The Boston Marathon can’t be your first marathon. You first have to have run a lesser marathon at a crazy fast time. Only then are you permitted to wear a race number in Hopkinton, MA, 26.2 miles from the finish in downtown Boston. There is another marathon for which you have to qualify but that one leads to the Olympics. This leaves Boston as the one marathon that most serious runners aspire to.
Every Patriots Day, the little town of Hopkinton swells with crowds of runners, support staff and spectators. Hundreds of school buses disgorge lean, fit, clear-eyed, serious looking men and women. They file towards the athlete’s village. You can tell a runner from a distance. It is a confident walk, sure, light yet in control, balanced, natural, effortless, as if after all the times they have bounced off the ground, they now have a comfort from it, a oneness with it. A runner’s motion is fluid, efficient from practice in using muscles and movements that contribute to forward – and nothing else. Their hair is short or tied up so doesn’t interfere. The clothes, their talk... you soak it in. You are with real runners now. You’ve already heard some casually mention it is their their 10th or 15th Boston.
After the anthem is sung and the gun goes off, the prerace distractions all fall away, the worry about inadequate training, a nagging pain, the chit chat in the starting corrals… You hope you won’t embarrass yourself among such an elite field of athletes. You don’t want to fall while pulling your throwaway sweatshirt over your head, let too many pass by as you falter, or have to walk, or splash Gatorade all over your face trying to drink while running. Mostly you want to finish – and then at some respectable time. The crowds lining the roads to Boston are like nowhere else. It’s as much their race as it is ours. They cheer loudly. Not just for the leaders but the middle of the pack, the stragglers just trying to hang on. An injury I had been nursing flared up. Still, we all got love from the crowds that line the route. People stood for hours watching us go by, long after the elite runner flash by, they are still there, exhorting you to not give up. “Looking good, number 7965, don’t give up.”
For the last half of the race, even walking is painful. The crowd, however, is working harder than I am. I’ve reached the bottom of every reserve, walking until shame makes me run again, each time the pain in my groin getting fiercer. But I must try to run down the last straightaway. The crowd demands it, the wall of sound greets you as you turn left on Boylston Ave towards the big blue structure over finish line with the unforgiving clock flashing the number that reveal your true measure as a runner. It’s all I can do to force a smile for the overhead cameras and raise my hand in victory.
A few minutes later, the bombs would go off.
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