Today was the fulfillment of a long term dream of mine, to run the famous Boston Marathon. As I wrote in prior entries, there was a great concern about the storm that was hitting Boston. It was difficult sleeping last night because of the wind hitting against the windows of the hotel, coupled with the beating of the heavy rain. How can someone run in this weather, especially someone from sunny California?

For those with a short attention span the conclusion upfront is that I finished with a time of 3:39:59 (no kidding, my watch stopped at 59 seconds) and that was fast enough to qualify to run Boston again, for all of you that thought I had to run that downhill marathon at St. George in order to get in.

I got up at 5 am, and went to breakfast at 5:30 am. That is kind of early with a 10:30 am marathon start, except when you consider the logistics involved with busing over 22,000 runners out over 26 miles to the start. I caught a 6:30 am shuttle from the hotel over to where I was able to get in a long line to board one of the marathon buses. It was not as cold as I had thought, but it was raining. Once we arrived out at Hopkinton, the place of the start, I made my way over to a large tent they had setup in the middle of a large lawn area, but the grass was soaked and the water came quickly into my shoes. We huddled down in the tent, waiting nearly 2 hours before we were ready to leave and take our bags with our “warm-up” clothes over to be checked for pickup at the finish.

I was not sure what to wear for the run. Hey, I am from California and didn’t train in anything except shorts and a short sleeved shirt. I finally decided to run in tights, a long sleeved running shirt with my biking Gore-tex jacket over that, and a running hat with a brim. After checking our bags we had more than a half of a mile to the start. I guess I was a bit behind because I didn’t quite get up to the right corral when the race was about the start so I had to crawl through the fencing and run down the sidewalk and enter back through the fence in corral number 13. Gee, I never thought about the fact that I had started from Corral No. 13 and wasn’t it just Friday the 13th?

The Boston Marathon is great for many reason. Because everyone needs to meet a tough qualifying time to get accepted, it means that all of the runners there were experienced runners. This also allows them to give everyone their bib number in sequential number according to qualifying time. So if you see people with a bib number in your range, that meant they qualified with a time close to yours. So corral No. 13 was my corral because my bib number was 13,281. They had a total of 23 corrals.

The race started and we began to move forward. It was time to shed the poncho and extra throw away long sleeved shirt that I didn’t check but wanted to keep warm with. Unlike other marathons that has one mass start, Boston has divided the field into two waves, with the first wave leaving at 10:00 and my wave leaving at 10:30 am. That meant that it was much closer to the start than in prior marathons and within a couple of minutes I was at the start line and started my watch.

The weather was better than I expected because the wind didn’t seem that strong and the rain had stopped. Could it be that I had over dressed and some of those people around me in shorts had picked it right? By mile 2 I had unzipped my jacket and at mile 4 I took it off. But it was only a couple of miles later that it started to rain again and I put the jacket back on, where it remained until the finish. We were greeted with alternating rain, wind and a cooling temperature as we marched mile after mile. I tried to draft behind some big guy when we had the head wind (it was never a tail wind) but hey, I couldn’t find any big guys running. I guess marathon runners are not normally big guys.

Many people had told me to just enjoy the marathon. Hey this was Boston and it should be more a celebration with no pressure to qualify to get into Boston as in prior marathons. It is good advice because this was the greatest experience of any of my marathons, despite the lousy weather. Running with good runners was a dream because it meant no winding your way through those runners you often find who start up too far and can’t hold the pace. People were asked to start in a corral that matched their qualifying prior marathon time. There was none of those jacket rabbit runners who took off with no clue of what running 26 miles meant and then would decide to start to walk, just as you were coming up behind then almost crashing into them like a car stopping on a freeway. By mile 12 most all the runners around me were running almost exactly at my pace and I was astounded to hear the wonderful sound of a syncronized sound as it seemed each runner’s feet hit the ground at the same time, like violinists all moving their bow together in perfect timing. Down the road we passed Wellesley college and the spectators crowds there was like having hundreds of cheerleaders rooting you on. The volume was louder than any other place. The fans in Boston were tremendous. We passed through many town and nearly everywhere the streets were lined with cheering fans.

So this was a marathon that someone could really enjoy. But I felt good and was running about how I was doing on my last marathon. At the half way mark I realized I could come in under 3:45 and qualify once again to run the Boston Marathon so I had a goal to meet and that kept me driving the pace I had been on.

As we approached Boston the winds picked up and it turned cooler. When I was at mile 22 my legs were aching, and begging me to stop. But I had learned a hard lesson before, just ignore those legs because if you stop you can’t get started again. I kept writing my blog in my mind, trying to keep my thoughts off the aching legs.

As I was getting near the finish, I realized that not only would I qualify once again for Boston (which required 3:45), I had a shot to break 3:40. That required me to run the last mile in close to a 8 minute pace, but I was very gratified when I stopped my watch at 3:39:59. My official time might be slightly more than that, but I am very happy with how things turned out. What I had feared as absolutely dreadful weather turned out to be runable and my time, although not a PR, was better than I expected. The elite runners were off their times by 7 minutes and over 20 runners had to be taken to the hospital, so I was happy with how things turned out.

Categories: Boston Marathon
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