Bell has been running for only a little over five years. He gave himself a year to plan the logistics around the races but did not change his training. Since he began running marathons in 2011, he has amassed 20, including Sunday’s. He tends to run his races between 3:10 and 3:15, save for a run this year in Berlin with a bad back.

For him, it is a call to constantly push the boundaries of his limitations.

“You start with ‘I want to run a marathon,’ then you want to run Boston, then it’s ‘I want to run a certain time,’ then I wanted to run the majors,” Bell said. “As we enter this stage of life, we’re missing competition, it’s us against the clock, but that’s the biggest opponent you can have, yourself.”

Wardian ran his first marathon in 1996 so he could qualify for the Boston Marathon, and he quickly moved on to 50-mile races from there. When he decided to improve his speed, he qualified for the 2004, 2008 and 2012 men’s Olympic trials, still relishing the day when he led the first 10K of the 2008 trials through Times Square, immortalized in a widely circulated photograph. Now he is focusing on frequency and longer distances.

Wardian was a varsity lacrosse player at Michigan State before he began running his junior year. He and his wife, Jennifer, who met at a fraternity party in Maryland, accommodate each other’s training needs. When watching the kids in the morning, he will run on the treadmill at home while she goes to a Jazzercise class. She was fine with his running 48 miles through the Grand Canyon for their 12th anniversary last month — but she has her limitations.