URBANA — The Boston Marathon was Daniel Romanchuk’s first competition of the year, but it wasn’t supposed to be. A few months ago, Romanchuk suffered a large blood clot in his leg, forcing him to pause his training and skip an earlier race.
He’s grateful to have recovered in time for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Marathon’s wheelchair division. But he learned the important lesson of staying flexible: “Lots of things don’t go as you planned them or you thought they might go,” said Romanchuk, who took second place, finishing the race with a time of 1:25:58, for an average of 3:17 minutes per mile.
Romanchuk is a two-time Boston Marathon winner and two-time Paralympic gold medalist; last fall, he won the 2024 New York City men’s wheelchair marathon. He’s one of two racers with ties to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: U of I alum Susannah Scaroni won the women’s wheelchair race for the second time.
Adapting to unexpected events is an important lesson for athletes, he said, because many factors, like weather conditions and wind, as well as the geography along the route, can affect athletes’ performance.
The Boston Marathon is a point-to-point course — starting in one location and ending in another location — and because of that, “if we get a good tailwind, it’s going to be a pretty fast day. But this time we had a very slight headwind. Overall, it wasn’t too slow of a day.”
Romanchuk kept pace with champion Marcel Hug at the beginning of the race, but eventually fell behind. He said the downhill portions of the Boston Marathon course were challenging, because downhill racing isn’t his strength.
While the course started with several miles downhill, it flattened out later and had more uphill portions, he said.
After the competition, he participated in a panel with Bob Hall, a wheelchair racing pioneer and the grand marshal for the 2025 Boston Marathon. Romanchuk said it was amazing to learn more about the sport’s history: “the inclusion of the race and the technology of the racing chairs, really just kind of seeing how much things have changed.”
In an interview in 2024, Romanchuk explained that spring and fall and for training outdoors, getting lots of miles in to prepare for upcoming marathons. Summer is track season, in which he and his teammates follow a rigorous training schedule to prepare for races.
“We all train six days a week, one to two times a day,” he said. “And each session is maybe an hour to an hour and a half long.”
Romanchuk is now in the U.K. preparing for the London Marathon, which takes place on Sunday, April 27.