• 4/17/2005
  • Boston, MA
  • Laurel J. Sweet
  • Boston Herald (news.bostonherald.com)

Cancer “survivalist” state police Lt. Billy Coulter’s mind-boggling grit in tackling tomorrow’s 109th Boston Marathon comes down to one simple incentive: That somehow, some way, a red hardtop Corvette at the finish line might be his chariot home.

“When you’re sick, all of a sudden you become the pretty girl at the dance,” Coulter, 53, said laughing yesterday at the Hynes Convention Center, where he volunteered to help fellow elite athletes iron out their problems before the 26-mile race.

This will be Coulter’s 22nd consecutive Boston Marathon, but because he was diagnosed with terminal head and neck cancer last June, it is the first for which his training has been limited almost entirely to walking and short jogs.

Unable to ingest solid food or generate his own saliva, the 146-pound cop will have to stop at every other mile marker and pour 12 ounces of water or Gatorade down a tube inserted into his stomach.

“Because it’s my life, I’m fully prepared to walk off (the course) if I have to. I’m not going to die in this marathon,” Coulter said.

And while there will be some 20,425 runners in his company, Coulter is counting on only two to watch his back: Boston police Superintendent Paul Joyce and Dr. Marshall Posner, head oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

“I fully expect he’s going to finish ahead of me,” Joyce said of Coulter, his friend of 15 years. “It’s just an honor to be running with him.”