Robert Fried ran the Boston Marathon in 1983. At age 62, he'll run his 10th, and possibly last, Boston race

In 1983, Robert Fried, an Adelphi University track team hotshot, ran his first Boston Marathon in a blistering 2 hours, 35 minutes and 11 seconds. On Monday — mellowed not at all by the intervening 40 years — he plans to race once more in the world’s oldest annual marathon. 

Fried, 62, a retired podiatrist from Lake Success, said he will be one of at most a handful of runners to perform this feat of durability, many of the other runners from 1983 being, in his words, “dead or retired from running.” 

News stories show that Fried’s finish in '83 — which produced “the fastest, deepest men’s results an American marathon has ever seen,” according to Runner’s World — earned him 488th place. The winning time was 2 hours and nine minutes. Marathon officials did not respond to a request for comment.

To qualify this year, Fried beat the 3 hours and 50 minutes cutoff time for his age group. In what will be his 10th Boston marathon, he aims to run 3 hours and 45 minutes or faster and has trained for months, running from his house to the Throgs Neck Bridge and along the Wantagh Parkway bike path. About 100 Long Islanders are registered for this year’s marathon, which has a field of 30,000.

“I’m an animal. I’m a tiger. I’m a freak,” Fried said Thursday, attesting to his competitive spirit. Examples of spirit in action: In 2012, he shook off a broken finger to try out for goalie of the U.S. Maccabiah Games ice hockey masters team.

“If it’s fair, I’ll make it,” he told a reporter at the time. Fried later declined an offer to be the alternate keeper, he said. In 2017, for the second time, he ran a race up the Empire State Building's 1,576 stairs, finishing in 17 minutes and 46 seconds.

“Everything I’ve done in my life — in my profession, being a parent, paying off the mortgage on my home — I used that drive in everything,” he said. “I missed one day of running this year.” 

The difference now is that “I don’t have that drive anymore to push my body,” he said, and the body has pushed back mightily. In 2016, he lost hearing in his left ear and with it some of his balance. When he runs now, he focuses on foot striking and cadence in a way he didn’t have to before. In 2020, he contracted COVID, and tests showed an underlying condition: a potentially lethal buildup of plaque around his heart. 

“I ran 15 minutes at a 6:30 pace for a stress test. ‘You failed,’ the doctor told me. I failed!” Fried said, his voice rising in incredulity.   

Fried said he asked the cardiologist who placed three stents in his arteries if the stents would improve his performance. “In theory, yes,” was the answer. “It was unbelievable to me that I was able to push the blood through and accomplish what I did,” he said. 

Gary Muhrcke of Huntington, 82, who won the first New York City Marathon in 1970 and founded the running specialty store Super Runners Shop in Huntington, said he recalled Fried as a “pretty good age-group runner … If he runs close to three hours, I’d say it’s a pretty decent run.” 

Brendan Dagan, 41, CEO of elitefeats, a company that administers timing for about 500 races a year on Long Island and in the New York City area, said Fried was well known in Long Island’s running scene and was expected to do well in the marathon sometimes called “the unicorn” because it admits far fewer runners than some other major events like the New York City Marathon. Under the age grading system, Boston recently turned away a younger Long Islander who ran a 2:24 marathon, he said. 

James Murray of Holtsville, 57, a director of the Great Cow Harbor 10k Run and a friend of Fried’s, said Fried was one of a few athletes he knew from what he called the heyday of Long Island running in the '70s and '80s still racing at a high level. Fried has “what we call true trackman’s form: high knee lift, large back kick; his arm carriage is excellent. The word is 'efficient.' ” 

Fried, who said he plans to continue competing in shorter-distance races after his marathon career ends, said his memories of his first Boston run were vivid.

“The gun went off and I went into my mode of running, just locked," he said. "I remember running the race and having a blast because I felt so good.”

He recalled the last two or three miles coming down Beacon Street and the crowd that had emptied out of the ballgame at Fenway.

“I could see the railroad on my left and the crowds on my right … I wish I could hear them again," Fried said. "They were screaming so loud.”