Leesburg native completes 2023 Boston Marathon

A dream that started almost 20 years ago recently became reality for a Leesburg native, as Fairfield graduate Cody Davidson completed the 2023 Boston Marathon this April.

A 2010 graduate of Fairfield High School, Davidson was a member of the Lions’ cross-country and track and field teams, including competing under head cross-country coach Raymond Friend from seventh grade through his senior year. His coaches at Fairfield, and others in Highland County, played a key role in inspiring Davidson to qualify for the Boston Marathon one day.

Running in the Boston Marathon is something Davidson said was a “bucket list” goal for him, one that started at a young age. He credited several individuals from Highland County for sparking that idea in him when he was in middle school, including Friend and Carol Grate from Greenfield. Grate, who had competed in the Boston Marathon in 2001, was at a local 5K event in 2004, and her example piqued Davidson’s interest.

“Back in the summer of 2004, I was at Leesburg Summer Fest, and Coach Friend put on a 5K for the Leesburg festival,” Davidson said. “Carol Grate was there. It’s funny how it works out. This was the first time I really kind of knew what the Boston Marathon was. I was always wanting to know who was the fastest around town, and Raymond said, ‘Carol Grate. She ran the Boston Marathon.’ He explained what it was to me. That was the first I’d heard of it, and as a kid, it sounded really cool.”

Davidson said that as he got older, he continued to read more about the Boston Marathon and learn from the example of others in the area who had experience competing in marathons, including former Fairfield cross-country coach Bill Mangus.

“As years go on, you see the Boston Marathon every year on Sports Center,” Davidson said. “It’s one of those things like the Kentucky Derby where you don’t know a lot about it, but you see it and learn more each year about the tradition of it.

“Then as a junior and senior in high school, Bill Mangus came in as my assistant high school coach. He showed me some of his old marathon relics, some of the stuff he used to do in the past, some old pictures. It was really cool to me. It kind of made me more into it and realized that one time down the road I could run in it. He told me how much wear and tear it could be and why he stopped, but I still had it as like a bucket list thing.”

However, Davidson said that he took “a long period of time off” from running after high school, until a friend challenged him to run a marathon with him in 2021. That initial spark has led to four full marathons and the ultimate bucket-list goal of the Boston Marathon in just a couple years.

“I had a buddy kind of smack talk or challenge me into doing a full marathon, and I went straight from the couch to getting back into it,” Davidson said. “He and I competed getting into it and ran the 2021 Flying Pig.

“After that, he stopped running, and I got the fever again and went after it and have been running since.”

Much to his surprise, qualifying for Boston was almost immediately achievable, as Davidson was only 15 minutes away from qualifying in his first-ever 26.1-mile race. At the Flying Pig in 2021, he ran a 3:15.46 (7:28 per mile), and seeing that time made him realize that running in Boston could be a reality sooner rather than later.

There were almost exactly two years between his first marathon — the aforementioned Flying Pig in Cincinnati, in April 2021 — to competing in Boston Marathon in April 2023. In between, though, Davidson put in many miles of training, competed in a couple other marathons and battled injury to reach his goal in Boston.

“[Before the first marathon] I never thought I would be anywhere close,” Davidson said. “I put it in my mind that I could maybe really work toward it in the next year or so and make it happen.”

That’s exactly what Davidson did, as he put in hours of work each week, along with focusing on his nutrition, as he described his training regiment.

“It’s crazy how fast your time can come down once you start focusing,” Davidson said. “I worked up to my pig mile, which was 90 miles a week. I ran probably an average of about 70 miles a week for 12 weeks straight. I did long runs, building up to about 22, 24 miles, on Saturday or Sunday, then just focused on three quality runs a week … a hard tempo, a threshold run, one day focusing on speed work, and then a long run on the weekends. Everything else was slow, and high miles.

“After five, six months, l started to see [my time] really come down.”

Davidson said he took a “middle of the road” approach to his diet, being careful but not fanatic about his choice.

