By Morgan Cardenas
editor@wayneherald.com
The 125th Boston Marathon recently took place in October and participants had the chance to compete either in-person or virtually. Sonia Lopez of Wakefield decided to participate in the virtual race.
For the virutal race, all participants were to complete the marathon distance of 26.2 miles in one, continuous attempt in order to earn their unicorn finisher’s medal, but were not limited to any time restrictions. Lopez used the Wayne Bike and Hiking Trail as the route for her run instead of running in Wakefield due to the length of the trail and the constant changing of scenery that kept her from getting bored.
This is Lopez's first marathon, but she has participated in half marathons, 10ks, and 5ks. Lopez is part of a group of runners and a majority of the group also ran in the marathon. The signup process was very simple, however, they had run out of small shirts and only had larges or extra larges for Lopez so she did not get the original shirt from them.
Lopez trained ahead of the marathon. She ran multiple different distances in order to prepare since she has never run this long of a distance.
"First, I really liked it and enjoyed it because I was able to do it," Lopez said. "Then two weeks before the marathon, I started feeling tired and it was my longest distance to run."
She could tell that she was running her distances in shorter periods of time during her training so she felt more motivated to keep pushing forward.
"It feels great when you get to the finish line," Lopez said. "Sometimes the circumstances make you feel like you're not going to make it. Your mind tells you that 'Yeah, you can do this, I want to do this' but your legs just want to quit on you."
When Lopez finished the marathon, she felt very happy. She planned to run the marathon for four hours. She started having problems with her knees and cramping in her legs around the 20th mile and jogged the rest of the way.
"The support [of my friends and family] was my motivation," Lopez said. "They believed I could do this."
After the marathon, Lopez was tired and stopped running for a month because she couldn't run due to her knees hurting. She started doing physiotherapy and she thought her knees were getting damaged. They told told her to rest her legs in order to continue running in races.
"What I learned is that you need to be hydrated and need to eat nutritious food while you are running," Lopez said.
Lopez has lived in Wakefield for almost 16 years now with her husband Jose and two daughters, Andrea and Jamie. She hopes her daughters will follow in her footsteps of running but doesn't think that will happen until they are older like she did.
Lopez started running before her family moved here from Mexico, after she married her husband. The reason she started running was because her husband had moved to the United States while she was still in Mexico. She had felt sad and lonely so she started walking and running to feel better.
Lopez has signed up for the Chicago Marathon for next year and will find out this December if she is eligible to participate.
