Boston Marathon

On Monday, April 16 I ran the Boston Marathon. It was exciting lining up with over 22,000 other runners -- certainly the biggest race I've ever participated in. It was a cold, rainy, windy day and it was my first experience with racing in that kind of weather. Fortunately I dressed appropriately and remained plenty warm for most of the race.

I ran the first half well, but by the time I hit the series of hills starting at mile 16, I was in pretty bad shape. By mile 20 I was doing a lot of walking. After mile 22 my calf muscles cramped up and I could barely walk. I was freezing since I wasn't running anymore and I decided to pull out of the race at the aid station at mile 23 because I couldn't hardly walk anymore. I found a park bench and massaged my calf muscles for a couple of minutes. I got back in the race and amazingly was able to run the 3 miles to the finish. I was pretty thrilled that I was able to make it even though I had not been able to train very well for the past couple of months due to my knee injury.

The fan support was great. Even though the weather was bad, there were spectators pretty much the entire 26.2 miles. Often when I was stuggling I could tell that there were people cheering specifically for me to encourage me on. Once when it was particularly bad, a young man came and put his arm around me and walked with me a while and reminded me that I was in the Boston Marathon and that I could do it.

It seems the worse I do in a race, the more motivated I am to come back and do better next time. I've already signed up for another marathon hoping to qualify again for Boston so I can go back again next year and redeem myself.