So, a couple of notes on Boston. I was much slower than I wanted to be or expected to be. I was expecting to finish between 4:40 and 4:50 instead made it in 5:28. I’m well up there in “at least I finished” territory. All in all, I think there’s a time to be realistic: for 19 weeks of training as a charity runner with a starting base where I was doing at most three slow three mile runs a week, probably less… well, finishing Boston isn’t bad. Considering the course, now that I know it, it’s surprising that I finished at all. It’s not an easy course.
What went right:
The crowds along the entire course were fantastic. It’s the sort of thing that’s easy to say if anyone turns up at all, but it wasn’t just like that. There were thousands of people lining the course cheering on everyone. Half a million people show up, apparently. If you didn’t put your name on your shirt, they’d yell your number at you and encourage you to keep at it. Every town and every college passed had numbers of spectators that I just couldn’t believe. Wellesley College’s Scream Tunnel made it sound like you were running through a stadium. In Newton, the families standing outside their houses giving out water, gatorade, snacks, etc. were as well organized as the BAA. The kids that weren’t handing out stuff were high-fiving people. It didn’t matter if you were walking, running, or crawling. In Boston, the college kids were loud, even four or five hours in when the back of the pack is heading through.
What went wrong:
Hills. The race is basically down or flat to mile 16, a climb or flat to mile 22, and then a lot of down or rolling short hills after that. It takes a lot out of your legs, especially if you’re not and experienced runner who is used to a lot of late race hills.
It actually takes more to do the downhill parts than I expected. There’s just something about the course that robs you of leg strength as you make transitions from extended downhill drops to extended uphill runs. The steep drop and hill combo around mile 16 gets rough. The six miles of up is a lot worse than what Central Park throws at you. I thought the hills in the Park would get me ready for this, but the sheer length of the different stages of the race made it very different than the choppy up and down there. In Central Park, you peak and recover on a downhill, peak and recover, etc. In Boston, there’s no real recovery after the different hills. By the end of the walk/run transitions that I was constantly making through the climbing stage, my leg muscles were going into spasms under any serious load. Ouch. Newton wasn’t easy. From there on, it was just a race against the clock and the six hour scratch point. There wasn’t anything left for an easy run in as I thought there might be.
The verdict:
Never again. Well, probably not again. My final take on Boston itself is that it would make a nightmarish first marathon for anyone and is probably only really worth doing if you have the speed and stamina to qualify for it. However, the people along the route will get a determined runner through the course and they deserve as much applause as they gave.
