Tewksbury Couple To Compete In Boston Marathon

Normally the word “Heartbreak” wouldn’t bring up thoughts of romance, but there might just be an exception to that rule on Monday for Tewksbury’s Colleen and Craig Tanguay.

This Patriots’ Day, the couple will trek together up Heartbreak Hill as well as the other 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon course in what will be Colleen’s third time participating in the event and Craig’s first.

The two began training shortly after Christmas, although the unusually poor winter weather in the area made a regular running routine difficult to keep up.

“(Colleen’s) been through this before and she said that this was a real tough year for training. Trying to find places we could go for runs, finding places that have been plowed out good enough, it was just a crazy year to train this year,” said Craig.

And yet, the pair became acclimated to cold weather conditions, so much so that Craig is wary of putting a prediction on how fast he will run since a warm day will take him out of the familiar frigidity he experienced during his training regimen.  

In fact, Craig’s only willing to claim two things with any real certainty when it comes to Monday. First, he expects this to be the last Marathon he participates in for a long time because of the amount of work that goes into training. And second…

“I’m definitely not going to be able to keep up with the Kenyans,” he said.

But regardless of what happens with the race on Monday, Craig is already looking forward to some smaller races with his wife in the near future, such as the 3.2 mile Warrior Run in Amesbury this summer, although he’s glad to have gotten the opportunity to say he participated in the biggest Marathon of them all.

“It’s been a tough road to train, but I definitely enjoy doing it,” said Craig. “Me and my wife are turning 40 this year, so I was glad to say I did this; it’s one of those things that’s always on the list.”

Thanks to microchips in the bibs of each runner, the progress of Colleen and Craig as well as all of the 29,000 runners in the field will be available to the public online at the Boston Marathon’s official website, www.baa.org.