Sussex man qualifies for Boston Marathon
A man from Sussex qualified for the Boston Marathon after a successful performance in the 2025 Fredericton Marathon and has since been filming the process of preparing for the race, which is on April 20.
Colin Swift started running in 2019 after he found himself looking for another hobby.
“I never enjoyed running, it was just something to do. When I first started, I decided to sign up for the Toronto Marathon, which is not a great idea for your first race, but I knew it would keep me accountable to keep running,” said Swift. “I just started training and ran my first marathon in 2019, and I’ve just been addicted to it ever since.”
Training for and running different races led to qualifying for Boston, which Swift has never run before.
He ran a 2:54:36 in the 2025 Fredericton Marathon, a time that beat the minimum qualifying time for Swift’s age group (35-39) of three hours, but Swift explained that runners typically have to go a bit faster than their given qualifying time to stand out in an application for the Boston Marathon.
“Qualifying for Boston is kind of funny, because you have to find a marathon that’s a Boston qualifying race, because not every marathon is. Fredericton is a Boston qualifying race, and a lot of people like running it because it’s flat, which gives you more of a chance to go a bit faster,” Swift said.
He and a fellow runner, Thomas Van Steeg, who ran a 2:49:50 in his first marathon experience, both posted qualifying times and applied for Boston. They have been training together for two years since Van Steeg moved to Sussex.
A couple of weeks later, good news landed in their inboxes.
“Once you run your qualifying run, you go to the Boston website on a certain date, you put your name in and just hope for the best. They usually email you if you get in or not, and luckily, my first time I tried to get in, I got in,” said Swift.
However, he might have had the opportunity had he applied two years ago.
“Post-Toronto Marathon, I’ve run Fredericton every spring, so four or five times. I did run a qualifying time two years ago, but I didn’t end up applying for Boston, so I ran it again last year and finally decided to go for it,” said Swift.
He is hoping to run a time under three hours if he has a good day, but a hilly marathon route has reduced Swift’s expectations.
“Originally, I would have wanted to beat my qualifying time [in Fredericton] because every marathon I’ve gone a little bit quicker. Anything sub three hours is considered a pretty solid race, but my training block probably wasn’t sufficient to do that because Boston’s a tough course, so anywhere from a 2:55:00 to a 3:15:00 is what I’m aiming for,” said Swift.
The self-proclaimed YouTube junkie has been documenting the training process leading up to Boston, which he says began after realizing there were not too many running content creators from the Maritimes.
“I watch a lot of running content on YouTube, and I always kind of wished there were more New Brunswick, even maritime running-specific channels. There’s one guy in Fredericton who does good content, What Matters to Matt. The only reason I started doing it was that I wished there was more local content for running,” Swift elaborated.
He documented his training for the 2025 Fredericton marathon as he was trying to get into Boston, and this year has done more filming for Boston training.
Swift and Van Steeg will join more than 30,000 runners on the Massachusetts capitol’s crowded streets, among sports fans attending the Celtics’ playoff games and visiting the Red Sox at Fenway.
“We’ll be popping around different parts of the city and there’s lots of events and stuff going on, and I’m kind of excited to see if I can spot any of the YouTube people that I like to watch, so we’ll see,” said Swift.
Following Boston, Swift will be training for trail runs, like the Quebec Mega Trail, a 50k race in July, and the Capes 100, a Cape Breton race with different distances, of which Swift wants to run the 87k.
