Yep, that was his debut marathon. He already made the trials with a 63:54 half, and he'd run some solid and consistent road races before that (60:48 20k, 64:14 half, 48:45 10 miles). He's another one of those "the more I trained, the more talented I got" kind of guys. 4:17 mile in high school, then reasonably good for a year or so at CU, anemia soph year indoors, then all of a sudden he pops a 14:14 soph year outdoors. Kept getting his miles up, probably did 130s a couple of weeks and a ton over 100, and he kept learning about when to push and when to back off in training so he'd run his best at the end of a season. The guy had kind of modest high school credentials, but got 80-something in NCAA cross, ran a 29-oh-something 10k and scored something like 70 Heps points in his career, with wins in the indoor 5 as a junior and a senior and a win in the 10 his senior year. Anyway, he's a super super dedicated guy. Looks like he got just a little carried away early and crashed a little in the last few miles on this one, but nowhere near as bad as a lot of people do at Boston. On the plus side, if he'd run it perfectly with today's tailwind, it might have resulted in a Beamon-esque mark he'd be chasing for a long time, so I'm betting he goes faster before too long. On the down side, since he was 2nd American, where are all the 2:10-2:15 Americans that we would have seen if the 1970s/1980s crowd had been in this race with this weather? Come to think of it, Zach is a lot like those sub-elite roadies were back then. Just a consistent, determined grinder who isn't close to world class but keeps doggedly plugging away at it and keeps getting better and surprising people.