Completing the first leg of his Fool’s Errand Trifecta for Epilepsy - Bad Bob is First to Complete Boston Marathon in Worst Weather in History:

After receiving well wishes from legend and four time Boston winner Bill Rodgers, six time wheelchair winner Ernst Van Dyke, and Kathrine Switzer the first woman to break into the Boston marathon, Knoxville businessman and renegade philanthropist Bob Sutton made good on his promise be the first to complete the course at the Boston Marathon Monday. Sutton crossed the finish line several minutes before the leaders. He was passed only by wheelchairs including his personal racing idol Van Dyke.

Taking to the course under cover of darkness and sheeting rain and intense head winds from a late spring Nor-Easter Sutton ran in ankle deep floods below Hopkinton and dodged debris distributed by the 35 mile per hour winds which gusted to 50 miles per hour. Course officials predicted the worst conditions in the race's 110 year history. By the start of the official race conditions improved to steady wind and rain with temperatures in the 40s. Apparently only Sutton was out in the worst of the storm before dawn.

Now having finished the first leg of his self styled Fool's Errand Trifecta for Epilepsy Sutton ran in honor of his daughter Ellen and in the hope of bringing attention to the need to increase the usage of the Harvard Anti-Epilepsy Drug Pregnancy Registry which tracks birth defects in women who must take medications to control seizures.

Sutton ran in the 2004 Boston Marathon when temperatures soared to 86 degrees and more than 800 runners were treated for heat related problems. He improved his previous Boston times by over thirty minutes. When asked to what he attributed his improvement, he credited his conditioning by noted boxing coach John Foust of Foust Fights, advice by his sparring partner Aaron Anderson, logistic support by Guinness World hand-walking record holder Danny Scannel, and "Of course the much improved weather conditions this year."

Donations may be made to the Epilepsy Foundation of East Tennessee
Lynn Goad (865) 522-4991

Later Sutton commented on the technicalities:

"While I would rather not invite detractors by quoting my time and also fact that I forgot to stop my watch until long after it was over, suffice to say that I ran the last fifteen of the Knoxville Marathon with a bleeding left nipple at about a 4:10 pace which is fast for me. My time in Boston was probably about the same as the clock time I started which was about 5:30 AM. Compounded by my 25 pounds of wet clothes and dry bagged clothes and equipment I was pretty pleased and I did really improve over my 2004 time when the heat soared to 86-87 degrees.

In reading the weather reports in the Globe today it sounds like the area around the start (Hopkinton) got 3-5 inches of rain with winds to 52 MPH. Gusts were reported in areas near Boston (not sure where) of 70. There was lots of tree damage and my friend Danny's privacy fence blew down. At five thirty a skylight was blown off a building and several other roofs were damaged by the winds alone.

Since the area where I was running the first 4 to 5 miles were unlit rather wooded swampy land it was really hard to see. I had a hiking head lamp and a strobe on my pack. Cars had a hard time seeing me but the garbage trucks were the most dangerous, big and wide and seemed to give me no quarter. (there were lots on Monday AM.) Being soaked in a sewage overflow was, I guess, the most picturesque moment.

I had joked about affecting the weather as it seems to rarely rain on my Cades Cove Saturdays. I have only gotten rained upon really hard once in five years and that was this Dec or January. Anyway it seems that by the actual start of the race at ten AM the worst of the storm had passed. The real miserable folks were the 20,000+ runners standing around in the rain (or unheated tents if you were a lucky enough) waiting for the start. I talked to lots of them today.

The race itself was not too bad for them except for the wind I was relatively dry (new Gortex jacket my kids bought me for Christmas and some great light mittens from Mast General's after winter sale) except for my feet which were soaked almost from the first 100 feet. I wore Injinji toe socks with Smartwool footies and slathered my feet in silicone jel and had no blisters at all! I was actually quite warm running until I stopped at the end when I got cold really fast. I ducked into the press hotel and toweled off and put on dry clothed that I had bagged in my pack. I had intended to intercept my epileptic runner friend but was too cold and exhausted to go back out to the finish area.

All in all it was a pretty good ride. I ran all the way up Heartbreak Hill and its smaller brothers. The toughest thing was running into a constant headwind which I had never done before."
Bob Sutton
bob@oldfool.net

To do the impossible we must attempt the absurd. –Cervantes