Bronson Venable says he’s not one for excuses.
After the Boston Marathon, he didn’t need one — not after a five-minute personal best.
On a picture-perfect day for racing, the former Bishop Hendricken standout ran 2 hours, 21 minutes, 31 seconds, placing 85th overall among 29,025 finishers.
What he didn’t share with most was how sick he had been the week before.
“I didn’t really tell a lot of people,” he said. “I’m not an excuse guy. But I got sick as a dog last Sunday night. I got some GI bug – nothing was staying inside me from Sunday until Wednesday afternoon. I couldn’t go to work. The doctor wrote me out for the whole week. I was literally laying in bed for like three days.”
It wasn’t until four days before the race that the 35-year-old Warwick native began to get some of his strength back. With a goal of running sub-5:30 pace – 2:23:55 or faster – Venable wasn’t sure he’d even make it to the starting line.
“For a minute, I was scared. I was just exhausted. I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. “I did a 4-by-mile workout on Thursday. I did 5:25, 5:26, 5:21 and 5:20, and it felt all-out. I was like, ‘How am I supposed to hold this for 26 miles? I was hurting.’”
But on Patriots Day at the Boston Marathon, the 130th running of a race that rarely forgives, he did.
“I got lucky,” Venable said.
From the start in Hopkinton to the finish line in Copley Square, Venable was locked in for the full 26.2 mile distance, hitting consistent splits at every checkpoint. He ran the opening 5K in 16:42 and reached the halfway mark in Wellesley in 1:10:40, a pace he nearly matched on the second half.
Venable was part of the PUMA Project3 sub-elite marathon program, which offers bonuses of $3,000 for athletes who run personal bests by three minutes or more. He cleared that standard easily, improving on his previous best of 2:26:55 from the 2024 Chicago Marathon.
He ran much of the race alongside other members of the PUMA Project3 group.
“I felt really good,” he said. “Everything was consistent. We didn’t want to push it too much – we held the same pace the whole way.”
Around 13 miles, he felt tingling in his hamstring, and by 16 his quads began to tighten. But as he entered the Newton Hills, things began to shift.
“I was praying for an uphill to change the muscle I was using,” he said. “The hills weren’t even bad, to be honest. The 100-mile weeks kind of set me up.”
By the time he crested Heartbreak Hill near mile 21, Venable began to surge. He was running his fastest splits of the day – 5:16 just after the climb, 5:15 through mile 24 and a 5:05 final mile.
“I started rolling,” he said. “I picked up my form and that was it. The crowd was unreal. It was deafening how loud it got. People were screaming, asking for high-fives. It’s a different atmosphere. I feed off the crowd. I love the energy.”
A lot of things turned out favorable in the race. For starters, the weather proved to be ideal, with temperatures in the 40s and limited wind.
“It was pretty close to perfect,” he said. “It was as perfect as you can get. There was a little headwind going into mile 13 — that was the only time I felt the wind change. Other than that, it was perfect.”
Venable also credits the footwear. He wore the PUMA Fast-R3, one of the brand’s so-called “super shoes.”
“They are incredibly light,” he said. “I think they’re like five or six ounces. The super shoes are all based on foot strike and all that. For me and the way my form is, luckily I am a bigger dude and I get a little more out of them. The shoes definitely make a difference – 100 percent. It’s definitely a game-changer.”
Besides the crowd weather and shoes, Venable also had support from his former high school coach, Jim Doyle. The longtime Bishop Hendricken coach made his way to multiple points along the Boston Marathon course.
“I talked to him during the week, and he said he’d try to be at miles six, 13 and 21,” Venable said. “I don’t know how he does it at his age, but he knows the course like the back of his hand.”
Doyle managed to find him more than once.
“He was at six miles and told me I was ahead of schedule to get to 13. Then I saw him again around 20. He had ERG (electrolyte replacement with glucose). I didn’t even know that was still around,” he said with a laugh. “It might have been expired.”
“It was huge to have Jim out there,” he added. “And I talked with assistant coach Danny Brennan the night before. I’ve been close with those guys since 2004. Now here we are in 2026, and it still feels like I’m running for them.”
