Boston Marathon Delivers - What a Weekend
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
When my mom asked me to go to Boston to watch her run the Boston Marathon, she promised it would be the experience of a lifetime. I had my doubts, but I’m always up for a road trip and this one was going to include a game at Fenway Park, so I was all in. I have watched my mom run some marathons and shorter races, but I have to say I was blown away by the magnitude of the Boston experience on race weekend.
“If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.”
From the time we boarded the plane at Midway on Friday morning I knew this was going to be something special. Our plane was jammed with runners and supporters and we arrived at our hotel near the finish line to find a buzz of excitement that carried through the whole weekend. We went to the race Expo - packed with running and fitness companies promoting everything from shoes and athletic apparel to training and nutrition programs. And there were runners lined up at every booth to get that last performance boost. That is when I started to notice that most people were there with groups - running clubs and racing teams that had traveled from across the map.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
Like many groups, my mom’s team had a private pre-race dinner - known as the “carbo load” - at the same restaurant they had been going to for over ten years. There were motivational speeches by the team’s coaches and lots of stories about past races and the reward of having qualified for Boston. That was when I started to see running in a different way - that runners don’t just run to run; they run with a purpose and with real goals. And often they and the friends and family who support them make sacrifices in order to achieve their goals. That was the message of one of the coaches - that every runner was part of a team and they should remember that “when it gets hard out there tomorrow.”
It is tradition that the Boston Marathon is run on Monday - Patriot’s Day — so we had a full weekend to experience Boston. That is when I started learning about the history of the race. This was the 128th running of the race which makes it the oldest marathon. Women were not officially allowed to run the race until 1967, although a number had secretly completed the race while disguising their gender. Even after that, both men and women runners have tried to run “unofficially” as what are termed “bandit” runners. This year there were over 30,000 registered runners.
I also saw how the race takes over the entire city. A long stretch of Boylston Street is closed off for the weekend, allowing runners and supporters to walk the route of the final half mile to the finish line. We went to see the Red Sox at Fenway and they were decked out in bright yellow and blue uniforms - the colors of the Boston Marathon. I do not know if that is why they played so bad during the game we saw - with three errors and losing 7-0.
Even with all that lead-up, the electric atmosphere on race day was more than I could have expected. We stayed in the downtown area instead of trying to take the subway trains further out onto the course. Fans were five deep along the finishing stretch long before the elite runners were anywhere in sight.
After we watched the men’s and women’s winners come through, we moved to a spot on Hereford Street about 1/2 mile from the finish line. And for almost two hours we watched the runners come through and make their final turn toward the finish. And that is where we saw what the core of the race is about.
The 70-degree weather was beautiful for watching a race but was brutal for the runners. We saw runners coming through with the joy of accomplishing their goal of finishing, and runners painfully trying to will themselves to finish. Every time a runner stopped, the crowd cheered them on to keep trying. And when they started up again, the crowd erupted even louder. We saw runners pushing disabled friends or family in special wheelchairs. Mostly we saw a community - of runners, of fans, of support services and so many others.
“The race is literally 26 miles of people lining the roads thinking you are the greatest person on earth”
And then we saw my mom. Exhausted but not quitting and able to accomplish her goal of finishing in under four hours.
My Boston weekend gave me a new appreciation for what we have in Chicago. Our marathon - like Boston - is one of the six World Major Marathons. World records have been set in Chicago. While Boston runners go “point-to-point” through ten or more different towns, Chicago runners complete a loop that takes them through all the major Chicago neighborhoods. And like Boston, the city turns out for the runners all along the course.
The 2024 Chicago Marathon will take place on October 13, and I will be out there with a new appreciation for what is taking place and what it means.
