“I saw my family and turned on the jets”: WECT’s Colin Hackman finishes Boston Marathon three seconds under goal

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - When Colin Hackman joined over 15,000 runners Monday morning for the start of the 2021 Boston Marathon, he had one goal: to finish the race in two hours, forty nine minutes and 59 seconds (2:45:59). Not only did he meet his goal, he beat it--by just three seconds.

Hackman finished the Boston Marathon in 2:45:56.

“It’s amazing,” he said reflecting on the race just a few hours after crossing the finish line. It feels really good to say I’m going to do something really scary and then dedicate time and energy because a few seconds different and I didn’t hit it and its a different vibe,” Hackman said.

For 11 weeks, Hackman trained for the marathon runners all over the world have to qualify for in order to participate.

“We have to get up and get going early so 16 weeks I run about ten hours a week my peak volume is usually about 90 miles a week and the trick to doing that for a 45-year-old is not breaking down. So mobility is a big part of that, wrestling around with my daughter, jumping on the trampoline--those are the kinds of things that help me.”

Hackman kept an impressive pace of a little over six minutes per mile until he got to mile 25 of the 26 mile race. At that point he says he found himself on what he calls the struggle bus. He says he’s not quite sure how his body made it to the finish line, but in his head he knew he had no choice.

“I literally thought a couple times about all the people besides me that had to make sacrifices for me,” he says. “There is no way I’m stopping even though that thought came into mind. Put in probably my worst mile at 25, turned the corner and I saw my family and turned on the jets.”

Hackman wasn’t the only runner from the Wilmington area. 20 other avid athletes crossed the finish line including Kevin Smith and Robin Godfrey who, according to Hackman, raised thousands of dollars for charity for the honor of to run the race.

Hackman, who owns Go Time, a company that puts on races in and around the Wilmington area, praised Boston for how it handled the marathon and the over 500,000 spectators who attend.

Every runner had to show proof they were either vaccinated or COVID-free.

“Boston did an incredible job with the vaccination protocol,” he said. “You either had to have a vaccination card or a negative test and they put you in a wristband and you were in a safe environment. The police and the fire and the national guard and everyone who is there to help make the race is phenomenal. It just shows in my business that we can do the same thing in Wilmington which quite honestly we have a much prettier city,” he says with a smile.

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