The Boston Marathon finish line after a Nor’Easter

The Boston Marathon is a race that nearly every marathoner aspires to run one day, and with good reason. The race has a lot of history, and while you never know what the weather will be like in New England on Patriot Day, you know that the volunteers will go out of their way to take care of you.

The second time I ran the Boston Marathon, I had passed a Nor’Easter the day before. The conditions during the race weren’t really that bad, despite the fierce headwind for the last 8 miles, but after the race it was cold. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t say this lightly. It didn’t matter what block you were on in downtown Boston, it was windy.

The finish line is similar to New York City where they do their best to get you away from the finish line as fast as possible. There are a lot of race volunteers and doctors at the finish ramp, and you have to walk about a quarter of a mile to get to the water bottles.

Probably because the race started 2 hours early, none of the volunteers knew who had won or what the outcome of the Red Sox game was. They really needed a radio. One of the big disappointments with the bad weather was that there were no game updates while I was running around the field. The first time I ran in Boston, when the race was still starting at noon and temperatures were reaching 80 degrees, the game was being blasted on the radio, people had their own up-to-date scoreboards for the runners, and it seemed that any spectator or volunteer The one you asked could tell you who was winning the race and why the Red Sox were winning. Once I got to the water area after finishing, I was able to tell who had won the men’s race, but no one was sure who had won the women’s race.

I think Boston handled food much better than New York. Instead of a pre-packaged bag, they give you an empty bag. Then you have to wander around like a kid on Halloween.

Of course one thing they did No handle well was the luggage. They used school buses to carry the luggage to the finish line. Unfortunately they left the luggage on the buses and delivered it through the windows.

Since people who were located close to each other had a tendency to end up close to each other, individual baggage buses had quite a few people in front of them pretty quickly. The woman on my bus kept trying to find individual bags, despite our efforts to get her to hold them and call out numbers to see if the person was there.

I heard her call out my number, but instead of passing the bag out the window, she put it back down. I was able to watch it in the bus window for 7 or 8 minutes as she almost froze me until I was able to convince the three people around me to yell at her to pass it on. They were just excited that someone was taking her bag, even if it wasn’t them.

I had some trouble finding a spot that was sheltered from the wind so I could change. I ended up asking a bellboy if he could hide me inside a nearby hotel long enough to change into dry clothes, and he directed me to the bathroom where there were already some corridors. It was so hot there…

Once I got cleaned up (baby wipes are a shower in a bag) and put on some dry clothes, I headed out and found my friends. About 2 minutes later, my friend I ran with passed by. I took him to the hotel where he had changed me and the rest of us had a few drinks while we waited for him.

We tried to find an open T stop but everything was closed. I really didn’t mind walking that much, as I would have wanted to anyway. We found an Irish restaurant and I ordered grilled salmon. It was quite tasty, although the IPA I ordered was a bit lacking.

The biggest problem after the race was getting home. The weather had hit Maine much harder than Massachusetts (with over $27 million in damage reported in the first few days), so my drive home was a little more difficult than it had to be. The train tracks had been washed away, so I had to go from North Station to South Station to catch a bus, and then it took me 5 tries to find a road that wasn’t flooded or blocked to get to my house.

But without a little adversity, running Boston wouldn’t be a very good story, would it?