Highlights from the Boston Marathon

I had never been to Boston before last week, but I was excited to go. I was done with my own marathon training for the moment which gave me the freedom to take a little break from running and to focus on my cheerleading duties. Bill was trained up and ready for the 112th annual Boston Marathon!

We flew out of Bellingham on Thursday. We spent the afternoon in Boston on Friday, mostly at the convention center for the race expo collecting samples of energy foods and pamphlets for other interesting races around the world. Here we were able to check out the Antarctica Marathon trip and talk with travel company representatives about when their next openings will be to cruise from Argentina to the Southern most continent for a glacial running experience (I guess we’ll have to wait until 2010 – darn!). On Friday night, we drove West on the Massachusetts Turnpike to spend the weekend with friends from Seattle who had recently re-located to the East coast. For two days we enjoyed stimulating conversation and amazing homemade vegetarian lasagna (thanks J and R).

But by Sunday, pre-marathon jitters were starting to hit Bill. I don’t get these jitters the way Bill does. I get overwhelmed with terror that I won’t be able to finish at all and drown said terror with wine and cheese the week before I run (which may, in part, explain both my race times and the reason why I put on five pounds whenever I train for a long race). Bill, in contrast, gets a particularly physical experience of nervousness: upset stomach, inability to sleep, compulsive packing and re-packing of his race bag. When the jitters started late Sunday afternoon, I sent him to bed early.

I had my own worries about Monday’s race to contend with. I had to make my way by car, train and on foot to various locations along the marathon route to cheer for Bill who, in all likelihood, would not be able to distinguish my voice from the rest of the throng of cheering fans.

Let me pause and set the scene of the frenzy that is the Boston Marathon. More than 21,000 runners and their families had flown in from around the planet and descended upon the city. Patriots Day, a Massachusetts holiday for which no one seems to know the origin, is also called “Marathon Monday” (as decried by banners hung on lampposts all over town). Streets and subway stops were closed down for the event. Churches offered “marathon blessing services” for runners. And fans numbering over one million lined the course early with coolers and cow bells and megaphones ready to shout out to any runner who had taken the time to write his or her name on an arm or leg in waterproof ink. All this was just the beginning of the chaos. Helicopters swarmed overhead prepared to track the progress of elite and/or famous race participants, and thousands of police and volunteers stood guard over the marathon route ready to prevent fans from interfering with the runners. Reportedly (I never verified this), there was beer offered at at least one aid station and at another, young women offered kisses to sweaty runners who cared to slow down in order to partake.

As I took all of this in Monday morning, after dropping Bill at the start, I was flooded with concern – OK, panic – that I would not be able to negotiate the crowds and the trains and the convoluted instructions in Bill’s race packet about where I could watch him and how I could find him in this crazy sea after the race. The highway leading to the park and ride where I would catch my first train (to get to my first viewing point at mile 17) was backed up for miles. I waited for an hour and a half just to park the rental car.

When I finally parked, purchased a train ticket and boarded the train, I was greatly comforted to find at least a dozen other dazed travelers looking for mile 17. A woman from Ohio told me her husband should be coming through at noon. Another woman asked me where I was from and learning I came from Seattle (that’s what we say when we travel since no one has heard of Bellingham) pointed dramatically at me and shouted across the train to a bleary-eyed couple sitting near the back of the car, “Hey, this lady’s from Seattle too!” We meekly waved at each other, grateful to be strangers in a strange land from the same part of the globe.

“My daughter’s running,” one man offered into my elbow proudly.

“We came from Sweden,” the woman sitting next to him responded. “My son is running. It is only his fourth marathon.”

“You win,” I said. “You came the farthest of anyone I’ve talked to so far.”

But after we all tumbled out of the train and took a short walk to the race course and jostled for places on the sidelines where we might be able to see the runners, I discovered fellow fans from other places in the world including a woman originally from West Africa, now living in England.

I have to admit to being slightly baffled. Why were we all here? I just ran a “hella” hard marathon the last weekend in my own backyard. I think I could argue that the Whidbey Island course was at least ten times as hilly and difficult as this Boston course would be. And there had been probably only, say, 60 fans along the whole way for me. So clearly, I lamented, the difficulty of the feat has no bearing on how much glory one gets for the accomplishment! It’s just another example of how the marathon adventure, like so many things in life worth doing, has to be motivated by something personal and intrinsic and not by the accolades you may or may not get from others.

In any case, I was here to add my screams and praise to the mounting excitement of the crowd.

The thing is, it really is profoundly awe-inspiring to watch the elite frontrunners if you ever have the chance. In spite of all the time I wasted parking, I was at my post in time to see the women, who started early at 9:30 am, and then, not far behind, the elite men fly by. These guys came through so quickly that I didn’t have time to snap a picture of anything but the bicycles that protectively trailed them, but I had enough time to see the way their taught skin flexed over their perfectly sculpted muscles and to admire the way they seemed to perform each stride as if it were the most poignant step in an exquisite ballet.

