The Marathon Post

On Monday, April 19th, I ran the Boston Marathon… I considered concealing the truth from you all, but I have decided against it. So here it is: I am really proud. I think my friend Ryan’s comment on Facebook expressed it best: “4:07:56 PR HELL YEAH”.

It was a personal triumph in many ways.

• I completed my 2nd Boston Marathon and my 3rd marathon over all. I ran 26.2 miles only 3 months and 1 week after spraining my ankle. And my time was a personal record.
• I estimate that I have raised over $9500 for Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge (DFMC) program where all the money goes towards cancer research. This was record fundraising for me. More importantly, it shows how incredibly generous people are, even during these difficult economic times.
• And I had a great time!

The Many Details

To the Starting Line

Everyone agrees that running 26.2 miles can be challenging. Yet fewer people might understand that getting to the starting line on the day of the race is a challenge in itself.

Boston Athletic Association (BAA) says that the only “guaranteed” way to get to the Boston Marathon starting line in Hopkinton is to take the official BAA school buses from Boston Common. So that is where I was headed at 6:23am on Monday morning. Twenty minutes later I was squeezing through crowds of hungry looking people with neon yellow plastic bags strung across their shoulders. (Of course I looked just like them.). I was looking for my friend and fellow DFMC runner, Bess.

Three quarters of an hour later, we finally got on one of the buses. Despite a few frozen fingers, we knew that now we would definitely make it to the start of the race. After a bumpy ride interrupted only by multiple incidents of public urination, Bess and I walked away from the Hopkinton High School to find THE church--a refuge for the DFMC team runners. (While everyone else hangs out in the fields by the school and waits for 30+ minutes in line to a porta-potty, DFMC runners are sheltered inside a church, where food, drink, medical supplies and toilets are plentiful.)

The church was warm, which was a relief, but we had to go back outside as soon as we got there to line up for DFMC team photos. The next hour was a bit of a blur. When we went back inside after the photos, announcements were already being made to “surrender” our bags. (Remember those neon yellow plastics bags everyone had. These are the only bags BAA will transport for runners from the starting line to the finish line, via school buses of course). I feverishly tossed things in and out of the bag trying to remember what I have forgotten to do: sunblock--check, sunglasses--check, gloves, GU...

I breathed a little easier once I put my bag on the school bus. Then I went out for a short warm up run. It was more of a “cool down” run, but it gave me an excuse to re-tie my shoes about a thousand times. I also got to see the Blue Angels, who must have been doing a fly by over the starting line.

It is unfortunate, that nobody documented my appearance in the starting corral. (Bess did offer, but I was too flustered to agree.) To keep warm I wore an old XL sweatshirt, while wrapping my legs in an even older black fleece cape. I was not the only one wearing expendable clothing, and BAA was well prepared for this situation. Volunteers had separate bags for garbage and for the clothing people shed as they moved closer to the starting line. The disposed clothing would be donated to charity.

We had already spent hours waiting, and months preparing. Finally, we slowly walked, then jogged, then crossed the starting line of the Boston Marathon. Bess and I wished each other good luck before setting off to run the 26.2 miles to that coveted finish line in Copley Square.

Running The Race

From Hopkinton the marathon course takes the runners through Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, Brookline, and finally to Boston. The Boston Marathon is known for its crowds. It was sunny and warm, and spectators were indeed out in full force, partying and cheering loudly.

A few live bands played along the course, and people were blasting music from their boomboxes. I remember entering the town of Natick to the sounds of the Who’s “My Generation”. At some point, the Rocky theme-song made my heart skip as memories of my high school jazz band flooded my sugar starved brain.

It is hard to remember what I saw where, especially during the first 9 miles where the course is less familiar to me. Here are a few things I do remember:

