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Joseph Reid says he doesn’t consider himself a runner. Or a huge fan of the Tragically Hip.
But he did just run the prestigious and highly competitive Boston Marathon dressed like Gord Downie — it was his seventh marathon, and the second he’s run dressed as the Canadian band’s iconic frontman — so maybe don’t take him at his word on either point.
“I don’t listen to a lot of music, but if I do, it’s typically them,” Reid, 47, a firefighter from Kingston, Ont., told CBC News Tuesday while wearing a Tragically Hip sweatshirt in his garage decorated with Tragically Hip memorabilia and embellished with Gord Downie quotes.
“I guess if that makes me an obsessed fan, then I’m an obsessed fan. Or maybe running a marathon dressed as Gord Downie,” he said with a laugh.
On Monday, Reid ran the intense 42.2 kilometre marathon in Boston dressed in silver pants, a Jaws T-shirt, a neck scarf and a grey top hat adorned with a feather — the same outfit Downie wore for his final concert in Kingston in 2016 just over a year before he died from an aggressive brain cancer.
Reid was among the thousands in the audience that night.
“I wasn’t going to miss that one,” he said.
The first time Reid ran a marathon dressed as Downie was in 2017, at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon just a week after the singer’s death. And that time, he also carried a guitar and a portable speaker, so he could blast the band’s music the entire way.
The reaction from the crowd and from other runners during his 2017 race was “unreal,” Reid said. People sang along.
He raised more than $5,000 for the Downie Wenjack Fund, and said that all in all, it was an unforgettable experience.
So, when Reid found out last fall that he’d qualified for Boston, he thought: why not? Although this time, the marathon’s strict rules meant he had to swap his guitar and speaker for a Canadian flag.
“Part of it is to kind of represent the city you live in, the country you live in,” he said.
“I mean, maybe there’s some argument about this, but Tragically Hip is Canada’s band, so what batter way to do it?”
Pace took a hit from all the high-fives
More than 32,000 people took part in Monday’s 130th running of the Boston Marathon. The course winds through eight cities and towns before finishing on Boston’s famous Boylston Street.
Kenyan John Korir broke the course record Monday morning, winning in two hours, one minute and 42 seconds — the fifth-fastest marathon of all time.
Reid finished in three hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds, a time he considers “not bad,” considering how often he zig-zagged across the course to give people high fives. But his goal wasn’t to get a personal best — that already happened when he finished the 2024 Toronto Waterfront Marathon with a time of 2:55. He found out last fall that this was the finish that allowed him to qualify for Boston this year.
Plus, the last time he ran Boston in 2005, he went in hoping to improve his time, but just wound up disappointed.
“Boston’s a tough course. It’s nothing but hills. And that didn’t go well,” Reid said.
So this time, he says he just wanted to enjoy the experience.
“The whole course is just fans. And if you really just focus on the fans, it’s a blast, you know?”
People thought he was a shark
And fans in Boston seemed to enjoy his costume, Reid says — even if most didn’t understand it. Because of the Jaws shirt, he thinks people assumed he was dressed to represent the movie, or maybe a shark. Reid isn’t quite sure.
He just knows he heard “Go, Jaws!” about 20,000 times, and the movie quote “You’re going to need a bigger boat” about 5,000 times.
“When I ran it in Toronto obviously everybody knew who I was,” he said. “Not so much down in Boston.”
Reid says only about 10 people throughout the entire day properly identified him, and he suspects they all had some kind of Canadian connection.
“If I was running and I heard ‘Gord!’ I would crank my head to the side and … I would just start fist pumping.”
Despite running in multiple marathons, Reid says he still doesn’t consider himself a runner. He doesn’t compete in many races and says he mostly runs for exercise. But he does have some favourite Hip songs for when he hits the pavement — Nautical Disaster, with Ahead by a Century as a close second.
“I mean, obviously I’m a Tragically Hip fan,” he said with a laugh.
Kenya’s John Korir won the Boston Marathon for a second year in a row, while setting a new course record with a time of 2:01.52. Top Canadian Rory Linkletter finished 14th in a time of 2.06:04.
