Boston Marathon
“I ate that chowder in record speed … Two personal records in one day!”
Evan Wood, 32, of New York ran the 2026 Boston Marathon. (Photo collage by Annie Jonas/Boston.com Staff)
Evan Wood does things a little differently on Marathon Monday.
The 32-year-old New Yorker has developed a unique tradition to celebrate running the Marathon each year: eating a quart of clam chowder.
This year marks the third time Wood has taken on New England’s favorite soup in heaping quantities, continuing a ritual he started, and repeated in 2023. The question, of course, is how it began.
Evan Wood ran the 2026 Boston Marathon. (Annie Jonas/Boston.com Staff)
After the first two Boston Marathons, he said, “I was shivering to death and love clam chowder a little too much.”
So after finishing the 2026 Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 37 minutes and 43 seconds — a personal record — Wood was famished.
He returned to his hotel to shower, change into normal clothes and eat a sandwich (he had to eat something, he admitted), before heading to Legal Sea Foods in Downtown Crossing.
Evan Woods ate a quart of clam chowder outside of Legal Seafood in Downtown Crossing after finishing the 2026 Boston Marathon on April 20, 2026. (Photo courtesy of Evan Wood)
The “light jog into Boston,” he joked, was the most unhinged part of his day, followed by the quart of clam chowder — $29.96 worth.
“I ate that chowder in record speed,” he said. “Two personal records in one day!”
Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.
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