Marathon Monday

The short story: f*ck that was hot!

The long story: It began absolutely beating down with rain, peppered with thunder and lightning, just as I had to make the 10 minute journey to the buses. I fared ok, in a PVC poncho, armed with an umbrella. The latter was confiscated at the buses, on the list of verboten items for the Athletes Village. I had no problem with that; it was a dollar store umbrella and it had served its purpose.

The road where the buses were loading was flooded to the point that each new approaching bus caused an actual wave of water to head for all of us lined up to board.

It was already so humid that the bus windows were entirely fogged up. The bus ride took much longer compared to what I remember, and another different element was the fact that they kept us sitting on the buses for a good 15-20 minutes, rather than just dumping us out and heading back to Boston for another load of runners. I discovered later that because of the thunder, the BAA had made the first wave runners shelter inside the school, and had held the arriving buses for athletes to shelter in place. The upshot of this was that there was no rain at all by the time we got off the buses, and the sun was even trying to break out.

I only had an hour before my wave was called, and I spent 45 minutes of that waiting in the port-a-potty line, so things went rather quickly. Sooner than I realized, we were sent on our way. It was already super humid, and I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist before I even began running.

I was checking my watch at every kilometre and ended up going a good 15 sec/kilometre faster than I had expected or planned. It didn't feel like an effort, so I decided to roll with it.

At about 7km, I thought I heard someone call my name, and when I heard it a second time, I looked over and there was a running friend, Heather. She'd planned on running in the low 3:20s, but her little boy had given them a restless night and she wasn't feeling like it was going to be a PB day, so we decided to run together. And so we did. Heather is one of the sweetest, kindest people I know, and even though we exchanged very few words, it did wonders to be running alongside such a great companion.

The sun came out and the day just got hotter and hotter. What did me in in the end was a first for me: a calf cramp, likely due to lack of salt (from sweating). It besieged me at around Heartbreak Hill, and that's about where I lost Heather. The last 7km were a real struggle, but I only walked at 2 water stations, and plugged onwards at a much slower pace. I finished just a whisker over 3:30, and for the day it was, I will certainly take that.

I have received all sorts of lovely messages of congratulations and encouragement and I am grateful for every single one. I will reply properly as soon as I can, but for now we are about to go out to a lovely restaurant with 4 beloved Boston friends, and celebrate our annual reunion.

Pic below is courtesy of Heather's husband, Chris.