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They hand out pickles on Heartbreak Hill. But why?
When Boston Marathon runners need refreshment, they often turn to Team Hoyt’s aid station to load up on electrolyte-packed pickle spears and pickle juice shots.
As many athletes will tell you, running the Boston Marathon is a pretty big dill — er, deal. And while the experience is definitely one to relish, certain parts of the course can be a little jarring (looking at you, Heartbreak Hill).
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So when runners need some refreshments after ascending the Newton hills, they often turn to Team Hoyt’s aid station, where volunteers fuel marathoners with electrolyte-packed pickle spears and pickle juice shots.
It’s become a Marathon Monday mainstay, much like the late father-son duo Dick and Rick Hoyt, who completed 32 Boston Marathons with Dick pushing Rick — who had cerebral palsy — in a wheelchair from Hopkinton to Back Bay.
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“The runners absolutely love the pickle station,” said Diane MacDonald, who previously served on the Team Hoyt New England board of directors. “Many repeat runners — a lot of people run the Boston Marathon consecutively, continuously — they can’t wait to get to our aid station to have a shot of the pickle juice.”
According to MacDonald, who ran the Boston Marathon several times for Team Hoyt and counted Dick and Rick Hoyt among her close family friends, the aid station’s origins go back more than a decade. It all started in 2012, when a few of the team’s marathon alumni gathered at mile 20.6 on Heartbreak Hill.
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The pickles came later, in 2015.
“And in that year, Dick received a letter from a runner thanking him for the pickles and the pickle juice for the cramping that he’d had going on during the race,” MacDonald said. The next time around, two volunteers decided to embrace the “pickle power” and dressed up in pickle costumes to cheer runners on.
“Basically, the pickles and the pickle juice help runners with cramping, which is very common in long distance running, especially marathons,” MacDonald explained. “And so at the top of Heartbreak Hill, which is the most challenging, I think, of the whole marathon, that’s where we chose to start to hand out the pickles and the pickle juice.”
The potential benefits of pickle juice for endurance athletes are well documented. Research has shown some evidence that the briny mixture helps fight cramps, possibly because the acetic acid in the vinegar triggers a reflex and sends a signal to the brain to relax the muscles, as Women’s Running magazine explained.
According to MacDonald, the gloved Team Hoyt volunteers pass out approximately 3,800 pickles at the Boston Marathon each year. (And if you’re not into pickles, they also offer more conventional refreshments such as water, Gatorade, pretzels, and orange slices.)
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Using a megaphone, they take turns announcing the snack lineup and espousing some of the benefits of pickles and pickle juice. More than once, the pickle station volunteers have convinced even the more hesitant marathoners to give in to their curiosity.
“They kind of turn their nose up at it, like, ‘Really?’” MacDonald said. “And then they’ll take a drink of the pickle juice, and within two minutes you can feel a difference.”
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