the 115th Boston Marathon

ok ok. So I've been lazy about blogging about the Boston Marathon, but here it is. I left my camera with my future mother-in-law for the marathon, so I don't have any pictures from anything until after the race.

On the morning of the marathon, we got up at 5:30am to get ready and to catch a shuttle to the "Athlete's Village." First, we took a shuttle from the hotel to the train, took a train to the Boston public garden, and that's where we caught a shuttle. The shuttle was a school bus, and it took an hour to get to Hopkinton where the athlete's village was. We got there around 7:30am, and athlete's village was crazy. It was on the grounds of a local high school. I have never seen so many port-a-potties in my life!! There were hundreds of them! And what's even crazier is that I still had to stand in line for 30 minutes!!

They had buses for us to put our bags on so that we could have our stuff at the finish line. It was all done by bib number. What bus you put your bag on, and where in the bus it went was determined by your bib number. I was wearing several layers of clothes that I definitely didn't want to wear during the marathon, so I put them in my bag onto the bus.

We left athlete's village according to our wave number and corral number to head to the starting line. It was a .7 mile walk from athlete's village to the starting line (according to the map they gave us). My wave started at 10:20am, and I had to leave athlete's village at 9:40am to make my way to the starting line. So, I was leaving athlete's village before wave 1 even started (they started at 10am). Since I had to wait in line for the potty for 30 minutes, I barely made it in time to my corral at the starting line.

Once we got started, it was crazy. There were so many people running! I definitely weaved in and out of people, but I tried to stay on the same side of the road as best I could. There was water/gatorate and port-a-potties at pretty much every mile. They had water and gatorade on both sides of the road which made going through the water stops interesting. People would grab the cups and just stop running, and I almost ran into several people that way. There was one time that someone threw a water cup and it splashed all over me!

The crowd was electric!! There were so many people that came out to cheer!! I gave out hundreds of high-fives along the way, but after a while, I stopped giving them out because I didn't want people to touch me. With less than a mile to go, I saw somebody getting a sobriety test on the side of the road (spectator, not a runner). I thought it was funny.

The girls of Wellesley are definitely loud! They're pretty much the most famous cheering section of the Boston Marathon. I could hear them like a half a mile before I even got to them. I heard that they're called the "scream tunnel." An older guy told me while running, that they were coming up and he would be staying on the far side of the road because they hurt his ears. Most of the girls had signs saying "Kiss me..." There were girls holding signs that said "Kiss me I'm Vegan" and "kiss me I'm a senior" and a lot of girls had signs saying "Kiss me I'm from [a specific state]." I actually kissed a girl on the cheek who was holding a sign that said, "Kiss me I'm from NC."

During the marathon, I was running really good for the first half. I was on pace to run under 3:19:00!!! Then at mile 15, I stopped at a port-a-potty. I was in it for a little more than 5 minutes. I knew that I would not be able to make up the time, so I relaxed and then right before heartbreak hill I hit the wall...and I hit it hard. After hitting the wall, I walked a bit and even stopped to stretch one time. My finishing time was 3:50:00! Surprisingly, not meeting my goal time really didn't bother me at all. I still ran in and finished the Boston Marathon, and it was an AWESOME experience.

After crossing the finish line, I felt like a baby cow in a herd of cattle. We had to keep walking and grab stuff along the way. There was water, gatorade, our space blankets, our medals, a bag of snacks, banana, powerbar, and gatorade recovery. Then you had to find the bus that your bag was on and pick that up, but I skipped the bus and headed straight to the family meeting area. As soon as I finished the marathon, all I wanted to do was find Josh. He had been in Wave 1, and had to leave athlete's village at 9am to head to the starting line. Once I found him after I finished, I asked him, "Why did we want to do another marathon? Why did we do this?" lol. After finding him, I went back to the buses to find my bag. Then we left to go back to our hotel, shower, and go to dinner with my family.

It was a fantastic experience, and I hope to do it again sometime. We said that if/when we do the Boston Marathon again that we will run it together instead of separate, that we'll bring a camera with us during the race, and that we won't have any goal times for it. As for my next marathon, I'm thinking of running in the Thunder Road Marathon in Charlotte, NC in November of this year.