The Build to Boston: Josh Derrick
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The Boston Marathon is a brutal endeavor. An insidious elevation profile, mercurial temperatures year to year, and a colossal likelihood of blowing up from these elements and more, will often catapult an athlete farther into the pain cave than they’ve ever known. For many, it’s a monumental achievement to make it to the start line at all and a one-and-done experience of a lifetime. Others cross the finish line and immediately know they’ll crawl back.
Photo by Jan Figueroa
Josh Derrick (MIT 2020) is one of those latter specimens. He crossed the line on Boylston Street one year ago in 2:48, and knew that just wouldn’t work.
“I came into my first Boston (last year) in pretty bad shape. I had to axe my sub 2:30 attempt at Chicago at the end of 2024 because of COVID and a hip tweak. I was still getting back into shape when I got injured again by racing too much too early. I adopted an aggressive cross training mentality, but still didn’t feel ready to race. Until the day of, I was planning to fun run a 3:30, but my friends bullied me into at least re-qualifying. The race started fast, but I quickly settled into 6:20 pace. I remember being distinctly unimpressed with the famous Heartbreak Hill, but was pretty tired by then and the rest of the course was super hard. I ended up running a 2:48, which I was very happy with given the lack of running.”
In the early morning in Baltimore this winter and spring, Josh can usually be found strutting around the city…. somewhere, quite a ways out there. “A big part of this build for me has been the Strava add-on Wandrer.earth, which keeps track of what roads you’ve done at least one time. In an effort to increase my easy mileage and to get to know parts of this city that are less well known, I’ve made it my goal to run at least 33% of the roads in Baltimore city before the end of the year. This means lots of exploring, 8+ minute miles, relearning geography and navigational skills.”
After a solidly impactful D3 running career and an MIT-enlightened cranium, Josh decided he hadn’t had nearly enough school and pivoted his time and energy to a Ph.D in CMDB (Cell, Molecular, Developmental Biology, and Biophysics) at Johns Hopkins University. Under the pseudonym ATiredVegan, he’s also developed PeakClimber, a software for deconvolving HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) peaks in laboratories. Sounds neat - and time-encompassing - but unexpectedly, the rigors of a terminal degree can sometimes be fortuitously malleable with other pursuits.
“I’m about a year out from finishing. I actually ran with the (Johns Hopkins) team for a year in 2020-21, which was really fun but very difficult to fit into my schedule. The PhD is very flexible, which means that I can do a swim in the middle of the day, or arrive at 10-10:30 after a hard morning workout, and I have plenty of time to train. Being a biologist, I’m also working quite a bit with my hands, which keeps me active and moving throughout the day, which has been a huge plus. There’s no way I’d be able to fit in the training load that I’m doing right now if my job wasn’t so flexible.”
Boston will feature 30,000 runners subscribed to every training habit and philosophy under the sun. Josh sagely avoids the marathoner’s pitfall of neglecting every other possible way to be physically active besides pavement pounding, and possesses what could be described as a healthy training mix of everything and with everyone. “I run about 50% of my runs solo, one day a week with a very casual run club, and the long run/workout days with 2-3 other guys (Jeff Basting, Ross Pedersen, Adam Willis). I’m also on a master’s swim team, and will occasionally do group rides up to northern Maryland on the weekends instead of long runs.”
All the same, training looks a little different this time around. “This year specifically I’m excited to see how my new approach to training will pay off. I was working with a coach for most of 2024 and 2025, which didn’t really work out for me for a number of reasons including differing training philosophies and lack of control over my own schedule. Late last year I got really into the coaching advice of long-distance triathletes Gordo Byrn and Alan Couzins, who emphasize easy volume over everything else. My primary goal this cycle has been to hit 10.5-12 hours of training every week (with down weeks around 9 hours). I’m not ready yet to do all of this running, so only about 50-60% of my total time is spent running; the rest is swimming, cycling, or dancing. I’ve been working with my high school friend Zack Schreier (Williams 2020) on a tempo-focused workout plan, but 90% of my total volume is still below 75% of my max heart rate. The main focus this year is on Chicago, where I’d like to run sub 2:30, which will entail even more training hours over the summer, but I’m excited by how well this volume game seems to be working. My tempo sessions are as fast as they were in 2023, and I feel amazing every day at work and in life outside of training. Boston will be an exciting benchmark to see if this also translates to racing success.”
Photo by Jan Figueroa
There is truly no cooler race to test one’s limits than Boston. The crowd, deafening; the electricity, contagious; the carnage, humbling. Josh calls the race “infectious,” and, with good weather (the 14 day forecast never quite ends up accurate….), is aiming to run a PR. While healthy competition and chasing personal bests still clearly entice him, where Josh stands out as a continual role model is in his ability to recognize the other benefits that running Boston entails. Life piles on responsibilities in a way that can be indiscernible in the moment. One can be right in the skinny of their career and catch themselves reminiscing on the glory days – and then suddenly, realize the number of years that have passed since seeing friends from that era. Personal bests and healthy competition are steadfast components of continuing to train as a solid athlete, but camaraderie compels Josh to come back to Boston just as equally.
“There’s so many Whys behind Boston for me. One of the big ones is always the MIT alum/D3 running community. There’s a big group of guys from MITXCTF that do this race every single year (Rory Beyer ’17, David Walter ’18, Alex Knoedler ’18) and a big part of why I do this race is to spend time with them, as well as other D3 friends (Dylan Jones, Tufts ’19 above all).”
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Josh Derrick is running the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 20th. He’d “like to PR (which would mean sub 2:35) and to actually race, which I haven’t really done since 2023 due to a series of injuries and illnesses. My training buddy here in Baltimore, Adam Willis, is gunning for the same time so I’m hoping we can run together the whole way.”