APR-B-13
THE 107TH
BOSTON MARATHON:
A BRIGHT BEAUTIFUL
“SPECTATORS’ DAY” EVENT
FROM HOPKINTON TO BOSTON
It was balmy, almost beautiful. And the hardest miles I experienced were the
first ones, when I finally got running, with the cramped up muscles from the
week’s earlier Ultra-Run.
After attending the AMAA meetings in
the Colonnade Hotel, I left with one of the participants to walk a bit of the
Freedom Trail to the Old North Church and the Revere Park and the old Copps
hill Cemetery. I then returned to pick
up the Clarks, and we took the MTA down to the Quincy market, Faneuil Hall we
had just left to stand in a very long queue for the traditional night before
the race Pasta Party. With not much
better to be done, I went back to the Back Bay Hilton and went to bed for the
early start.
I wandered in to the Colonnade
around seven AM and found a few folk who were waiting nervously to get on the
AMAA bus to the start line. Five school
buses were leased to go out, and two would stay behind Colella’s Market in the
usual place at Hopkinton for the baggage buses and returning folk, such as
Freeman Dyson, who always goes out with Imme who was in my starting corral.
I wandered the town square at
Hopkinton for the obligatory “It All Starts Here” photo and the hoopla of the
waiting crowds. I saw Dick and Rick
Hoyt again, who paces along at the level of the elite women, running in his 23rd
Boston, pushing hi now 41-year old son with severe CP in a wheelchair.
It was already too warm for my
single most valuable aphorism “In any Endurance Event, if you are not Shivering
at the Start You are Overdressed.” In
fact, it was a sunscreen and sunglasses day.
Ideal for spectators, it would get hard on runners.
I had made up a card to drop at Camp Calvin in Natick, which I had seen
for ten years running. IO knew it would
be a long time for the Corral 16 qualifiers to be crossing the start line and a
lot of the charity runners who were back in the 20,000 corral would be mixed in
doing their walk-runs. So, Imme wanted
to push as far forward as possible. I
convinced her to dress down, although she was reasonably worried about chilling
out in the perpetual wind tunnel of the finish line.
AND, WE’RE OFF!
At noon the national anthem was
drowned out by a flyover of the Air Guard and then the elite were off. We stood for about twelve minutes without
moving, then slowly walked past Collela’s market, and made the turn on Main
Street. I had met the VHTRC (Virginia
happy Trails Running Club) participants in the Bull Run Run earlier, and I had
also seen a few familiar faces and a number of first timers whom I had
volunteered to coach along the way. I
had enough time for conversation since even after the start line passed about
twenty minutes into the race; we were still strolling down the hill toward
Ashland. It was a good thing we were
slow at the start.
THE FIRST 10 K OF THE 107TH BOSTON
My tibialis anticus and quads were
tight as a tick and complaining bitterly at the downhill shuffle. I thought to myself, this must be payback
for the long run earlier in the week; but, then I remembered, “Isn’t it always
this way at the Get Go in Boston? It
seems that I never run just before the big event, so I have to re-learn how to
do this. It usually loosens up to the
point that I ma no longer aware of the pain and then I start racing too fast
while I am still in the down hill first half.
My other aphorism passed along freely to the first timers, is “The
marathon ins in Two halves, and the half way pint is at Twenty Miles: There you
need to have just as much energy to finish as you did to carry you to that
point, so that I call it a twenty mile slog and a 10K race!”
I loosened up after Ashland, where
my favorite “local townspeoples” scenes take place---little kids holding out
their hands, a group of Down’s Syndrome folk reaching out, and some elderly
pushed out in wheelchairs with blankets over their laps to be a part of it
all. I always give High and Low Fives
to the kids. A Dixie land Band is
always performing. The shouts and
cheers are from here to Boston in an uninterrupted stream. “Wait until Wellesley!” I said to the
first-timers: “It gets good up ahead.
This is one of the few times that an old fart can feel like a rock
star!”
I got to feeling good. My heart rate monitor read out 140, and when
I picked it up to 150+ I backed off on the pace. I looked ahead to the Natick 9 mile point and Camp Calvin---and
looked hard where it should have been and saw nothing. After a decade of maroon and gold cheers—that
curb was empty, unless I missed it.
