JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas –
Lt. Col. (Dr.) Trevor Lim, 59th Medical Wing Radiation Oncology chief, pinned on bib number 10874 to race among 27,355 other runners in the 2019 Boston Marathon April 15.
Accomplishing one of his biggest bucket list items, Lim completed the race in the top 28 percent of overall finishers with a run time of 3:24:49.
“This was my second best marathon time of five marathons I have ran,” Lim said. “I probably could have pushed a little harder, but I purposely saved energy during the first half of the race as miles 16-21 are known to be brutal because of the Newton Hills, including the infamous ‘Heartbreak Hill.'"
In 1997, Lim ran his first marathon in New York City and 14 years later he ran his second, a shadow Boston Marathon, while deployed at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.
“The shadow run reignited my passion for running marathons and made me want to come back stateside and seriously train for a marathon to qualify for the real Boston Marathon,” Lim said.
The Boston Marathon requires a person to run a qualifying time in order to participate. Historically, runners must have run approximately two to three minutes faster than the qualifying time to be accepted into the race.
Lim applied for the marathon in September 2018 and obtained a bib after running his personal best in the San Antonio Rock-n-Roll Marathon with a time of more than eight minutes below the qualifying time.
“The Boston Marathon is the granddaddy of all U.S. marathons and one of the six major marathons held in the world-- including New York, Chicago, London, Berlin and Tokyo,” Lim said. “With the lively crowd of supporters who lined all 26.2 miles of the course and the other runners who were there with me in the beautiful and historic backdrop of Boston, this marathon will be a memory I cherish for a long time.”