“I avoided fried foods and sodas, empty calories, things like that,” he said. “I’m not perfect when it comes to diet. I never focused on specific things, just watched what I ate. It was nothing too crazy, but you’ve got to reel it in a little bit.”

In just his second marathon, which was the 2022 Flying Pig, Davidson reached his qualifying time for Boston.

“You had to break a three-hour marathon to qualify for Boston, and I ran a 2:55.06 (6:41 per mile) at the 2022 Flying Pig,” he said.

Almost two decades after introducing Davidson to the Boston Marathon, Friend is still a big supporter. Davidson said that his former coach attended the 2022 Flying Pig Marathon and cheered him on as he ran his Boston-qualifying race.

“It was awesome to have Coach Raymond Friend come down to Cincinnati in 2022 to watch me qualify,” he said. “I was roughly about 16 miles into the race when I saw him hanging over the rope. I never thought I'd get to hear another ‘Come on, Cody Davidson,’ so that was really special.”

Then, in his third-ever marathon, Davidson reached his personal best time and also qualified for the 2024 Boston Marathon.

“This past November, I ran the Indianapolis Marathon,” Davidson said. “I ran a 2:46.36 (6:21 per mile), my current best, and I qualified for the 2024 Boston Marathon, so I have the opportunity to go back next year.”

Still, after all that hard work, Davidson was afraid he might not make it to Boston after all this year for his fourth-ever marathon. A couple months before the event, he suffered a foot injury that caused him a lot of pain, but with an adjustment to his training and physical therapy, he was still able to finish the race.

“It was not the worst time to get hurt because I could still run, but I had to switch to ellipticals, icing about an hour day and physical therapy to get to the point I could run it,” Davidson said. “My foot would start hurting after five miles, and I was getting really worried. I found a really good physical therapist in Cincinnati, and he helped me get ready and made sure I could finish the race.”

Davidson saw his years of work pay off in April when he ran at Boston, calling the experience “very surreal.” Even with the injury and what Davidson said was “a harder course,” he still managed to finish the Boston Marathon under three hours, with a time of 2:52.04 (6:34 per mile). Overall, he finished in 2,118th place, as he was 2,031st for men’s runners and 1,600th in his division.

Davidson said seeing how the city and the event organizers accommodate the thousands of competitors was one of the most impressive parts of the trip. Instead of running in “a big loop” like the Flying Pig Marathon, where the race both starts and concludes at the same point, the Boston Marathon is a 26-mile run through the city.

“As unbelievable as the race was, some of the accommodations for that many people was even more amazing,” he said. “They bus 30,000 people to the start line, and you run a straight 26-mile race back into downtown Boston. To see buses literally as far as you could possibly see was crazy. That was just unreal, the thought of how they accommodate such a huge event.”

For someone like Davidson, who has enjoyed learning more about the event over the years, he also enjoyed seeing all “the history” that surrounds the event, from past competitors returning to “expos set up with old jerseys of people in the past.”

“It was very cool,” he said.
 
And not only are there thousands of competitors, but there are thousands of supporters, too, which Davidson was so encouraging for him and the other runners.

“From start to finish, the streets were lined the entire way with people, nonstop, which is huge,” he said. “Just having the people cheering and the extra adrenaline from that would help push you along.”

After the race, Davidson said he realized that not only did he have support throughout the race from the strangers lining the course, but many of his loved ones were following him virtually throughout the race.

“I also want to acknowledge how much I appreciated all those who've prayed and given me support and positive energy along the way,” Davidson said. “I had posted my bib number and Boston’s tracking app on my Facebook page the night before the race. The amount of people who tracked my progress and splits throughout the race was overwhelming. I loved hearing all of the stories from those who mentioned following and made it somewhat of an event for themselves that day.”

The distance of the course was not as challenging as other aspects of the race, as Davidson said a main difference between the Boston Marathon and other events is that everyone has qualified to get in, so most of the thousands of runners are all running a similar pace.

