Gail Miranda Runs the Boston Marathon, Gets Her Six Point Medal, But It Wasn't Easy

It was far from easy, but, Gail Miranda did it.

The 63-year-old Hampton Bays resident ran the Boston Marathon on April 15 in 5:54:07, completing all six Abbott Majors and finishing a task only thousands of people around the world have done, which is run all six major marathons for the Six Star Medal.

A task that began in 2016 when she ran the New York City Marathon in 5:09:51, Miranda went on to run Chicago in 2018, finishing that race in 5:17:18, then completed London in 2019 in 5:21:16. After suffering through multiple health-related issues, she eventually took down Berlin in 2022 in 5:57:31, and then Tokyo on March 3 in 5:42:08.

Temperatures nearing 70 degrees in Boston the day of the marathon made for what was an excruciating day for runners, including Miranda, who admitted there were points throughout her race when she thought for sure she was going to give up.

“It was really hot, and I was extremely hot, and I started feeling really nauseous and really dizzy. At one point, I didn’t know where I was,” she said. “People were dropping like flies. They were falling and hitting their heads on the pavement, especially people like me that race in the back of the pack. We take five or six hours to finish our race, and so we really didn’t get started until 11:15 a.m. And so, of course, by then, it’s really hot.

“I almost bailed a couple times,” Miranda continued. “I kept getting my water at each stop, and I kept looking at the medical tent across the way. One of my friends was a medic at mile 22, so I thought, if I can make it to 22, I can always go see her. So when I got to mile 22, my friend actually came running out of the tent. I thought she was running to me, when she actually ran past me to attend to someone behind me who had collapsed.”

Miranda passed her husband Frank and other family and friends at mile 6, at which point it was hot, but not too bad, she said. At mile 14, though, after completing half of the marathon, that’s when the heat really started to take its toll. She started taking two cups of water at each station, one for her head, one to drink. Still, things started to deteriorate for her to the point where she really couldn’t understand where she was.

“I couldn’t tell if I needed more water or if I was taking in too much water,” she said. “It was the hardest marathon of all of them because of the heat. The course itself isn’t really that bad. There are the hills at the end, but if you conserve yourself for them, you can do it.”

At one point, Miranda started to get her second wind and realized that if she didn’t make it across the finish line in time, she wouldn’t be able to get her medal, and therefore wouldn’t have proof that she finished it for the Abbott Majors. While technically there isn’t a time limit for the Abbott Majors, there becomes a point when those handing out the medals pack everything up and leave.

“Even if I finished, if I don’t get the medal, they won’t accept my time as an Abbott Major, so I said to myself I’ve really got to get it together.”

So Miranda started to formulate a plan in her head. She knew that the hills toward the end of the course were coming up. She thought she could conserve energy by walking up the hills, fast, then running down the hills with momentum to pick up time. That, along with continued support from volunteers and spectators, were the difference, she said.

“My name fell off my bib about halfway through, so the only name there was Dana Farber, the team I was running for. So the spectators would yell out, ‘Go Dana Fahbah,’ in that Boston accent,” Miranda said, with a laugh. “So for that race, I was Dana Fahbah. Tokyo, I was Miranda, because it only had my last name.”

“Everyone was so supportive,” she said. “People started to come out with buckets of ice from their houses and we’d put them everywhere, down our bra, on our head. There was a tailwind, so you didn’t really have wind, and, of course, there was no shade, so that sun was beating down on you the whole time. I put sunscreen on, but I was still a lobster at the end.”

Miranda came up to the sign that said “Boston-2 miles,” at which point she realized she was going to finish. She made the final right, then the left onto Boylston for the final stretch.

“I just said, ‘I’m doing it, that’s it. I came this far, I’ve got to find it inside of me to do it,’ and I just did it,” she said. “I figured if I’m going to go down, I’m going to do it in glory. I picked up the pace, picked up the speed, and I could hear the announcer at the finish line, ‘That’s how you do it! That’s how you finish a marathon!’”

Miranda wound up raising $13,175.50 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which is near and dear to her after finding out that she has the MGUS precursor gene to multiple myeloma, which there is currently no cure for.

Up next for Miranda is a local race, the Westhampton Beach Brewery’s Riptide 5K this Saturday, April 27. After that is the New York Road Runners Brooklyn Half Marathon on May 18.

As Miranda had heard previously, Abbott World Marathon Majors is rumored to add a seventh race, Sydney, Australia, at some point in the future. She’s already starting to wonder how she can get into that race and is interested in running it, but she’s proud of herself for having completed the original six and getting her name on the Six Star Hall of Fame.

“Amazing. I can’t believe that I did it,” she said. “Some of the races were difficult. Some of them were hard to get to, the time changes and just learning a new place that you haven’t been to and just not being familiar. But I’ve heard of people having run marathons on every continent, that’s a possibility. Or switching over to halfs and running one in every state. But every marathon I do I feel like goes really fast. Like, by the time I got to mile 22 in Boston, it was in a blink. The first marathon seemed like it dragged, but every race since then has gone really quick.”