As a marathon runner, Malcolm Pain is a numbers guy.
He tracks speed and distance and can easily recall every race he’s run and the year it was held. But one number he’s not counting is his age.
“If you don’t recognize that stuff, there’s nothing I don’t think I can do,” says the Bedford, N.S. resident.
Pain rain his first 42-kilometre race four decades ago, and now, at the age of 78, he is just days away from competing in his 7th Boston Marathon.
The retired navy electrician rents a car and drives down to the race with friends. When competing, he always wears a pinny gifted to him from his co-workers.
“The people in running are fabulous,” he says. “It’s a great group of people and it doesn’t matter where I go. They all seem to be the same.”
Of the 30,000 runners at the marathon, Malcolm is only one of 24 people over the age of 78. He is also the oldest Maritimer heading to Boston this year.
He says he has made many memories in Boston, and one from his first marathon seems especially remarkable now.
“I was standing next to a fellow from Ohio who was 78 at the time and I thought ‘holy smokes!’”
He says the year of the Boston Marathon bombings was bittersweet. While he crossed the finish line in third place for his age group, there was no celebrating at the end.
“I just got the tape around me and they gave me my medal. Then the first bomb went off and it was about 150 yards to the other side of the finish line,” recalls Pain.
He received a trophy in the mail months later. For now, Pain has his eye on another prize.
“I would like to run Boston as an 80-year-old. I don’t think it has been done in Nova Scotia, so I’d just like to do it.”
