Me and Chris from Polar
Last Monday I ran the 115th Boston Marathon. But for me it wasn’t just a race it was an entire event packed family vacation. There is so much to write about that I will break my story up into several segments.
Our journey started with an AirTran flight out of DFW and into Atlanta and after a two hour layover finally into Boston. This already upset me for several reasons.
- The original airline schedule, when I booked the flight in November, only showed a 30 minute layover but since then they changed their schedule which meant us missing the earlier Atlanta to Boston flight and having to wait 2+ hours.
- AirTran charges $20 for each checked bak plus an additional $49 for each oversize bag. Anything over 61″ of the sum of dimensions is considered oversize. On American Airlines the size limit is 62″. My bags were 63″ so I paid $138 extra each way to get two suitcases from Dallas to Boston, the same suitcases that have traveled to and from Europe a dozen times at no cost before. It’s my bad for not checking the new, very carefully chosen, luggage limitations but it sure left a bitter taste in my mouth and left a close to $280 hole in my wallet.
Regardless, I sucked it up, paid the fees, waited the wait and we were on our way to Beantown. The first sign that it was no ordinary trip came in Atlanta where I saw several runners already waiting for the Boston flight. I could tell they were runners because one of them wore a 2006 Boston jacket while the other, an older guy in his 60s, had a marathon finisher shirt on and a marathon cap from another event. We started talking about Boston and whether we were ready to run it. I asked the older guy when they were returning and he said Tuesday, the same day we were so we parted ways saying we’d probably see each other coming back.
Once we landed in Boston we took a short cab ride to the hotel, grabbed a quick pasta dinner at Salvatore’s at the Seaport then hit the sack.
Next morning we grabbed a quick breakfast from the hotel’s Café and this is where I met Doug, another marathoner from Texas who was also planning on running his first Boston Marathon and he also had his entire family with him. I asked how his training went and if he was going to race Boston for a PR or hold back and enjoy the event. He said he had no plans on running a PR but he wanted to run a BQ time. I asked if he was going to run that night as a last run before Monday’s race or if he was going to run Sunday morning. He said Saturday night was the plan, we exchanged phone numbers and we were planning on running a quick 3 mile run after the kids went down to bed. We also decided that we’d share a cab to the bus pickup on Monday morning.
After we parted ways with Doug I told my wife that we needed to head to Boylston Street so I could get my bib and race packet at the Expo. This was the moment where it dawned on me that I left my bib pickup sheet in Texas. I was hoping that they’d have a solution for guys like me. We took the Silver Line, the Red Line and the Green Line of the “T” until we finally made it to Boylston street and the first thing we saw was the huge scaffolding of the finish line going up. The official finish line was already painted in the BAA signature blue/yellow combo and I realized things were getting really real. This race was going to happen. By this point we’ve seen a ton of people on the subway in Boston Marathon jackets and I couldn’t wait to buy mine. We stopped for a short photo shoot at the finish line where we bumped into the same runner who I chatted with in Atlanta. It runs out he’s from DFW. Such a small world we live in.
We went to the expo just down the street and the place blew me away. It was the biggest expo I’ve ever seen. I’m not a big fan of expos. They’re OK for the most part but it’s usually the same old crap that I’ve seen at the running store and in on-line ads and chances are I don’t need any of it. I had four goals at the expo:
- Pick up my bib# and packet
- Meet with Chris Zoller from Polar
- Buy the Boston Marathon Jacket and get the free poster.
- Buy a ticket for my wife for the pasta party
First step was already problematic without the race number pickup sheet so I had to stand in a special line to get a new pick-up form. The whole thing took less than 5 minutes and I was on my way to the bib and packet pickup which was also very quick and painless. The whole process felt like it was a well oiled machine and it truly amazed me just how smooth everything went despite the 26,000+ registered runners. The race packet was plain and simple, the cutest thing in it was a BAA cowbell that I gave to my son and I instructed him to use it if he gets lost in the mass of people. There was also a Boston Marathon 26.2 bumper sticker which I will probably not use, the long sleeve Boston shirt, couple of food samples and the thick official program booklet. All in all it was a nice packet in a nice bag which was meant to be used as your bag drop bag on race day.
