right on hereford, left on boylston

By PaceKit Team · Updated April 2026

There is a point in the Boston Marathon, around mile 25.5, where you turn right off Commonwealth Avenue onto Hereford Street. The street is narrow. The crowd is deep. And the road goes slightly uphill.

Nobody warns you about that uphill. It's maybe 20 feet of rise over a block and a half, which is nothing on any other day and everything on this one. Your legs have run through Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, and Brookline. They have descended 480 feet, climbed four hills, descended again. The Hereford uphill is the last insult before the reward.

Then you turn left onto Boylston Street.

Boylston is straight. It is wide. It is flat. And it is lined, on both sides, multiple people deep, with spectators who are screaming your name. The finish banner is visible from the turn. The distance is about 600 meters, roughly two blocks, and it is the longest, loudest, most emotionally overwhelming 600 meters in distance running.

Runners describe this stretch in terms that don't normally belong in race reports. The sound. The way the buildings channel the noise. The clarity that comes when you realize you're going to finish the Boston Marathon. Some runners sprint. Some runners cry. Some do both. The 2013 bombing happened on this street, and every runner who has turned onto Boylston since carries that awareness, consciously or not.

The finish line is painted on the road in front of the Boston Public Library. When you cross it, you have finished the oldest annual marathon in the world, in the city that invented the American marathon tradition, on a course that demanded everything you had and gave you this stretch of pavement in return.

Right on Hereford. Left on Boylston. You will remember the turn for the rest of your life.