Greg's Running Blog

It’s been a week since I ran the Boston Marathon and I’m still on cloud nine and I’m still having a runner’s high! I’ve been sharing my experience with everyone I know and everyone who’d listen as it was an amazing long weekend. I already posted about Saturday and Sunday and finally Monday rolled around and it was Marathon Day. Patriot’s Day is an official state holiday in Massachusetts but the people in Boston just call it Marathon Day instead of Patriot’s Day because that is what it’s all about. 25,000 or so runners lining up in Hopkinton to run to Boylston Street in Boston to gather their finisher medals and reflective heat blankets. That is what Patriot’s Day is all about.

I slept really well from Saturday to Sunday but from Sunday to Monday my night was nowhere near that good. I woke up to a nightmare around 1:30; I had a dream that I was at the start line in Hopkinton and the gun was already fired but I was still wearing my sweats and I wasn’t ready to go and I had to wait for all the people to run past me and I was dead last to start the Boston marathon and the sweeper bus was ready to pick me up right out of the gates. It was a terrible nightmare and I don’t remember sleeping much after that. I set the alarm to 4:30 as me and my new found Texas buddy Doug, who I was supposed to run with on Saturday night, decided to split a cab to Boston Commons where the buses were supposed to pick us up to take us to Hopkinton. I put all my clothes and gear out in the bathroom the night before so I would not wake the family while getting ready. My gear included the following:

• Polar RS800cx Heart Rate Monitor and GPS
• Energy Bars, Bagel, Oatmeal and 5 Clif Gel Packs
• Hat, singlet, racing short and socks
• Nipple Guards and BodyGlide
• Bib holder, HydraPouch and bib
• Under Armour ColdGear hooded long sleeve and tights
• XXL sweats for throwaway clothing
• Pace Band, RoadID and stapler
• Shoes
• Old cellphone to go in bag

It sure sounds like a lot of things to arrange and prepare but this is pretty much what I do before every single marathon. This is my comfort zone and I need all this crap to make sure I won’t have a hick-up or any issue while running.

I heated some water in the coffee maker and made a bowl of instant oatmeal for breakfast then took care of the usual stuff before leaving the house, got dressed, packed my green bag and headed downstairs to the hote lobby to meet Doug. Just as I got there Doug was calling me and he was standing right next to me. There were two other runners in the lobby and a van outside that was going to take us to Boston Commons for $5. So we went with it, all of us got in and we were off. We were there by 5:45 and since I only had two one dollar bills and a $20 Doug paid for my ride. And since it was so cold on the surface we decided to wait down at the subway on a bench until 6AM rolled around when I was supposed to meet with my co-worker who was also running Boston.

Me and my co-worker spent the entire weekend in Boston at the same time yet we never saw each other. He had his family, I had my family and our paths just couldn’t cross and I realized just how futile it was to try to find him at 6AM on the corner of Boylston and Treemont, the busiest intersection in town where all the buses departed from. So I stuck with Doug and we found a bunch of Canadian guys at the bus line and we had a pretty good time sharing stories during the 30 mile bus ride to Hopkinton. Running is a fantastic force that can bring together strangers on a bus or on the subway. We all had our own cross to bear, our own injuries to talk about, our own Boston Qualifying stories and it was fascinating to hear how other people got to where they got and what it took for them to make it to the 115th Boston Marathon.

Once to bus got to Hopkinton we entered the runner’s village which was basically the football field behind the school which was lined with port-a-potties on the perimeter, a huge tent in the middle, a jumbotron on one end and a ton of runners sitting down or curled up waiting for race time. They handed out some Gatorade Pro Forumla G1, chewy Powerbars, bagels, coffee and water. Since we were more than two hours away from the race start time I had some water, I already ate my bagel on the bus and tried a chewy Powerbar. Note to self: don’t try to eat the chewy Powebar in sub-50 weather, they turn int o a sticky brick. I tossed the thing and stuck with my own crunchy bar that I brough along for the ride. Morning carb loading was done and I was ready to go.

