Nathanael Gomes Tejeda grew up in Nashua, where he got the nickname many know him by today. He was in elementary school, playing football, and his coaches and teammates noticed he was always running around with a smile on his face – even after a fall. They started calling him Smiley.
“At some point the name just was bestowed upon me. And it's been here ever since,” he said.
Tejeda decided he wanted to run the Boston Marathon when he was 17. He’d been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and his cancer clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital paired him with a runner who was racing to raise money for the clinic.
“She’s a pretty awesome lady,” he said. “She was really inspirational to an extent for me, knowing that, hey, if this lady can do it, I can certainly do it. And I know with just a little bit of training, I could get myself back into shape after the cancer treatment and give it a shot myself.”
Six years later, Tejeda is running to fundraise for the same clinic. He says training has been challenging –- he’s wrestled and played football for most of his athletic career, and running has been an adjustment. But, he says, it’s nice.
“It’s a good time to reset, to kind of get away from everything,” he said.
Boston is his first marathon. He says he’s most excited about seeing his family and the patient he’s partnered with for the fundraiser – a 17-year-old with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“It's kind of been a blessing to be on the other side and have that kind of full circle moment,” he said.
While Tejeda runs the course for the first time, Albany resident Linda Parrish will be treading familiar ground.
Parrish started running with a group of friends in North Conway in the 80s. Her first Boston Marathon was in 1990, and she made a goal to run ten in a row, every year of the 90s. But when she finished, she just kept going.
“When I started running, I had young children, and it was sort of time for myself. It's still kind of like that,” she said. “It's time to just sort of reflect and enjoy being outdoors. It's just become such a part of my life that I don't know what I would do if I wasn't running. I just try to appreciate the fact that I can still do it,” she said.
This year’s Boston Marathon will be number 36. Parrish, who is now 72, says she enjoys the race, though it gets harder every year. This year, she says, her goal is to finish – and to feel good while doing it.
“The thought that I will not have a choice in the probable near future about running or not makes me feel I need to at least try,” she said.
Parrish is part of the “quarter century club,” a group of people who have run 25 consecutive Boston Marathons. It’s a club that Lisa Zappala, who lives in Derry, is working to join.
“I guess there's not many women in it that have completed 25 in a row. So that's my goal,” she said.
Zappala has run 26 Boston Marathons – 23 of those consecutively, every year since 2002.
She got into running after her father passed away, while she was having a difficult time. She started walking, then jogging a bit, then running 5k races. She said once she got into it, it was like therapy.
“I think if you just set your mind to it and persevere, I really believe that anybody can do it,” she said.
