runs 10th Boston Marathon 40 years after his first

Long Islander Robert Fried finished the Boston Marathon on Monday in 3 hours, 56 minutes and 13 seconds.

It was not the time he had hoped for, but it was a kind of “closure,” he said in a phone interview Monday night.

Fried, 62, said Monday's race would be his final Boston Marathon but he plans to run his last marathon in Chicago later this year and continue with shorter races in the future.

The retired podiatrist from Lake Success was one of about 100 Long Islanders who qualified for the Boston Marathon this year. Fried was a college kid at Adelphi University when ran his first Boston Marathon in 1983, a sub-elite but strong 2 hours, 35 minutes. In the years since he became a familiar figure in Long Island’s many weekend races, whom commuters sometimes spotted training on the Cross Island Parkway bike path he took from his home to the Throgs Neck Bridge and back. 

The fastest man on Monday, Kenyan Evans Chebet, ran a superhuman 2:05:54. In this, Fried's 10th Boston Marathon, run 40 years after the first, he proved all too human: his quadriceps and calf muscles began to cramp 16 miles in. His training had not been what it should have been and he was dehydrated. “I fell apart,” he said. 

Earlier in the race, he said, he had concentrated on his pace, his gait, and the miles melted. “It goes quick,” he recalled. “It flies by, you don’t even realize it.” 

When the cramps came, he considered dropping out. He reconsidered and is glad he did. “There was no way I was not going to finish.” He closed out by running three minutes, walking a minute and repeating. At Fenway he saw the paint on the road that read “1 mile to go” and he finished running.

In his hotel Monday night, munching on chicken and French fries, he said he planned to take Tuesday off, then do a light run Wednesday.