After the pros came through, there was a break in the action and then the first wave of starters (with the blue bibs) began trickling past us. A woman standing next to me was receiving text messages announcing her sister’s progress in 10 K intervals. I’d never heard of this and wished I had signed up for this service so I could calculate exactly when Bill would be coming through. Bill was in the second wave of runners (with red bibs) that started at 10:30, so I knew I had a long while to wait. I used the calculator on my cell phone to figure out that he would be passing mile 17 at or around 12:45, so I settled in to enjoy the show.

A large group of people decked out in purple shirts and Dr. Seuss hats (the Doctor was born in Massachusetts) stood on a street corner to the right of me and chanted enthusiastically to every runner who came through wearing the trademark purple Leukemia Team uniforms. Before arriving in Boston for the event, I thought the only way to run in the marathon was to qualify, but as it turns out, there are also charity teams allowed to enter who raise funds for their various causes.

At about an hour and fifty minutes into the first wave, helicopters began swarming above us. “Lance must be coming,” the woman tracking her sister by text messages said to me. We had been trying to guess when Lance Armstrong would be coming through. I had read that he was going to try and run the race in 2:45.

“Then our friend, Jason, will be coming too,” I said. Jason had told Bill he thought he might see Lance on the route since he was shooting for a similar finish time. I blinked my eyes and when I opened them there was a wave of yellow sailing past me.

“There he is,” my new friend said.

“Where?” I strained to get a glimpse of Lance, but all I could see was an entourage of buff young men encircling something – or someone. And then I saw Jason, not twenty yards behind Lance’s posse. Jason and his wife, Laura were at most of the races Bill and I ran. We had had the privilege of watching both of their times improve with almost every run, but Jason’s PR to date was 2:59 – and here he was tracking Lance, looking like it took no effort at all to run four minutes a kilometer. “Jason! Jason!” I screamed. “You look great! Whoooo!!!” I knew he couldn’t make out my voice in the crowd, but I was thrilled. “I know him!” I told the woman beside me with pride, as if I knew Lance, himself.

Almost an hour later, having been on my feet for two and half hours (it’s hard to complain when you’re watching marathoners, but my back was aching), I saw Bill’s slightly bow-legged stride coming around the bend. I hadn’t remembered to look to see what color shirt he would be wearing or to take note of his bib number, so I was lucky to spot him in an unusually large group. He was running on my side of the road, and since I had recently nudged some observers out of the way so I could position myself against the guard rail, I had a good view of him. I started shouting his name and flailing my arms, “Bill!! You’re doing great! You look good. Bill!!” With a sudden intuition (he told me later he couldn’t hear me yelling his name) he turned and spotted me, waving back and shooting me a broad smile.

I thought this meant that he was feeling good. His knee must not be bothering him and he must be having a strong go of it.

Sadly, this is all I saw of Bill’s race – thirty seconds, a wave and his butt jogging away toward what the Bostonians call “Heartbreak Hill.”

It was time for me to leave my new pals and cram myself into a train and ride into the downtown area. Once there, I had to weave my way through six blocks of detours just to cross the street only to discover that I couldn’t get within a mile of the finish line. Then, I had to get lost among twenty thousand marathon finishers all wearing the same foil blankets and to fight an anxiety attack when Bill didn’t show up in the designated family meeting area even an hour after his race should have been done.

When he finally arrived under the letter of his last name in the family area, I was so grateful to see him that I cried. He’d had a good race time (3:42, which qualified him for next year’s race), but it had been a harder race for him than I had guessed. At 15 miles he had gotten sick and had to take a four-minute break at a port-o-potty (I didn’t ask what happened in there, but four minutes in an outhouse is never pleasant). And the hill had felt much longer than he remembered from the first time he ran the race in 2002. He had spent an extra long time in the recovery area stretching and rehydrating before making his way to the family area because he was still fighting a mild nausea.

I didn’t bore him with my navigational trials until much later when we both had a couple of drinks under our respective belts and his queasy stomach was just a memory. At that point I told him that I had concluded small races were more fun for fans and big races were more fun for runners. Bill agreed with me, of course. In the past eight days he’d gotten to be a fan at a small race and a runner in a big one – the best of both worlds.

We climbed in bed that night, both having earned our exhaustion, excited to wake up the next day and check finishing times in the paper.


Finishing times that interested us:
2:07:46 – Robert Cheruiyut – Men’s #1 finisher – from Kenya
2:25:25 – Dire Tune – Women’s #1 finisher – from Ethiopia
2:50:58 – Lance Armstrong – famous cyclist wearing yellow
2:56:02 – Jason – awesome runner – I know him!
3:42:28 – Bill – my #1 finisher – from Bellingham