Boston Marathon 2016 recap – a little late!!

With all of that excitement about the Glass City Marathon, I didn’t get to fit in a recap of the Boston Marathon.

Let’s back it up a few weeks to April 18th.. Mind you, it’s a whole different perspective when you are spectating the event vs running it!  You get all of the excitement, and don’t even need to get all sweaty 😉

We arrived on Saturday and hit the expo after checking in to our hotel.  I gotta say, I’m so spoiled now that I stayed at the Hyatt downtown.  They had a workout room with apples, chilled towels, headphones (in case you forgot yours), and treadmills that had video screens which made it seem like you were running on different courses/countries. I choose New Zealand for my run.  Very beautiful!

The expo was quite interesting.  6 years ago when we first went to Boston our kids were only 6 and 4 years old.  The expo was a quick flyby at that time.  This time my kids wanted to go see everything.  They loved the giveaways of course, and I think we ate half our bodyweight in Clif samples!  My daughter in particular had the shopping bug and wanted to try on every pair of running shoes.  Which of course meant trying to set a distance record on this treadmill!

I was super excited to meet Sarah Bowen Shea from Another Mother Runner.  Their podcast is my must-have when I go out for a long run.  Love the energy and empowerment I get from that group of women.

Outside the expo we got to meet Meb, Ryan Hall, and Desi Linden.  So cool!!

Saturday night Alan and I had some drinks with friends from Facebook and the RunnersWorld forum.  I didn’t talk to nearly enough people.   I think a lot of them were in a different room and I never even saw them!

Sunday morning I ran to the Charles river.  There were so many runners there!  There was an organized shake out run going on and I think I even saw Bart Yasso.  I’m sure I missed many famous runners down there.  It was fun to hear all of the different languages being spoken.

Sunday we walked around the beautiful city and went to a playground.

It was an early dinner at the pre-race pasta dinner.  Unfortunately we chose to sit in the shade outside and were a little chilly!  Didn’t realize there were seats in the sun on another level of the building.  Doh!

Soon, it was Monday morning and race day!!  Alan took off for the buses to Hopkinton and we grabbed our spectating essentials – iced coffee and donuts!  It’s a rough job but somebody has to do it!! 🙂  Oh, and we also picked up some noise makers to cheer the runners on.

We headed out to Boston College and went over to the top of HeartBreak Hill.  It was not highly motivational for me (running a marathon in the next week) to see the exhausted runners coming over that hill!!

Because of the warmer temps, a lot of my friends were running quite a bit slower than their times they trained for.  Especially Alan.  But eventually he made it to us!

Off he goes!!  Run Alan, Run!

After finishing he said that the race really sucked the life out of him this year.  He thought he probably should have modified his time goal to fit with the fact that the weather was warmer than anything he has trained in yet this year.  But in the end, it’s always an accomplishment to simply cross that finish line.  So cheers to him and all of the Boston Marathon runners!!

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Q:  If you are were ever a spectator at the Boston Marathon, where did you cheer people on?

Heartbreak Hill was pretty interesting to witness!  We have also been at the half way point too.  

Q:  If you ran Boston, how did you feel at Heartbreak Hill?

The year I ran it, I cried… because I still had 6 more miles to go!!  Yes, my marathon running does involved a lot of crying!! 🙂

Q:  What are your favorite accessories to spectate a race?

We usually have cowbells, which are a great attention grabber.  The kids had megaphones this year.  Great for yelling at runners, but not so great if you are stuck between the two of them!!  They were so loud I think they scared some of the runners!