Photo: Belmont’s Becca Pizzi with former Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chára with their medals after finishing the 127th B.A.A. Marathon (credit: Omar Rawlings/Getty Images)
Seconds before former Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chára crossing the finish line at the 127th running of the BAA Marathon on Monday, he reached down to grab the hand someone town residents know fairly well, Becca Pizzi, to share this special moment.
Turns out that Belmont’s 5’2” marathon champion was a big reason the 6’9″ Bruins legend was able to complete the 26.2 mile race which both would be raising money for the Hoyt Foundation. Being it was Chára’s first attempt at the distance, who better to be partnered with than the two-time winner of the World Marathon Challenge in which Becca ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven consecutive days.
In a twitter message before the race, Boston Marathon’s long time race director Dave McGillivray wrote: [Chára] is READY due in big part to Coach Becca Pizzi and has EARNED THE RIGHT to do this race.”
On Monday, Belmont’s 29 finishers were part of the 30,090 who completed this year’s marathon.
Five men ran under 3 hours and four women broke 3:45 with Brian Harvey finishing 47th overall while 52-year-old Laurie Nahigian raced to a 3:44:47 finish which was the 367th finisher in her division, while long-time State Sen. Will Brownsberger was 395th in his division with a time of 4:22:54.
| Runner | Official Time |
| Brian Harvey | 2:22:40 |
| Cheng Zhong | 2:47:42 |
| Donal Reynolds | 2:53:44 |
| Mathew Swanson | 2:55:53 |
| Tony Luongo | 2:58:54 |
| Matthew Taylor | 3:03:31 |
| Jacob Scott | 3:05:22 |
| Lixin Qin | 3:05:22 |
| David Marchefka | 3:05:41 |
| Jeffrey Roth | 3:13:22 |
| Douglas Hall | 3:16:16 |
| Sam Belcher | 3:22:32 |
| Nicholas Gallo | 3:28:06 |
| Lisa Engler | 3:36:22 |
| Becca Pizzi | 3:38:23 |
| Xiaomei Zhou | 3:39:50 |
| Laurie Nahigian | 3:44:47 |
| Yi Zhang | 3:48:20 |
| Catherine Wall | 3:52:37 |
| Michael Ascione | 3:59:38 |
| Yufei Xu | 3:59:43 |
| Jenna Vargas | 4:11:05 |
| Erin Woodbury | 4:19:37 |
| Will Brownsberger | 4:22:54 |
| George Grant | 4:23:23 |
| Meaghan Murphy | 4:54:41 |
| Sylvia Limm | 5:15:42 |
| Rachel Heller | 5:15:42 |
| Mandela Toyo | 5:49:23 |