Patriots Day and the Boston Marathon

Today was the 114th running of the Boston Marathon. That's right - the marathon is run on a Monday. Massachusetts calls it "Patriots Day" and most businesses take the day off as a holiday. Greg had never been to watch (seriously, did he have any fun before he met me??), plus it comes through Newton, which is 5 minutes from Greg, so we decided to go watch. Plans for biking over were thwarted (still haven't found and purchased new bike, but I'm close), so we drove to where we could park and then walked.

The wheelchair race started at 9:00, and Newton is about mile 20, so when we got there around 9:30, the front runners in the wheelchair race were just coming by. We were able to find a good spot on the first hill on Commonwealth Ave. where the course starts to gradually go up - it's called Heartbreak Hill, and it was really hard to watch the wheelchair people struggle up the hill, especially knowing that it just keeps going up. Not too much later, the elite women come by (the women start 30 minutes before the men). The front runner had a sizeable lead on the next woman, but I heard she only won by 3 seconds. The men came next followed by lots and lots of people. A lot had slogans on their runner's uni (like "Greater Boston" for the Greater Boston Track Club or the name of their college or university). Others had written their names on the front of their shirt or on their arms and people would yell at them - "Go Bob!" There were some interesting outfits, but nothing like the Peachtree Road Race where people wear all kinds of costumes and stop and talk along the way. This seemed a little more serious (probably because people have to qualify to run the Boston Marathon). We stayed and watched a lot of people run by but it was still in full force when we left. I tried to wait around to see my friend Elsa, but she was running with the Tufts team and I only saw the occasional person with a "Tufts Team" shirt on, never a big crowd of them running together like I had pictured. It was a neat experience, but not all that different from watching the Peachtree.