How an under-the-radar RI runner became one of the top Boston Marathon finishers
I asked Andrew McCann, the number-one Rhode Island finisher in this year's Boston Marathon, how his legs were feeling. It was three days after the race. He was the 20th-fastest American and finished 32nd overall out of 30,000 runners.
With the world's best in the mix, that's an insane performance.
Andrew is 34, lives in Westerly and works as a footwear product manager for New Balance in Boston.
“Pretty good,” he said by phone after I tracked him down. “Still a little sore. But I’ll probably get out for a few miles this afternoon.”
He’s already back to running?
It got a laugh. “I have a hard time not taking advantage of the nice day,” he says.
At least he won’t be doing the 24 miles or so he did on “long run” Saturdays during training.
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Andrew seems to have been under the radar as a local runner. There’s not much coverage of him online. But when I checked the Boston finishers by state, an “RI” guy jumped out as the 32nd overall. Andrew’s 2:21:06 time was a blazing 5:23 or so per mile pace. Most seasoned runners couldn't hit that once, let alone 26 times nonstop.
With a personal best of 2:17:07 last fall in Sacramento, he’s among around 100 men qualifying for February’s American Olympic trials to pick the top three competing in the 2024 Paris games.
Andrew told me he’s a long shot, but he’s proud to have made the cut, and you can always hope.
Where has this local star been hiding?
Although he grew up in Syracuse, his family has had a Misquamicut home for generations. Andrew spent most of his summers there and made Westerly his main home three years ago.
He told me it’s a great place for a marathoner. He loves running the 50-acre Avondale Farm Preserve, or along the water from Misquamicut to Weekapaug. It’s just right for one of his favorite things: a post-run ocean dip.
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“There’s nothing better,” he says.
Andrew is an efficient 5-foot-9 and 135 pounds when in training. I asked if he’d heard of a similarly built Boston Marathon legend also from Westerly — Tarzan Brown, a Narragansett who won the race in 1936 and 1939, among the few Native Americans to do so.
It turns out Tarzan was an inspiration to Andrew. His mom, a schoolteacher, used to tell him stories of Tarzan training in the same Westerly area that Andrew now does. In fact, for his Boston run, Andrew created a race tank top — or “kit” — with “Westerly, RI” on the front as a nod to the one Tarzan wore during his first victory.
“It resonated with me,” said Andrew.
Alas, he was told it wasn’t quite regulation size.
In college, Andrew was a 5K and 10K runner at UMass Amherst. Feeling a bit burned out and frustrated that he didn’t rank higher, he gave up competitive running after graduating in 2010. But friends who knew he was into the sport kept asking if he planned a marathon someday.
In 2019, partly because of that, he ran one in Lowell. He was surprised to win, with a time of 2:34. That got him back into competing. Andrew has done a half dozen marathons since then. He was the number-one American last October in London — and now this remarkable Boston finish.
Boston pre-qualifies a few hundred top men and women as part of the race’s “pro field” who are allowed to take off ahead of the crowd. Andrew was one. They all met at 6:15 a.m. at the Fairmont Copley by the finish line to check in, then boarded buses with a police escort 26.2 miles to Hopkinton for the start.
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When the gun went off, Andrew and his running partners were hoping to keep up for a while with world record holder Eliud Kipchoge, of Kenya, and the other top contenders. No luck.
“The pack broke up almost immediately with how fast they took it out,” said Andrew. “We all laughed a little bit about how quick it happened.”
I asked Andrew why he ran with partners. He mainly had two: Eric Ashe, who works for Tracksmith, a Boston running apparel company, and Brian Harvey, a Boston-area tech guy, who both finished a few spots behind him. Andrew explained that each occasionally “tucked” behind the others to get a breather from wind resistance, as well as the stress of looking at your watch to keep the pace.
I told him it seems like a punishing existence, being a marathoner.
Not to him. Andrew loves the races and routine. He even considers 24-mile “long-run” practice days as something he “gets” to do rather than “has” to do.
Andrew McCann will be home in Westerly this weekend, and although it’s just five days or so after Boston, he’ll be out there running again.
And very likely adding his favorite thing — a dip afterward in the ocean off Westerly.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Boston Marathon's top finisher from RI has run under the radar