The runner’s village was the place where I noticed this thing was really happening. Sure, the bib pickup was nice and amazingly organized, the expo was huge and busy, the pasta dinner was fantastic the night before but it was at the runner’s village where I realized that this is it. I’m about to run Boston and when the rubber meets the road it’s just another 26.2 mile run on city streets and roads to the finish line. While I was surrounded by thousands of runners, runner’s village was a lonely place. I told Doug that I had to go into a port-a-potty to remove my ColdGear and put on my singlet and shorts under the baggy XXL clothes. So I did and by the time I finished Doug was gone. Later he told me that he missed his corral in New York and he was so nervous about missing it again that he had to bolt to make sure he made it. So I was at the runner’s village all by myself sitting on the curb of the school parking lot shivering in the cold. As friendly and talkative the runners were at the dinner and on the bus to Hopkinton they all shut down and got their game face on at the runner’s village. The wait at runner’s village was probably the worst part of the entire event and I’d like to spend as little time there next time as possible.

Adidas was providing massages but I have no idea who in their right mind would want to get their legs worked over before a race by a complete stranger. The Gatorade tent ran out of the G1 pre-race formula long before the wave 2 and 3 people started showing up and their tents were standing there empty and lonely. The port-a-potties started to get busier but the two times I went for one I never had to stand in line which is quite a feat when you consider there were over 24,000 runners at the start. I put on my nipple guards, attached my bib, put my RoadID  and stapled my pace band onto my wrist. I was ready to go. I found the bus that would take my bag to the finish and dropped it off. I saw plenty of runners applying BodyGlide to parts of their body I can’t really mention and I even saw a guy brushing his teeth which totally cracked me up. The pre-race rituals can be really funny.

Once I was free of all my auxiliary accessories and items that were no longer needed I took the walk from the runner’s village to the start line. It’s a nice little walk downhill on a narrow street lined with temporary fence to keep runners out of people’s yards. Runners were a lot more friendly as we got closer to the start. The corrals were closely guarded by volunteers to make sure that only people with the corresponding bib numbers would enter each corral. I went to the very front past the starting line to watch the elite women warm up with some strides then I watched them start their race at 9:32AM. I had another 28 more minutes to kill. I was still wearing my baggy XXL clothes and someone asked if I had someone I knew running the race and I was spectating/cheering them on. I pulled my zipper down and flashed them with my bright red bib and told them I was running the race. It was kind of funny how the baggy clothes made me look more like a spectator than an actual runner. Once the women were off I went back to my corral and got the the front of it.

As I was standing in the corral I saw a familiar face right next to me but I couldn’t quite place him. I met so many great runners and heard so many great stories over the weekend I had a hard time remembering who was who and where I saw them last time. Then he started talking to me and the first thing he mentioned was that he ran the Cowtown half marathon in 1:22. I immediately remembered him. He visited with me at the Cowtown Marathon Expo when I was manning the pacing booth and he told me how he wanted to run a New York Marathon qualifying time of 1:23 or less at the half. He was happy to say he did. So I naturally asked him if he was shooting for a sub-3 goal at Boston to which he replied with yes. I told him I had similar goals so I hoped to see him out on the course. Little did I know he’d play an integral part in my run later.

Once there was only 15 minutes to the start I took off my baggy clothes and threw them in the donation bags. The volunteers told us they collect an incredible amount of clothes for the homeless at the Boston Marathon. I hope my XXL sweats will keep someone warm in the cold Boston spring. When I shed and threw my baggy clothes away I felt like I finally threw away the last piece of my obese history and it was a pretty emotional moment for me. The pants were so big that my sister actually had to hem the legs to fit me. They don’t make size 42 sweats with a 30 in inseam. That set of seats really represented just how fat I used to be, you could have fit two of my new me under it. I drank the Gatorade G1 and shivered for the next 10 minutes wishing I had left my baggy sweats on longer. Then the elite filed was announced, none of which I could see, the national anthem played and we were off to run Boston.