Strength in numbers
The Lowell House dining hall at 7 a.m. Monday was abuzz with energy, and doing brisk business in peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. “Everybody psyched?” Daniel Lieberman, professor and chair of human evolutionary biology and a dedicated runner, asked a group of students loading up on carbs. At that moment, it was a rhetorical question. The clear, crisp morning promised a perfect day for a run. For Harvard’s small but dedicated community of distance runners, the Boston Marathon is a team sport — an attitude on display that morning as students, faculty, and staff prepared to board a bus bound for the starting line in Hopkinton. Some had qualified for the big race, many were charity runners, and a few planned to run alongside friends to help them keep up their pace. Some were old hands: Dunster House tutor Kirstin Scott was gearing up for her 20th marathon. Several were running 26.2 miles for the...