Amanda Sandstrom, Westview alumna, math teacher, cross country and track and field coach, stood at the starting line of the Boston Marathon—the oldest and one of the most prestigious marathons in the U.S.—waiting for the starting gun to fire, April 21. Out of 31,670 total runners, 13,595 female competitors, and 12,199 participants in her age group, Sandstrom placed 2,624th in her age group with a time of 3:22:12, averaging a 7:43 mile.
Sandstrom always knew she wanted to run the Boston marathon.
“The Boston Marathon has always been on my bucket list,” Sandstrom said. “I love running. When I was in high school, my mom ran the Boston Marathon, and I saw how cool that was, what a big deal it was for her, so I knew that one day I would ultimately want to run the Boston Marathon as well.”
She started training in December, continuing to run with her cross country students and putting in time over the weekends to train, often being out for a long run.
“It was hard and tiring, but very rewarding,” Sandstrom said. “[It was] also very unlike any other race experience I’ve ever had before, because there were so many fans. When people come out for our cross country races, there are points where there are fans, but then there are also points where there’s nobody, and you’re doing it all by yourself. A marathon is 26.2 miles, and in most marathons, there are giant stretches where there is nobody cheering you on. But this was wall-to-wall with people cheering you on the entire 26.2 miles, which was very exciting and cool.”
Starting in Hopkinton and spanning 26.2 miles to Boston’s Copley Square, the Boston Marathon is no easy feat. Sandstrom had to qualify for the race with a previous marathon time faster than 3 hours and 30 minutes and the Boston Marathon, so she started running with athletes who qualified with similar times as her, but the Boston Marathon’s course was much harder than any average marathon.
“The hardest part was the layout of the course,” Sandstrom said. “It started with downhills, which is nice, but a decent amount of downhill running burns up your quads. And then at the end, miles 18 to 21 were uphill, so when you’re already very tired, it was hard. They weren’t super steep or super long, but it was the placement and the beating that your quads had taken prior to it that made it such a difficult race.”
The Boston marathon was Sandstrom’s third marathon, and she said she had to mentally prepare for the sheer length of it. She set mental goals to reach certain goals in the race until she reached the finish such as the half marathon point, where her husband and son were cheering her on, and the last 5 kilometers or 3 miles of the race.
“A marathon in general is a mental challenge, but I feel like I did a decent amount of training, and I had prepared myself prior to doing that mentally,” Sandstrom said. “I had gone out for quite a few long runs with my longest being 20 miles, and you just have to tell yourself, ‘you can do it.’”
After going through a 19 week training program and finishing the Boston Marathon, Sandstorm implemented some of her personal training into her team’s workouts.
“[The marathon] had a very direct correlation to my coaching style come track season because as I was preparing for the Boston Marathon, I was also coaching track,” Sandstrom said. “As I was training, I did some speed workouts at 5K pace, 10K pace, half [marathon], and tempo pace, rather than just doing everything at my goal marathon pace. I also did active recovery, which is when you’re doing a speed workout, you jog the recovery rather than stop, [which] really helped get me stronger. So I’ve employed that in my coaching plans.”
Sandstrom’s running journey didn’t end when she achieved her goal of running the Boston marathon, and it is far from over. Returning home from Boston, Sandstrom went straight back into running and coaching her students. To encourage her to continue pushing herself to reach her goals, Sandstrom has the quote “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift” by Steve Prefontaine tattooed on her arm.
“That’s my life motto and essentially, if you’re gonna do something, give it your all,” Sandstrom said. “Don’t just be half-hearted. I had this goal, I gave it my all, and I’m very happy and very proud of it. It’s no small thing to run a marathon. There’s all the training and the preparation that you put into it ahead of time that you [have to] set your mind to so you can accomplish it [and]
life lessons that can be taken from it. This was a goal of mine.
I put a lot of effort and a lot of work into it to try to get there.”
