SouthCoast Course Serves as Substitute for Boston Marathon

If there's one common theme among people who are making the best of these strange days, it has been the ability to improvise, adapt and overcome.

When the Boston Marathon was postponed last month, Karen Coucci and Teresa Firth decided to not allow their training to go to waste. The two Mattapoisett women are avid runners year-round, but they had been doing some serious marathon training since January. They weren't ready to throw all of that work away.

The initial thought was to drive up to Hopkinton (either this weekend or today) and run the actual race route without the fanfare of the official marathon. That idea was short-lived. Worried that the crowds might be more than responsible social distancing would allow, they decided running the actual route might be just a little too risky.

Instead, Karen and Teresa decided to take full advantage of Sunday's gorgeous weather to run 26.2 miles locally here on the SouthCoast. Using their innate feel for distance, accompanied by their Apple watches, the ladies began by running 10 miles in Mattapoisett, then continued into Rochester, Acushnet, and New Bedford, and ended their marathon distanced run in Fairhaven.

"We didn't really have a route in mind," said Firth. "We kind of know distances because we've run for so long, we knew where we had to go to get the mileage in to finish at my house."

They both plan of running the official Boston Marathon on the rescheduled date in September.

The ladies both normally run 26.2 miles between 3:40 and 3:50, but they say they weren't racing yesterday.

"We were just having fun, stopping and taking pictures along the way," Firth said.