Bruce Indek is the lead chiropractor and organizer of the chiropractic section at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. At the finish in Copley Square, he can be found with his glowing flashlight from Logan Airport directing runners to the chiropractic tent situated by the old John Hancock building.
Bruce is a certified chiropractor and practices in Quincy, MA. He has worked as a chiropractor for many athletic events like the Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii. He also traveled with the US Triathlon team in the early 1990’s.
When Bruce moved to the Boston area 29 years ago, he quickly became interested in volunteering for the Boston Marathon. He noticed that there were no chiropractors working at the finish, so, he contacted the medical team at the B.A.A. and told them he wanted to offer his skills as a chiropractor. “At the time, there were only fifteen people at the medical meeting I attended,” he said.
1985 was the first year that Bruce volunteered. He remembers how minimal the resources were at the time: “I was the only chiropractor on the medical team. We had to assemble army cots to use for the runners, and all we had to give them to eat was some bullion and Doritos.” Since then, the chiropractic team has grown to approximately twelve chiropractors that have their own separate chiropractic tent.
Bruce has watched the marathon evolve and has seen some incredible moments in marathon history. At the 100th running of the Boston Marathon, all of the medical tents moved to Boston Common to accommodate all of the runners. He remembers watching as a “sea of space blankets walked down Boylston” towards him and his team. Another year, Bruce had a nice chat with Johnny Kelley about some of Johnny’s paintings that Bruce had seen. Bruce said he will never forgot those moments.
For Bruce, above all else, it is the “kinship” he feels with the runners that keeps him coming back to volunteer. “I see the same people that come back every year, and we are friends for ten minutes each year,” he said. “If I wasn’t having fun, I wouldn’t keep coming back. The atmosphere is electric.”
He considers this race to be “a premiere athletic event” that has become a tradition for him each year. “All of my patients know that I won’t be open on Marathon Monday,” he said. “I’ll be in Boston.”
