Boston Marathon Part II-Hopkinton to Wellesley
I was surprised that it took just five minutes for the 9th corral to pass over the starting line and Jim and I were quickly able to get into our running strides. As usual I wasn’t completely paying attention and missed hitting my watch at the first mile marker but caught the second mile at 15:42. This is right where I hoped to be. One thing that surprised me early on in the race were the hundreds of runners darting into the woods for a quick nature visit in just the first two miles of the race. I then remembered that Cathy and I were very lucky to have avoided the long porta potty lines back at the Athlete’s Village thanks to the Thyne’s. It was at about this point that I also shed my long sleeved shirt I had worn to the start. The road was scattered with all sorts of shirts, hats, gloves for miles and I later learned that a road crew sweeps the road after the second wave and donates truckloads of clothing to local homeless shelters.
My goal was to be settled into my pace by mile three. I hit the 5k (3.1 mile) mark in 23:49 and the 5 mile mark at 38 minutes, exactly what I had planned. Despite being on pace, I never had that feeling like so many runners talk about when running the early downhill miles at Boston that it is “effortless”. While I was comfortable I was still tight in my lower abdomen/psoas as I had been since the Hampton Half Marathon in February.
There were many more people out cheering in these early miles than I expected. The crowds were 3-4 deep by the time we crossed into Framingham. We soon passed the Framingham train station where I watched the race with my family in the early 70’s. I was relieved at the number of water stops on both sides of the road. This did cause some near collisions and some frayed nerves as runners crisscrossed and tripped over each other to get to the tables. I received a less than friendly shove at one point from a runner in a University of Michigan shirt and then had to endure several miles of annoying chants of “Go Michigan” “Go Blue”. In Natick, I saw Amherst neighbor Theresa Grella and her family which were the first familiar faces I recognized. There was one point in this area where a gymnastics studio had set up at least 10 small mini trampolines lined up one after the other along the side of the road with kids jumping up and down making for a bizarre but hilarious visual which I wish I could have captured on film. I passed the 10 mile mark in Natick in just under 1:15 (7:30/mile-3:17 pace) right on target but I still didn’t feel that the miles were passing with ease.
We now entered Wellesley and I got my first “Go Granite State Flash”cheer and soon after I could hear a deafening roar in the distance: Wellesley College. This couldn’t have come at a better time as I’d been running nearly 90 minutes and the fun and excitement of Hopkinton was beginning to wear off …along with a growing recognition that the five miles of Newton Hills were not too far off in the distance. We passed the roar of Wellesley College and then arrived in downtown Wellesley where I had planned to greet my Uncle Bill Murphy right at the 13.1 mile mark in front of the town library but the crowds were so large I somehow missed him. I also had slipped in behind two guys running together from Virginia who were doing a nice job of creating a wind barrier for me and holding pace until they stopped suddenly at the side of the road to apply vasoline to their legs and nipples . I politely turned down their request to join in the fun and kept going passing the halfway mark at 1:38:03—3:16 pace but knowing things were going to get much more difficult from this point forward. Although I didn’t know it at the time Cathy had passed through this point five minutes earlier in 1:33.
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