But I did NOT miss Wellesley. The screams and cheers were audible, of
course, about a mile before you get close, and I hug the right side and slap
hands with the screaming pulchritude of
hundreds of nubile college women in full cry. I keep noticing the genes on display. (On a warm day in Wellesley, quite a lot of the Wellesley women
is on display!) It seems to me that
each year the women become more Asian, and fewer blue-eyed blondes.
My race is over after Wellesley—but
I looked up to see the Half Way point at about the two hour cut point on my
watch, subtracting the twenty minutes for the start (Gun minus Chip time.) Others were
running faster in the shade of the few trees that are around Framingham,
with a lot of terrain ahead including the sun-baked hills of Newton. Everyone says after the first rise that they
have been on Heartbreak Hill not realizing that there are five hills and the
rise they have just come over is not one of them. I look out for the crossing of the Mass Pike, 128/95 where one
invariably picks up the wind in the teeth from the onshore breeze, and then,
after rolling through four Newton hills, I hit
Mile 19.2 at the foot of the last of the “Heartbreak hill.” There I always turn to salute the bronze
statue of the Old and Young Johnny Kelly, age 95, the marshal of the Boston
Course and the only 63 time participant in the running until the year before I
entered. Charlie Clark is running his
29th and is among a group of the 25+ finishers. Cindy will run in at 17 miles to accompany
him in.
I went out into the middle of the
road to climb the hill with my head back and a determined smile upon my
face. I was determined, despite the
last run of twice this distance, to WALK NOT A SINGLE STEP OF THIS RACE, HILLS
INCLUDED. That I achieved.
I crested heartbreak and gave High
Five to the TV cameraman standing with his rig right in my path, and chugged on
down, noting that despite the slowed pace, my heart rate had bumped to 160 on
the uphill slope.
Now, it is counting down time. From this point I am counting up the miles I
have run, and after twenty I start the reverse “Only a 10K,’ “A meager five
Miles,” “Anyone can do a 5K,” etc.
Boston College tried to outdo
Wellesley, and in one sample group may have done so. With my eyes at midlevel along the sidelines, I seem to have
passed a constant stream of bared midriffs, and jeweled navels.
I came along Commonwealth Ave—a place where only 34 years ago, I
had stood in the sleet, with a coat over my Surgery resident whites, and a
small boy on my shoulder, watching these incredible paragons of mankind
weathering through their 22nd mile.
I looked up and saw the Citgo Sign—the Kenmore Square oracle as if lifted
up by Moses himself to let us know the “End is Nigh.” I stretched out the stride and began lapping quite a few of the
folk who had passed me, and at one long level stretch, I was the only runner
threading my way around walkers. “If
this weren’t THE Marathon, I would bag it right now,” said one to me as I
passed, and encouraged him with a tap on his shoulder. I caught up behind a tall young woman with
long legs and “Sarah” written on her singlet.
I glued on to her backside, and never lost her until I turned the corner
onto Boston where there is 500 yards between the runners and the clearly
visible finish line. Then I took off my
cap (“Couch Potato”) and kicked it. I
may have passed everyone between me and the mats at the end under the 385 yard
point, since I saved out a bit of the glycogen depleted muscle function by
thinking “This is only the first of two back to back marathons in the last
race” and hit the mats on a hot day total chip time somewhere between 4:15 and
4:30. OK, I was satisfied.
I got the medal and the Mylar
blanket and then started the long trek through the wind tunnel of Downtown
Boston to thread my way through Hotels---Marriott to Colonnade, where I made
the reunion with the AMAA group an got the key to the shower room, then made my
way back to the Back Bay Hilton to pick up my Checked bags for the Airport to
make it to my 9:00 PM shuttle, Everyone
saw my medal and gave me thumbs up or “Congratulations: However, on earth,
could you do such a thing?” More
realistically, how could I lug all my bags and baggage aboard the MTA, make
three transfers, and lug them over from Terminal A to the Delta Shuttle
terminal? I was told that a taxi would
take four times as long because the disruption of the street traffic by the
marathon course and all those runners still coming in. Bless them!
So, another in my consistent series of Boston
marathons now goes into the history books, which
is spread through both of the centuries in which
it has been run.
It is a great party and a wonderful celebration
of life, health, and strength—none of which are
commodities to be taken for granted.
There are 25, 000 stories out there on the
road from Hopkinton, and mine is neither more nor
less than one of those, and I did it fair and square,
with the same effort required of us all.
I am delighted to report taht6 the airport
security metal detectors detected my medal!