After I took care of the official and most important business of packet pickup we went to the expo room. I quickly realized that it was way too crowded and way to busy for me to have any chance at browsing with a 6 year old son who I had a tough time keeping near me, a 3 year old daughter whining in a stroller and a wife who hated the whole thing and wanted to get out of there. Luckily we found a big screen TV that played historical moments from previous Boston races and it kept my kids occupied for a while so I also got to enjoy it. Watching some of the footage made me teary eyed and it was an amazing feeling to know that I would be part of this history soon myself. They also played a course review video which included a drive-by of the entire course with commentaries from elite runners and Boston veterans. Watching the video the course did not look too bad and it did not look very downhill either. It was a great video, very well done.
After the video I found the Polar booth and finally met Chris Zoller, Polar’s Customer Experience Manager. I am a Polar Ambassador and I’ve been in contact with Chris for 9+ months but this was the first time I finally met him in person. He’s just as awesome and nice in person as he is over twitter, e-mail or over the phone. We had a quick chat, snapped some photos and we had to part ways. He was busy with people asking about Polar heart rate monitors and I was busy with my family having a complete meltdown. I wish I had more time to visit but I had to take what I could get. Hopefully next time I’ll get a longer visit in with the Polar guys and gals.
The next item on the agenda was the Boston Jacket. There is nothing special about this jacket. It’s a plain Adidas jacket, this year it’s pretty obnoxious green/white/black, but what it represents makes it a coveted garment. I had to have one even if Adidas dropped the ball this year and the order from China got screwed up. You see, the jacket was supposed to have fully embroidered logos front and back just like prior years but this year it ended up being silk screened. I knew this long before, people have been pissed off about the whole jacket situation ever since they hit the shelves a month ago. Adidas lowered the price by $10 but they weren’t going to throw out 10,000+ jackets and they had no time to order in a batch of embroidered ones in time for Boston. I still wanted the jacket. It’s a status symbol. It is a sign to the rest of the world that you are a Boston Marathoner. While I was in town anywhere you looked the streets were full of Boston Jackets from various years and various colors but they all represented the same thing; someone who ran our about to run the Boston Marathon or maybe both. It was a public display of marathoning and strangers would come up to you and wish you good luck on Monday’s race as long as you wore the jacket. You would get approving nods from fellow runners on the subway. You felt like you were part of this enormous fraternity of runners. It was an incredible feeling that lasted throughout my entire stay in Boston. I don’t think there is any other place on the face of the Earth where you would be treated this way only because you are a runner.
So I went to the Adidas floor at the expo, got the jacket and thanks to my daughter being in a stroller we got a speedy checkout. The other item we picked up was the Boston Marathon poster. It’s a pretty ordinary poster until you look at it closely. From the distance it’s a so-so poster, not something I’d pay money for but since it’s free I’d take it. But if you look at it up close there is a layer of screen print on it that has every single registered runner’s name on it. It took me a while to find my name but I’m on it. I also looked for my co-worker’s name who was also running Boston and found his one too. The poster is pretty cool and a must have souvenir for any of the Boston runners. I picked up a couple extra ones for the family, I’m sure my dad wants one.
After the expo we were going to head out and go sightseeing and take a bus tour around the city to see what we should try to visit the next day. As we left the expo we stopped at the oldest fire station in the city and took some photos of the bright red trucks. I used to be a volunteer firefighter for 2.5 years in my town so shiny red trucks are still kind of close to my heart. I kind of wish we had more time but the family was impatient so we went and waited for a tour bus at a hotel and once we got on it we went around town with it.
It was nice to finally sit down and not have to worry about where my kids are or wondering whether all this walking and standing is good for my feet or not. While on the bus I realized that I forgot to buy the ticket for the pasta dinner. A lot of places told me that I should probably skip the official dinner but I wanted to get the whole experience, good or bad plus I had other plans with the pasta dinner, namely to meet some runners from Hungary. So I had to go back and buy the ticket. With ticket in hand we stopped at the Boston Commons park area and let the kids play on the playground until it was time to head back to the hotel. We had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and I ate a juicy burger Beantown style which meant bacon, cheese, egg and beans on top of the patty. It was an awesome burger! I haven’t eaten anything this unhealthy in a long long time so I felt I could afford a binge before the marathon.
I was supposed to run with Doug but he called me and said that he would do the treadmill instead and I would be on my own. Given that I just had a heavy dinner I didn’t really feel like going for a run myself so I shelved the idea and went to bed instead. So this is how my Saturday in Boston went. I took care of business and I was good and ready for the big race on Monday.
Update:
Day 2 Recap
Race Day Morning
