Thousands Expected at Last Mile Run to the Marathon Finish Line

Photo via #OneRun

Organizers of a Memorial Day weekend run along Boylston Street, put together to honor the victims of the marathon blast, and let runners finish what they started, are expecting up to 4,000 attendees.

Already, more than 2,000 people have signed up on the #OneRun event’s Facebook page, saying they will participate in the meet-up, which stretches the last mile of the Boston Marathon route. But Jonathan Ritter-Roderick expects a lot more will come. “We are going to expect double or triple that,” he says.

The run was organized collaboratively by representatives from several running clubs, teams, events, businesses and organizations in the Greater Boston area, with the help of Ritter-Roderick. The #onerun concept was originally created by Andy Marx of Informal Running, and headed by Emily Koepsell from Cambridge Running Club, along with J. Alain Ferry and others. Ritter-Roderick says organizers worked with city officials to put the event together, and parts of Boylston Street will be shut down for roughly 20 minutes to accommodate the large crowd traveling toward the race’s finish line.

At 10 a.m. on May 25, runners will lace up and meet at the “one mile left” mark and stride together towards Boylston Street. When they finish, Ritter-Roderick says businesses in the area, located near where two bombs went off on April 15, will be open to the public, and some will have special discounts and deals. “Our goal with the #onerun is to give runners that did not finish their chance —and encourage other runners [and] spectators to line the road and cheer them on over the final mile of the marathon—while also bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars in consumer spending to [the] Back Bay,” according to the group’s Facebook page.

Ritter-Roderick says the event is not a race, but rather a chance for people in Boston to come together. “Run, walk, it doesn’t matter…we are going to set a steady pace. It’s not going to be race. We aren’t going to turn anyone away, and we want the people who didn’t finish to finish,” he says.