BOSTON — Robert Gomez knew he wouldn’t achieve a qualifying time for the Olympic trials, not with only 11 weeks gone since his competitive marathon debut in Houston.

So he enjoyed his first foray from Hopkinton, Mass., to Boston in the 115th running of the world’s most famous marathon Monday.

He cheered with the crowds. He blew kisses to the women of Wellesley College. He wondered if someone at Boston College might hand him a beverage.

“It was a blast,” said Gomez, 27, of Saco. “Boston is everything as advertised. It is an absolutely amazing event. If I can manage it, I’ll try to come back as much as possible.”

That Gomez ran under sunny skies with a healthy breeze of 20-25 mph mostly at his back certainly helped. He finished the 26.2-mile course in 2 hours, 24 minutes and 18 seconds — far shy of the 2:19 necessary to join the Olympic hopefuls next January in Houston but still good enough to finish as the 35th male.

The fabled hills of Newton, Mass., didn’t seem to bother Gomez until he put them behind.

“They come back to haunt you,” he said. “After the hills is when you feel the fatigue in your legs. I think that’s what got me.”

Gomez had the fastest time by anybody from Maine.

As Gomez strolled toward a white tent in Copley Square with a fellow elite runner from Maine, Sheri Piers of Falmouth, a green-jacketed volunteer lifted a medal toward him.

“Do I get one of those?” he said, the whole business of competing as an elite athlete still sinking in.

“The entire experience is surreal,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t think I belonged in there. It was more like a festival for me. It was like a celebration of even being here.”

As for Piers, a month shy of her 40th birthday, she hardly felt like celebrating after placing 23rd among the women in 2:39:23. The time was more than a minute faster than she ran a year ago, but more than 2 minutes slower than her 2009 time, which was good for 11th overall.

“The heat really got to me,” she said. “I almost never take water but today I was drenching myself.”

Had Piers been one month older, her time would have won her $2,500 for third among Masters women.

“I need to be 40 right now,” she said.

 

RYAN MCCALMON, a Cheverus High graduate and former Class A cross country champion now living in Belmont, Mass., was 103rd in 2:30:57 after a second straight year of cramping on Heartbreak Hill.

This year his solution was Cheez-Its, water and some sort of muscle spray applied by a medic who noticed McCalmon’s bloodied knees.

“Last year,” said McCalmon, 35, “a guy came up to me and said, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I command your cramp to be released.’ I was like, OK, whatever works. And it actually did for a minute or two. Then it came back.”

 

THE TWO wheelchair winners both hail from Japan. Men’s champion Masazumi Soejima of Fukuoka never led at any checkpoint but made a dramatic move from third to first on Boylston Street to win by 1 second in 1:18:50 over Kurt Fearnley of Australia and nine-time champion Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa.

“I wasn’t in the top for very long,” Soejima said. “At the end I was thinking that until my hands start bleeding, or my heart stops, I wasn’t going to stop.”

Wakako Tsuchida of Tokyo won the women’s race comfortably in 1:34:06.

 

Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at: gjordan@pressherald.com

 

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