Nineteen years after Suni Williams ran the Boston Marathon strapped into a treadmill aboard the International Space Station, the Needham, Massachusetts native runs it this morning on the pavement as the 130th race's Patriots' Award honoree. [1] [2] Williams crossed the 2007 orbital finish line in four hours, twenty-three minutes, forty-six seconds — the first person to run 26.2 miles in space. [1] The spacecraft carrying her was moving at 17,500 miles per hour.
The BAA announced Williams as the honoree February 12, citing "perseverance, service, and curiosity." [1] [2] Past recipients include Robert Kraft, Joan Benoit Samuelson, Rick and Dick Hoyt, Tim Wakefield, David Ortiz, Marty Walsh, and Rob Gronkowski. [1] Williams retired from NASA in May 2025 after twenty-seven years of service, having held the record for the second-longest cumulative time in space by a NASA astronaut and the most spacewalking time logged by a woman. [1] She and Butch Wilmore spent nine months aboard the ISS last year when Starliner's thruster issues extended a week-long mission into an international concern.
The divergence is tonal. MSM coverage — Globe, CBS, NBC — treated the announcement as a feel-good Patriots Day story. Space X and Williams's own accounts frame her presence as NASA's soft landing after Starliner: the astronaut who got stranded now gets honored on the ground she orbited. [3] The paper's Sunday account of the Boston Marathon security posture notes the FBI's heightened-threat posture; Williams running under that posture is a visible counterweight to it.
She steps off in Hopkinton mid-morning. The race will give her the same finish line it gave her in orbit.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos