Calli Hauger-Thackery didn’t come to Boston chasing a podium. The 33-year-old British Olympian is 22 weeks pregnant with her first child, a boy due in late August, and her goal at Monday’s 130th Boston Marathon was simpler than the one she brought a year ago: cross the finish line with her baby, and collect a fifth finisher’s medal, as reported by Runner’s World. She did both, stopping the clock at 2:43:58.
That time placed her 65th in the professional women’s field, racing with bib No. 114. It’s a notably different result from her 2025 Boston performance, when she finished sixth in 2:22:38. Her average pace went from 5:29 per mile last year to 6:16 per mile on Monday. Still, Hauger-Thackery said she felt comfortable with the effort, and her doctors backed her decision to race.
“Are you still running Boston?” she recalled them asking at her most recent prenatal checkup, in an interview with Runner’s World. “Good luck.” She said they “didn’t bat an eye.”
A chaotic first half
The race did not start smoothly. Hauger-Thackery lined up with the elite women and tucked in alongside a group chasing the 2:37 Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying standard. Around mile five, her right glute locked up. She pulled into a medical tent, explained the issue, and a staffer put her face down on a table and worked the nerve loose with an elbow. She also squeezed in a quick bathroom break before rejoining the race.
At mile 11, the same glute seized again. Another tent, another round of treatment, and what she described as “loads of freeze gel” on the spot. After that, the problem disappeared for the rest of the race.
“The second half was flawless,” she told Runner’s World. “The first half was absolutely chaos.” Her half-marathon splits tell the same story: 1:23:10 for the first half, 1:20:48 for the second. For a course that punishes aggressive starts, that negative split is no small feat.
Her third marathon while pregnant
Boston was Hauger-Thackery’s third marathon of her pregnancy, though only the second she ran knowing she was expecting. She won the Honolulu Marathon in December before she had any idea. On Christmas Eve, she found out she was pregnant. Three weeks later, still in her first trimester and keeping the news private, she won the Houston Marathon in 2:24:17.
She has kept training at a level close to her pre-pregnancy volume, adjusting expectations day by day and, as she told the Boston Globe, “listening to the bod more than ever before.” It’s the kind of approach covered in our guide to running while pregnant, where experts stress listening closely to the body rather than pushing through.
“The pregnant life is just crazy,” she told the Globe. “One day you feel like a million dollars, but then there’s other days where you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, a [training] session cannot happen today.'”
In a pre-race Instagram post, she wrote that she had “no real goal other than to try and get me and our little legend our FIFTH finishers medal together.” She shared photos of her “bump friendly” race kit and thanked “all the amazing women who have paved the way before me,” along with other pregnant women “taking on start lines and doing epic things while growing a human.”
A family affair at the start line
Hauger-Thackery’s husband, Nick Hauger, also lined up on Monday. He coaches her, and he ran with the professional men’s field, finishing 34th in 2:12:05. The day belonged to Kenya’s Sharon Lokedi, who set a course record in 2:17:22, as covered in our full 2026 Boston Marathon results.
The night before the race, she asked Nick whether he was worried about the baby. His answer, she said, was short.
“No,” he told her. “Because I know how tough his mom is.”
Hauger-Thackery said Boston will likely be her “last proper race” for a while. “The body will need recovery more than normal at the minute,” she told Runner’s World — a sensible plan, considering the timeline most experts recommend for a postpartum return to running. But she also described why she kept racing in the first place: “It would almost be weird for me to just stop training and not have any goals. Because I race a lot, it’s just what I know. It’s what fires me up. It’s what gets me through the training blocks.”
As for Monday’s performance, she knew where her limits were. She said she would have pulled out immediately if anything felt wrong. Nothing did. She crossed the line with her fifth Boston medal, and one more marathon on the résumé she and her “little teammate” now share. Most of the elite women racing alongside her will be back on the start line at the Houston Marathon in January — though Hauger-Thackery plans to be off the roads by then, with a new teammate in her arms.
