St. Albert resident Fred Fieber, 73, is no ordinary runner.
After quitting smoking at the age of 51, he began training for marathons and eventually qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon, which he ran in both 2011 and 2013. As he points out, that long journey was anything but straightforward.
"I quit smoking when I was 51 years old, after starting when I was 19. I put several different things in place in order to quit. I got a patch. I got a physiotherapist who was going to do acupuncture. And then I destroyed all the cigarettes I had left. It was cold turkey. I’ve taken no cigarettes since then," Fieber said.
Fieber's running journey began when a friend and former boss took notice of his enthusiasm for race walking and mountain climbing. "If he has so much confidence that I can do this, then what am I doing sitting on my backside?" Fieber thought, as he took on the challenge of training for his first half-marathon.
Fieber said that the early days started out slow.
“When I first started training, I knew nothing about running, except that the Running Room had the practice of running for ten minutes, and then walking for one. In the beginning, I reversed it. I walked ten and then ran one. Slowly, I expanded my running and shrank my walking."
By gradually increasing his endurance, Fieber completed his first half-marathon in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Then, after being approached by a group of fellow runners, he joined a relay team for the Death Race in Grande Cache.
“Because I was a newbie, they gave me the first leg, which was 19 kilometres, which involved a lot of going up and down terrain.”
While he was still a relative novice in the sport, it was clear to Fieber that he was moving in the right direction.
“I finished that one in under two hours, so I was definitely improving my speed.”
He later ran his first full marathon in 2009 at the Edmonton Marathon after using 2008 to recover from an injury. It was a huge accomplishment, but Fieber's friends encouraged him to aim higher, urging him to set his sights on the world’s most iconic race.
“The next year, in 2010, I ran the Edmonton Marathon in three hours and fifty-six minutes. Because I turned sixty that year, the qualifying requirement for Boston went up to four hours; I finished in three hours, fifty-six minutes.”
“My friends said, 'Fred, not everybody qualifies. You’ve got to go!’”
That feedback landed, and the gears were set in motion for Fieber to jet east to New England.
“After sitting at my computer for five hours on registration day, I was finally able to get a spot in the 2011 race. I ran my first Boston Marathon that year, and I felt like I had fulfilled all my running goals that my friends had set for me. I say that to highlight that I wasn’t in the race alone. I had many people supporting me and pushing me. They weren’t dragging me along, but they were pushing me forward.”
That support, Fieber attests, has made the activity an enduring and deeply important facet of his life.
“Before then, I had no reason to run. But now, I have a love of running. I have my own internal motivation, and that’s how I got to Boston again in 2013.”
Reflecting on tragedy
The 2013 iteration of the race was, however, marred by a tragic terrorist attack that took three lives and injured nearly three-hundred.
Fieber recounted his experience with vivid clarity.
“When I was at the pickup window to get my bag of clothes after the race, I heard the first explosion. I turned, and I could see the smoke. It was right near the finish line, and I knew it was a bad place for an accident. Ten seconds later, the second bomb went off. I said to the lady at the bag pickup, ‘That’s no accident.’”
As Fieber notes, the scene on the ground in the moments that followed the blasts was utter chaos.
“People were hysterical as I made my way through the crowd to meet with my wife and son. I remember one person with head dressing on. It was unbelievable.”
While the Fieber family ultimately emerged from the day unharmed,Fieber points out how differently things could have turned out in a world where his mile-time was even a little bit slower.
“The three of us had determined a meeting point the day before the race, and we later discovered that my wife and son would have been just across the street from where the bomb exploded if I had finished just fifteen minutes later.”
In the years since 2013, a number of media dramatizations have been made about the incident, the most recent of which is a Netflix mini-series released earlier this month, just three days shy of the bombing’s 10th anniversary.
Discussing Patriots Day (2016), which starred Mark Wahlberg, Fieber said, "Except for the swearing and gun play, which I feel were overdone, I do feel like it is a pretty good representation of what occurred that day."
Maintaining momentum
Fieber continues to run regularly in and around St. Albert, maintaining a consistent routine even in his seventies.
“I can be seen running along the pathways, sidewalks and roadways in and around St Albert. In the winter, I make use of the track at Servus Place when the weather is too inclement to run outdoors. I like to run at a minimum of every other day, although I am told that as one ages the time for muscles to recuperate is longer.”
To this day, he trains with a mind for what’s on the horizon — races that may help to usher in the next generation of Fieber runners.
“I have two races on my schedule at this time — the first is a 5k race in Whitecourt on June 3rd where I will be running with one of my daughters and my eight year old grandson. The other race is the Edmonton Marathon, which will be run on August 20th.”