• A runner pulling a cart with a couple of oxygen tanks—really, if he can run the marathon, then so can anyone.
• Seeing some of my coworkers in downtown Natick. Thanks for your support!
• Seeing Karen B and getting a hug!
• Watching my dad run alongside the course near Coolidge Corner, because he wanted to get a photo of me running.
• Running with Bill Y for a few minutes somewhere near the Wellesley-Newton border. (That was enough time for Bill to tell me that we will all eventually die…) It was all very inspiring, but being much slower than Bill, I stayed back and he pulled ahead as we climbed the Route 95 overpass.
• Enormous “Run Boston Better” posters at every town border—I wish I could find photos of them on the web. Some of them were rather clever.
• Super cheerful Wellesley College girls—you hear them before you see them. Unfortunately, this year I did not see any middle aged male runners act on signs like “Kiss me, I am a senior”, “Kiss me, it’s your last chance”, etc. I did see a few men sprinkled amongst the girls holding up similar signs… No, I was not tempted.
• Painfully loud Boston College students—they seriously scared me. (Of course it was the 22nd mile, and I was not thinking straight.) They were stepping right into the course, forcing all the runners really close together. The screaming so close by was disorienting. When I tried to slow down to avoid crashing into a runner in front of me, I realized that I could not maneuver all that well anymore. I cannot tell you how glad I was to get to the area where the BC students were behind barricades.
• DFMC "cheering squad" at mile 25 on the Mass Pike overpass. I was really looking forward to that extra encouragement. It was a great feeling to reach the top of the overpass and to see so many friendly faces cheering the team on.
  
• Runners in costumers or otherwise wearing interesting clothes—a lady in violet princess cape, two ladies running together in pink Superwoman capes, an older gentleman dressed as a Cat in the Hat, a guy with all of his exposed skin painted orange, a woman in a leopard outfit, etc. (The leopard outfits were apparently quite popular...)

• Realizing that I can no longer run downhill when following Commonwealth Avenue under Massachusetts Avenue in the last mile of the course.

Apparently I misread the BAA information about water stops. I expected them to be every 2 miles, but instead they were positioned at every mile. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, but for the first several miles I was confused, uncertain when to expect the next water stop. For awhile I seriously considered asking a fellow runner about it, but felt too embarrassed. Just as well—it worked out fine.

Because of my sprained ankle, I only did two long-distance runs (by “long” I mean over 10 miles) before the marathon. I ran 20 miles 3 weeks before the race and 14 miles 2 weeks before the race. As a result I had little sense for the pace at which I should try to run the marathon. When my hips started “talking to me” around mile 14, I worried that maybe I went out too fast. Of course, there is no point in worrying, but… Luckily, getting preoccupied with something else made me temporarily forget my various aches and pains. Meeting Bill, seeing Karen, eating a GU (Chocolate Outrage was my flavor of choice this year), turning onto Commonwealth Avenue, and finally working through the “Newton flats” were all excellent distractions.

Favorite parts of the course:

• cruising through Natick and Wellesley
• turning “right on Hereford, left on Boylston” to glimpse the finish line and hoping to see mom.

Least favorite moment: dodging the drunken BC crowds.

Official results and statistics:

• Official Time: 4:07:56
• Overall: 16848
• Race entrants: 26,776
• Race starters: 23,071
• Race finishers: 22,588

Boston 2010 vs Boston 2008

• Nick convinced me to eat more during the race, so I went from eating 3 GUs in 2008 to 4 GUs this year. Now I think that having more food at regular intervals helped me avoid feeling sick to my stomach as I did last time towards the end of the marathon.
• I have many more memories from the race than I did from 2008, when I could not remember running through Washington Square or Coolidge Corner. I would credit more GU with this improvement as well. Though perhaps I also paid more attention this time.
• Sadly I saw fewer people I knew along the course. Just as in 2008, I did not see Nick, but this time he did not see me either.
• Having run Boston once before, I did not worry as much about the pre-race logistics such as what would happen once I was in Hopkinton.
• Despite having run 2 marathons including Boston before, I still stressed out about such seemingly unimportant things as oversleeping and missing the BAA bus, deciding what to wear, and eating just the right amount of food the morning of the race. People say some pre-race jitters never go away.

Overall it was a great race for me, and the nice weather and super supportive crowds made it even better.

I would like to thank

• all the people who supported my run and made it possible for me to raise so much money for Dana Farber! Your generosity is humbling.
• my coworkers who were extremely supportive, enduring my long monologues about training and physical therapy, buying my homemade treats every Monday, driving me to and from work when I was on crutches

Special thanks goes to Trace at the BU Physical Therapy Center, who helped me start running again, and to Jack Fultz, the DFMC team coach (and the winner of the 1976 Boston Marathon), who helped me structure my training around the injury replying to every single one of my emails despite having 549 other team runners to worry about.

And last but not least, I would like to thank Nick who endured it all—the training, the therapy, the whining, the sprained ankle, the fundraising, etc, etc, etc…, and even borrowed a friend’s dog, Calvin, for a day to lift my spirits.