Boston: Pre-race thoughts

Posted by Chen

I started this post yesterday from SFO, 15 minutes before boarding my redeye flight, and it still hadn’t hit me that marathon weekend had actually arrived. Even now, after having walked around Beantown all day like the sleep-deprived zombie that I am, I’m mostly in denial that I’ll be running 26.2 miles in less than 48 hours. Whether I like it or not, though, this thing is happening, and it’s probably time that I put into writing the various Boston-related thoughts that have been circulating throughout this jumbled brain of mine all week.

This is probably sacrilegious for me to say, but Boston isn’t my favorite marathon. Far from it, actually. I can easily see why people hold it in such high regard, but I've personally found it somewhat difficult to get super excited about the race in the past. To me, marathoners are generally pretty type-A people, and Boston only amplifies this by plucking the type-A+ folks from the crowd and corralling them all into the same super-hyped event. I consider myself to be type-B+ on a good day, so my one and only Boston experience so far (2011) was pretty overwhelming. That year, my friends had arrived a day or two earlier than I did, so I went to the expo alone. While I had planned on nabbing all sorts of awesome Boston gear that morning, the crowds frightened me so much that I grabbed my bib and shirt and bolted like a bat out of hell. The race itself certainly had more crowd support than any race I’d ever run before, which was great to see, but other than that, my experience left me feeling a little bit ‘meh’. Maybe I had over-hyped the event in my own mind; maybe it was that I bonked after heartbreak hill and crawled to the finish line, but after the event was over, I didn’t exactly feel the need to return anytime soon.

But then last year happened. So much has already been said about the events of 4/15/13, so I won’t go into too much detail here. What I will say, though, is that even though I didn’t personally know anyone who ran the race last year, I still found myself deeply affected by what had occurred. I was glued to the news for days and couldn’t stop myself from looking at the gruesome images that popped up all over the internet. I was horrified, saddened, and in disbelief that a day typically associated with achievement, triumph, and joy could be marred by such senseless terror.

I think every entrant this year has his or her own personal reasons for running. For me, Monday’s race will represent the next step forward in bringing the Boston Marathon back to what it had always been before 4/15/13 – a day to celebrate all of its runners’ accomplishments, whether that be training diligently to qualify or raising thousands of dollars for noteworthy charities around the greater Boston area. It will be about making sure that runners’ biggest worries revert back to whether they remembered Body Glide or whether they timed their porta-potty visits properly. And it will be about encouraging all of those dedicated spectators to come out and show their support without fear.

So while the expo was equally as overwhelming this year, and while I still feel supremely inferior compared to all of the runners here who have competed in Boston year after year, I can honestly say I’m super excited to be part of this year’s race. I have no idea how I’ll perform, but it really isn’t about that anyway. I’m eager to toe the line with the marathon community and celebrate my favorite sport in the world.

Sweet Boston swag