There is an expression, “All roads lead to Rome.”
And while Rome may be the birthplace of Stratford's Ercole Guidi, for the 75-year-old runner all roads lead to Boston and the Boston Marathon, the Holy Grail of running that Guidi has competed in four times.
On Monday Guidi finished with his fastest time to date, and won the bronze medal for placing third out of 47 entrants in the 75 to 79 age group.
A veteran of 18 marathons overall, his first marathon was in Toronto, in 2012.
“I started running just to keep in shape; to be active,” he says. “You don’t have marathons in mind when you start, but the atmosphere around racing is so great that something happens in your brain. You start training for a race. When you do that, you run almost every day, and then you start feeling better, and eating better. You choose a diet that is conducive to performance. And then you actually start needing it.”
This was Guidi’s fourth Boston Marathon, but for him, “every time is like the first time.”
There are six major marathons considered as “qualifiers” for Boston, the world's oldest annual marathon that celebrated its 128th birthday Monday. Among the 30,000 registered participants, there are categories. For Guidi’s age group, the qualifying time in order to register is 4 hours 35 minutes. Guidi’s time was 30 minutes faster.
His first qualifying year was 2015. His time then was 4 hours, 15 minutes. Nine years later he’s even faster, with a time of 4 hours, 13 minutes.
Training for the last 12 years has been like a job for him. He credits his improvement to putting in the work every day. “It’s an addictive activity. You don’t want to lose your form, so you keep going.”
Once he committed himself, he started studying what to eat, and recognized that it’s not only a physical challenge, it’s a mental one too, because even though there are gels and nutrition packs along the course, at a certain point, your body runs out of carbohydrates.
“It’s like a car that runs out of fuel,” he explains. “So, you have to be mentally strong and train for longer hours. You gain confidence by doing that.”
There are several hills throughout the 42 km race, particularly around the 30 km mark.
“You’re really out of energy at that point,” he said, and so his training plans in Stratford, where the terrain is flat, includes repeatedly running up and down the hill in front of the Stratford Festival Theatre.
Guidi is motivated by his running community, and says that no matter which marathon he’s running, “in runners’ circles, everybody talks about the Boston Marathon, and everybody comes from all over the world for it.”
One particularly iconic section of the race is called the “Scream Tunnel” in which thousands of female students from Wellesley College hold out signs and cheer-on the runners. “I cannot repeat what they say on those signs,” he laughs, “But it’s almost deafening.”
After so many marathons, he’s seen it all. “I have seen a guy with prosthetic legs running. I saw visually-impaired people running with their assistants beside them.
There were people running with a message on their shirt saying that they’re running for a lost spouse, or that they survived cancer. If you look around you, there are all kinds of people each running for their own special reason.”
Guidi has a special reason, too.
Even more than the accomplishment of qualifying and then completing this pinnacle of all marathons, and with a personal-best time, and achieving the bronze medal, Guidi is most proud of the fact that his whole family is running now. His wife ran the 5 km race in Boston just the day before, and in 2022, he ran the Boston Marathon with one of his sons: “Can you imagine a father and son running the Boston Marathon together?” he asks.
Not only has Guidi become a proponent of running and walking, he is living proof of the health benefits.
“If you stay active, you’ll age better. I don’t feel as old as I am getting now.”
On most days, you can see Guidi running around the river. “Almost everybody knows me, because I run every day.”
Another Stratford runner, Gerry Thuss, who has run the Boston Marathon six times, sent him a congratulatory message saying that “Stratford’s roads will never be the same.”
