NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams, who spent 286 unplanned days aboard the International Space Station between June 2024 and March 2025 after her Boeing Starliner return was postponed, has been named the 2026 Patriots' Award recipient by the Boston Athletic Association and will start Monday's race in Hopkinton. The Patriots' Award is given annually by the B.A.A. to an individual or organisation whose achievements, character or contributions to the community embody the spirit of Patriots' Day. Williams, a Massachusetts native and veteran of three spaceflights, becomes the first active astronaut to receive the honour.
Williams ran the Boston Marathon route remotely in April 2007 while aboard the ISS, completing 26.2 miles on a station treadmill in 4:23:10 as part of her first long-duration mission, and has spoken often about how running helped structure her days in orbit. Her return to Earth in March 2025 followed a nine-month stay originally scheduled to last eight days, a mission length that required a significant change to her physical-reconditioning timeline and to any thought of a return to competitive running. She entered Monday's race in the charity field and has been training in Houston since rehabilitating muscle and bone loss attributable to the extended stay.
Speaking at Friday's press conference in Copley Square, Williams said she would be running the race at a deliberately conservative pace with a small group of family and friends, and that her goal was simply to finish the course on which she had trained mentally for years. B.A.A. President and Chief Executive Jack Fleming said the choice had been straightforward once the organisation began looking at candidates whose story would resonate with the 130th edition, and praised Williams for continuing to advocate publicly for science and endurance after a mission that tested both.
The Patriots' Award has previously gone to a mix of public servants, veterans and community figures, including the late race director Dave McGillivray's family last year. The ceremony takes place at the finish-line grandstands on Monday morning as part of the pre-race protocol and will include a moment of recognition timed to the first wave of athletes entering the Boylston Street chute. Williams is expected to be introduced alongside B.A.A. board members and the governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
For Williams herself, Monday is as much about a personal marker as it is about the award. Friends have said that she described the ISS run in 2007 as "a promise to myself that I would one day do it properly," and that the nine-month delay on her return home only sharpened the intent. Monday's course, with its early descent out of Hopkinton, its passage through Wellesley's scream tunnel and its eventual turn onto Boylston, now offers the chance to make good on that promise — and, perhaps, to close a circle that began more than seven hundred kilometres above the Earth.