This was originally posted in the Concord Bridge. You can read the original story here.

Some say it takes one step at a time. Others dread the miles. Some are addicted to the feeling of crossing the finish line.

Concordians will tell themselves many things on Marathon Monday as they push themselves to run the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston. 

Twenty-seven Concord residents will run this year’s Boston Marathon on April 21. The Concord Bridge met with four of them to hear their stories. They include a 71-year-old outdoorsman, a clinical researcher overcoming an injury, and a married couple running together.

The oldest marathoner

Eugene Delsener has been running for more than 50 years. At 71 he’ll be the oldest Concordian in the 129th Boston marathon.

Delsener, who began running at Syracuse University, was able to devote more time to his running after retiring from a long career in financial services. There was the odd turkey trot or 5K, but he didn’t start running long distance races until his mid-50s, when he ran a half-marathon in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

“At the end of the 13 miles, I was like, ‘That was fun,’” he said. “I felt pretty good. You know, it’s like, ‘Yeah, I could do more.’”

Since that half-marathon, Delsener has tested himself in other ways. He and his daughter ran the 2018 New York City Marathon. Then he hiked the Appalachian Trail over four years.

Delsener, who is running to raise money for Massachusetts General Hospital, usually runs between 15 and 25 miles a week.

“There’s something about going to that next level,” Delsener said. “It’s not that I have to hit a certain time. … I just want to be able to run the [26.2] miles, enjoy it, and finish it strong.”

Delsener runs without headphones early in the morning when roads are quiet and dark. During those runs, his head is clear, focused on the next mile.

“Being out there, whether I’m in the suburbs and I run into a wooded street, it just felt like it was very liberating,” Delsener said.

Delsener ran in the Chicago Marathon on a hot day in 2021. He’s always wanted to run the Boston Marathon and compared his training leading up to Boston to his time on the Appalachian Trail.

Delsener said he was surprised to hear he’s Concord’s oldest runner but isn’t preoccupied with that fact.

“I did Kilimanjaro, hiked in Bhutan. I just got back from Patagonia,” Delsener said. “I’m usually one of the oldest on those teams … sometimes in the back of the pack, and then sometimes at the front of the pack.”

Delsener’s family will cheer him on during race day. Though he’s looking forward to the big dinner they’ll have that night, he’s focused on finishing strong.

“It’s no different than when I would do a 400-mile section of the Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just like, OK, [one] step at a time, enjoy every day, and every day is an adventure.”

Overcoming injury

“If you are a runner,” Eline Laurent said, “you can’t escape that desire to one day run Boston and run a marathon.”

Now, she’ll be running her fifth marathon — and her second in Boston.

Laurent, a 24-year-old clinical research coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital, hasn’t had an easy time training for this marathon. She tore her labrum and fractured her hip when she hit a pothole during a casual run after two half-marathons in consecutive weeks. She’s had to get in marathon shape quickly.

“There was even a debate: Was I going to be able to run this year?” she said.

Laurent worked closely with a doctor whose office was on the marathon course and asked whether she could run. After her appointments, she’d feel heartbroken as she drove home on the same course she’d run before.

She will be leaving Massachusetts this fall to get her doctorate at the University of Washington after a lifetime in the state.. “This was just kind of like my goodbye to the city,” she said.

Despite her frustrations, she kept working on her injury. She received four rounds of “incredibly painful” shockwave therapy. After her second session of that, she got cleared to take an easy run. 

“I put on my shoes, and I went 8 miles,” Laurent said. “I was like, ‘Wait, OK, I can do this. It hurts, but I can do this.’”

Only a few weeks ago, she got cleared to run the marathon. She’ll run as part of a team of charity runners with the Stepping Strong Center, which focuses on trauma care and recovery. 

Last week she did her longest run since her injury — 24 miles, in a giraffe onesie — to raise money for her charity during a training run. She plans to wear a blue tutu in the Boston Marathon.

Laurent has been running since she was a little girl. Maybe not in a sundress and sandals, as she did for the Thoreau Elementary Road Race, but she’s addicted to it.

“No matter what marathon it is, what number it is, it’s just this, like, overwhelming sense of emotions,” she said. “It’s just this feeling that doesn’t get old.”

Running all their lives

There’s only one married Concord couple on the marathon entry list.

Rosemary “Rory” and Robert Burns have run alongside each other for a long time. They grew up together outside of Philadelphia and watched each other run at different moments in their lives.

“He came to watch me run Philly [the Philadelphia Marathon], and I see him at the end,” Rory said, “and he’s wearing a shirt that says ‘Running sucks’ on it.”

They reconnected after they ran into each other in Kenmore Square after watching Game 4 of the 2004 World Series. Robert came down from Bowdoin College with a few friends to watch the game at a friend’s house in Newton. Rory was a freshman at Boston University watching the game in her dorm when Robert messaged her he was nearby. They started dating in 2007 after Robert moved to Boston.

They mostly cycled together back then but fell back in love with running once they had more time for it. After Robert and his partners sold their business, Night Shift Brewing, in January, they moved to Concord, which was perfect for them.

“Concord has such an amazing amount of sidewalks and trails,” Robert said. “You can run from neighborhoods to farms to the woods to Walden Pond. Like, this is just too incredible not to be outside.”

Rory will run to raise money for Women’s Lunch Place, a shelter for women experiencing homelessness and poverty. Robert qualified for the race with a time under three hours. 

Although they got into the race for different reasons, they want to set a good example for their kids. Recently, the kids started asking about joining track meets and going on runs. The kids wanted to train for a school turkey trot, which prompted a trip to a local track.

“Kids see what you do. They see how you talk, they see how you spend your time, they see what you eat,” Rory said. “Fostering this love for them to love movement in whatever way it may be is a piece of why I wanted to do it and show them.” 

After the race, they’re looking forward to a few things.

“A beer!” Robert said with a laugh. 

“Stopping,” Rory said. “We’ll have family in town for the race, but yeah, shower and sitting on the couch.”

This story is part of a partnership between The Concord Bridge and the Boston University Department of Journalism.