Wiedmer: Carden's long run lot of fun

And then he kissed her.

If you've never run in the Boston Marathon or become a casual fan of the world's oldest annual 26.2-mile race, you may not know of the tradition of kissing a Wellesley College girl about halfway through the race.

"They actually hold up signs that say, 'Kiss Me,'" said 2004 Notre Dame High School graduate Rob Carden, who learned of the tradition two years ago during his first slog through Beantown.

"I tried to kiss a girl last year while I was running but overshot her. This year I had two goals in mind. I wanted to run all the way up Heartbreak Hill. And I was determined to kiss a Wellesley girl."

The 23-year-old Carden is determined in many areas. Last week's Boston Marathon fell nine days before the start of his second-year law school final exams at the University of Memphis.

"I've got an Administrative Law final tomorrow," he said by phone during a brief study break Tuesday evening. "The final's at noon so I'll probably study till 3 a.m., then get back up at 9. I'll be ready."

He was certainly ready for his big kiss. Roughly 40 yards away he spotted a girl holding high a sign that read: "Kiss me, it's my birthday!"

Said Carden, who doesn't currently have a girlfriend: "It was very clear to me that this was the one. When I got close enough I grabbed her face, kissed her right on the cheek, then ran off. The crowd around her went ballistic."

What made Carden's kiss especially unique was that he was bunched with a group of "pretty serious runners" at that moment, athletes who weren't going to stop for even the smallest smooch for fear it would ruin their race times.

Yet it never seemed to bother the former King College soccer star, who finished with a personal best of 2 hours, 53 minutes, 49 seconds -- good for 714th out of 26,000 runners. That was good for second among the 20 Chattanoooga-area runners known to have participated at Boston, trailing only Red Bank track coach Hugh Enicks' 370th place time of 2:46:17.

"I was a little surprised I did so well," said Carden, who normally runs 55 to 65 miles a week as a "release from school. But if more runners from this area had run, there's no way I would have finished second."

The whole experience was second to none. Because he wore a Notre Dame High T-shirt, many Boston College students mistook him for a University of Notre Dame student, booing him mercilessly.

Then there was the sign, the one made by his mother for the first marathon he ran a few years ago in Nashville. Because his parents, Karen and John Carden, couldn't make it to Boston, neighbor Ned Giles and his wife brought it along during a brief vacation there.

"I saw it around the 25-mile mark," Rob said. "It's an old maroon bed sheet with 'GO ROB' written in all caps with white paint. That point in the race is normally not your most pleasant moment as a runner. But as soon as I saw it I lit up. It really put a hop in my step."

Afterward, he had just enough hop left to bounce down the stairs leading to Boston's most famous watering hole, the Bull & Finch Pub that most know as the "Cheers" bar from the NBC sitcom.

And if the bartender may not have known Carden's name, he did figure out that the runner was the first finisher to visit the establishment after the race, which earned him a Sam Adams on the house.

Wrote Carden to the Gileses a few days after the race: "(The late comedian) George Carlin used to say he didn't run because he never saw anybody smile while running. Obviously, he never saw me."

Do kiss and tell.

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