“In smaller marathons, there are openings to move better,” Davidson said. “[At Boston], you’re packed in with people as fast as you are, so you’re pretty tight for the whole almost three hours. There’s not a whole lot of shoulder room.

“It made it harder because you’re trying not to step on other people’s feet. Especially in the earlier stages of the race where people were packed together, it was nerve-wracking. It’s part of the experience, and hearing that many people running at the same time is kind of rhythmic and cool.”

Davidson said that like Ohio, Boston weather in April is unpredictable, so he said he felt “pretty lucky” that the weather was mild, “in the 50s and a little cool,” although he did face strong rains late in the marathon.

“There was a pretty hard downpour, for me, around mile 24,” Davidson said. “At that point, thankfully, I’d got through the worst of it. If it rains early, you worry about blisters. At mile 24, it was pretty heavy, and right after race there were pretty heavy rains. Personally, I think we got pretty lucky. It could always be pretty windy or super cold.”

Finally reaching the end of the marathon, after years of dreaming about running in Boston, battling injury and enduring years of training, was an emotional experience, Davidson said.

“Definitely hitting the finish line, when you do something and work for it for that long, all those training runs kind of come together,” Davidson. “As you’re training and you’re running 20 miles by yourself, every weekend for a year, year and half, two years, you never know what it’s going to be like. You finally get there and realize all those tough days of getting out of bed at 6 a.m. to make sure you get a three-hour run in is all worth it.

“Having someone put the medal on your neck and hitting you with a heat shield, it all hits you there when you cross the line. There were a lot of cool things throughout the race, but it’s all about the finish line.”

It was especially meaningful considering his injury, he said, as a lot of friends and family knew that he had qualified and were rooting for him.

“Especially when I got hurt, I didn’t know if it would happen,” Davidson said of finishing the Boston Marathon. “It would be a hard thing to have to tell the people cheering me on that I wouldn’t be able to race or finish. In my mind I was just thinking, ‘get to the finish line no matter what. Just get there.’"

He thanked his parents, Tammy and Howard Davidson of Leesburg; his fiancée, Spenser; his grandparents; and his high school coaches from Fairfield, Friend and Mangus, for helping him reach his goal.

“I’d like to thank them for all the support along the way and different inspirations and things they’ve given me over time,” Davidson said. “Sometimes when you’re out there running, even 12 years later, you hear their voice in your head, whether it’s motivational or a one-liner you can think of when running or training that keeps pushing you along.

“Different things they’ve all said through the years, or taking me to practices as a kid, have been huge and work into the bigger picture of it.”

Davidson is a high school health and physical education at Conner High School in Hebron, Ky., where he also now serves as the assistant coach for the school’s cross-country and track and field programs, thanks to his years of experience as a distance runner. He thanked the head coach and the teams for their support and inspiration as well.

“I owe thanks to our head coach at Conner High School, Ian Johnstone, along with the Conner High School boys XC team,” Davidson said. “Ian found out I'd started getting serious about running again and invited me to run with the team, which led to coaching. These kids are back-to-back ’21 and ’22 Kentucky 3A (equivalent to Ohio’s Division I) state champions, so their level of talent and competitive nature helps push me to be a better runner myself.”

If anyone else is interested in running a marathon — whether it’s Boston or somewhere else — or even just getting more active, Davidson said his advice is to “just get started,” and everything should fall into place.

“Just get started, because everything will become a new normal after a few weeks,” he said. “The first two or three weeks feels like an absolute job to get out and run, but once you do something five or six weeks straight, it’s just normal, part of the routine. It’ll get easier from there.

“Something I do is I’ll book a race a long time in advance, and it keeps me motivated to complete it. It keeps me focused if I book it further out in advance. That’s what kept me going. It’s easy to get discouraged, especially getting injured. Stay in some kind of routine, and if you get hurt, find something else that helps — whether elliptical, bike, whatever — and make sure you don’t get used to not doing anything.”