Boston Marathon

Cyclists gear up for annual Boston Marathon midnight bike ride

The Midnight Marathon bike ride will return for its 16th annual ride on Sunday, April 14.

By Annie Jonas

April 10, 2024

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There’s a moment during every Midnight Marathon that Greg Hum, the founder of the unofficial, unsanctioned annual event, can only describe as “magical.”

It’s the night before the Boston Marathon and thousands of cyclists gather at the Southborough commuter rail station stop. It’s pitch black outside, save for a sea of twinkling bicycle lights spread out in front of Fitzgerald’s General Store. The streets are mostly empty, but some residents are camped out in front of their houses, hyping up the riders about to begin their 26.2 (or 52.4 mile) adventure.

They’re gathered for the Midnight Marathon bike ride, an unofficial bicycling tradition along the Boston Marathon route the night before the annual race. The event will return in 2024 for its 16th annual ride on Sunday, April 14.

Just before midnight, the wave of riders will take off and head down Cedar Street toward the start line in Hopkinton. Within minutes, they will race down the first of two large, steep downhills. The buzz and excitement during the first downhill is “out of control,” Hum said.

“All you see in front of you is just a sea of red, blinking bike lights,” Hum said in an interview with Boston.com. “If you were to look behind you, as you’re flying down this hill in pitch black darkness, you’d see this sea of white bike lights behind you.”

‘I’d say all of us hated running. But we loved biking’

The Midnight Marathon bike ride was born from a bicycling advocacy club Hum started with his friends as an undergraduate student at Boston University.

“None of us were runners at all. In fact, I’d say all of us hated running,” Hum added, laughing. “But we loved biking.”

Hum and his friends would often find themselves hopping on their bikes in the middle of the night to explore the city. And when they caught wind of some friends in the Tufts Running Club who had hatched a plan to run the Marathon route “bandit style” the night before, the idea for the Midnight Marathon was born.

“My friends and I already knew that biking in the middle of the night was this super magical and relaxing thing. And we thought, ‘What if we just took our bikes out on the commuter rail to the starting line of the marathon route the night before, and bike back into the city in time for the running race the next morning?’ he said. 

The first “unofficial official” Midnight Marathon was held in 2009, after Hum created a Facebook event for the ride. He invited no more than 10 of his friends from BU, but the event soon caught the attention of bike blogs, and Hum was surprised to find between 70-80 people at South Station to catch the 11 p.m. train to Southborough.

“There were people of retired age mixed with college kids hopping on this midnight train to the middle of nowhere to ride bikes,” Hum said. “It was awesome.”

What started as a midnight escapade between college friends has become a fixture in the New England cycling scene. Hum estimates the event now draws between five to six thousand people. Fifteen years since the event began, and now 36 years old, Hum is the father of a two-year-old child. But he still considers the Midnight Marathon his “first kid.”

“It’s been really, really wonderful to see it grow up and become its own independent thing,” he said. “This year, my baby the Midnight Marathon is now a teenager, and I might not even ride this year. I feel good enough to sit back and enjoy the beauty of it, to just let the thing happen, to let the kid go have an adventure.”

Choose your own adventure

There is no single start time or mandatory route for the Midnight Marathon, although riders are encouraged to begin their journey between 6 p.m. and 12 a.m. The main wave of riders leave Southborough station around 11:30 p.m., arrive at the starting line by midnight, and bike into Boston. 

There are several different journeys a rider can take, including 26.2, 27.3, 30.6, or 52 mile routes.

Sean McShane, 27, completed the 52 mile out-and-back route for the first time last year. As a cycling enthusiast who had done a few trips traveling by bicycle, he viewed the event as a way to get back into shape after the winter season. 

McShane doesn’t own a car and didn’t want to pay for a train ticket. So, he decided to “just do the whole thing.” He biked from his home in South Boston to Hopkinton and then back to the city in the course of the night.

“It is 50 some odd miles, and at first I was like, ‘What am I doing?’” he said. But once he saw the hundreds of cyclists at Hopkinton, and started chatting with fellow cyclists along the route, he knew he made the right decision. 

“The vibe was very upbeat and very friendly,” he said. “I was a little nervous having never done it before myself, and I didn’t know what to expect, but people are out there just to have fun.”

And it’s not just bicyclists who are taking on the challenge. Thomas Allen, 40, of Foxborough is an inline skater who will complete his fifth Midnight Marathon ride this year. He’s one of a contingent of 20 or 30 skaters who do the event, and said he appreciates the camaraderie among attendees.

“People on bikes will say, ‘Whoa, people are on skates, that’s wild!’” Allen said. “They don’t expect it, so they get a kick out of it.”

Because the event isn’t a race, skaters can take a leisurely pace to complete the course, he said. Even so, you might be a bit sore once you get to the finish line, he acknowledged.

“Your feet are very painful at the end, that’s definitely true, but it’s a ton of fun,” he said. “It’s a good goal if you’re interested in inline skating and have a goal of completing that level of distance,” he said. “It’s certainly achievable.”

Diane Fabri, 53, of Nashua, New Hampshire rode the traditional route for the first time last year with a bike she won from a raffle in her hometown. Her daughter dropped her and a friend off at Hopkinton and they were amazed at the number of people there.

“People were not only on bikes, but there were tandem bikes, there were electric bikes, rollerbladers, what looked like racing teams with those fancy, sleek helmets. People had music playing. It was just so much fun. It wasn’t a race by any means,” she said.

She completed the route in two hours and celebrated with a fireball shot at the finish line before heading home. 

“It’s just an awesome event, to be a small part of the historic Boston Marathon,” she added. “It’s emotional.”

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