At least six of Harvard’s varsity athletes traded their Crimson uniforms for race bibs early on Monday morning to conquer an unfamiliar arena: 26.2 miles of asphalt stretching from Hopkinton to Boylston Street.

As has become customary in recent years, several Harvard varsity athletes took to the track for this year’s Boston Marathon — each running on behalf of a charity that championed a cause important to them.

“It was a bucket list item for sure,” Vilas Sogaard-Srikrishnan, a junior on the men’s water polo team, said. “It was incredible to get the chance to do that — likely the most famous and coolest marathon in the world.”

The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon, dating back to 1897, following the widespread success of the event at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Since then, the race has been held every year except for 1918 — when it was replaced by a military relay — and for 2020, when it was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This year’s iteration was the marathon’s 130th.

The race is one of the seven World Marathon Majors, drawing some of the best long-distance runners in the world, around 25,000 total participants, and more than 500,000 spectators.

“It’s been in the back of my mind since freshman year,” Eva Rankin, a senior on the women’s rugby team, said. “Last year, one of my fellow teammates ran the marathon and watching everybody in their final stretch of the race and seeing the raw emotion that was present in that moment, really inspired me to compete in the race the next year. The environment of Boston is just unparalleled.”

“I think the coolest thing about it is the fact that damn near everyone in Boston is out on the course. I saw people of all ages — there were newborn babies and there were people who were cheering outside of nursing homes,” she added.

Qualification for the race can be done in one of two ways.

First, runners can achieve a qualifying time in a previous marathon, with cutoff times varying based on age and gender. This standard is known as the Boston Qualifying time (BQ), and changes year-to-year based on race capacity and applicants.

Some prospective runners try to achieve a time below the BQ in other marathons leading up to Boston, then anxiously await acceptance day, when they learn whether they were fast enough to qualify. This year, the requirement was 2:50:26 for the open men’s division — an average pace of roughly 6:30 per mile — while the cut-off for women was 3:20:26.

However, an alternative option for qualification remains for runners who are unable to achieve these times. By partnering with a charity through the Boston Marathon’s official program, runners can fundraise for a cause of their choice and earn the right to run in the historic race.

For instance, Harvard senior Hannah Nguyen, a libero on the women’s volleyball team, raised more than $10,000 for the Target Cancer Foundation, a cancer research charity.

“I found out that the organization was for rare cancer research, and the founder, who passed away, died of cholangiocarcinoma, which is a rare form of bile duct cancer,” Nguyen said. “My uncle actually passed away from the same cancer less than a year ago, so I immediately knew this was a great chance to run in his honor and commemorate him.”

“Running for him was super meaningful,” she added. “Not only was I running for him, but I was also running for other patients who have dealt with rare cancers, and for my dad, who lost his best friend.”

Meanwhile, Sogaard-Srikrishnan ran the marathon for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute on behalf of Andy Freed, the chair of the men’s water polo alumni association and the former president of the Harvard Varsity Club.

“He’s done a huge amount for so many generations of our team and our players,” Sogaard-Srikrishnan said. “Unfortunately, last October, in the middle of our season, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I got a spot on the Dana Farber team a month later, and it was just this perfect opportunity to run the marathon and support someone who has done so much for our program.”

Sometimes, finding a charity to sponsor a spot in the Boston Marathon is not an easy task.

After running 20.26 miles as a goal to start the New Year, Rankin said she cold emailed 20 different charities before she connected with Semper Fi & America’s Fund, which sponsored her with a bib donated by a Boston Marathon Bombing survivor.

Rankin, who is also in ROTC, went on to raise over $7,500 for the charity and closed her walk-on rugby career by finishing the marathon despite suffering a stress fracture shortly after starting training.

Although none of these Harvard athletes recorded the time required to qualify for the marathon this year, each put in a substantial amount of work in the months leading up to the race to prepare them to have the capacity to complete it.

“I had a running training plan, because typically I don’t run as much for sailing, and started that in February when I got back to campus,” senior Catherine Mignone said. “Since everything was kind of frozen up initially, I met a bunch of people who were also running the marathon in the gyms on the treadmills.”

“It was kind of like a whole Harvard team, especially in the winter, when everyone was running indoors,” Mignone, who has competed for both the rugby and sailing teams, added.

Seniors and longtime men’s soccer teammates Ethan Veghte and Rustin Khosravi both ran the marathon and trained together extensively.

“All of the training, almost five days a week, was together with Ethan, and that made it a million times easier,” Khosravi said. “We trained starting the moment we got back for second semester, up until a day before the marathon. That looked like everything from running hills in the Boston Commons to long runs on Saturdays.”

“It was a very big privilege to be able to run alongside Ethan,” he added.

When race day came around, the two stuck together for much of the race. However, Khosravi eventually pulled ahead, all with the support of his teammate.

“On race day, we ran the bulk of the run together,” Veghte said. “We were right there together through mile 20. Rustin had fresher legs that day, and so I was like, go get it.”

“We were trying to chase sub three, and we were on those splits. Both of us fell a little short of it, but we were still very happy with an incredible day,” the captain added.

“Turning the last corner onto Boylston is just one of the most special things I’ve ever experienced in any athletic event ever,” said Khosravi.

Each Harvard runner said the support from their family, friends, and teammates made the marathon well worth the preparation — even if some admitted the difficulty and pain led them to believe that they would never run in a marathon again.

“I think that the through line between Harvard athletics and running the marathon is that you’re surrounded by some of the best people who are all pushing and striving to achieve something,” Rankin said.

“That is the connection between being an athlete at Harvard and being able to run the Boston Marathon,” she added.

—Staff writer Samuel S. Rudavsky can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @samrudavsky.

—Staff writer Uy B. Pham can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ubp.88. Follow him on X @uybpham.