Boston Marathon 2011

The Boston Marathon, with it's elusive qualifying times, is probably out of my reach to ever be able to run in. The closest I'll ever come is watching it, and that's exactly what we did last Monday.

Taber took the day off work, we got sitters for the girls, and headed down to West Newton to catch the runners around mile 18.

It was such a festive atmosphere. A popular radio station had one of their vans set up blasting music and giving updates on the runners. There were venders selling colorful toys and a giant hot pretzels. There was a concession table set up in front of the fire station grilling hotdogs. Everyone was just happy and excited.

We got there around 10 and expected the elite runners to be coming through around 11:15 or so. I was super excited and nervous and just pumped to see the elites, especially Kara Goucher who is my running idol and who just had a baby less than 7 months ago!!

Finally the police motorcycles and and the lead timing truck came through meaning the runners were right behind them.

When the runners came into view everyone started screaming and going nuts. The elite women were first and they were HAULING BOOTY! I mean, here they are at mile 18 still clocking around a 5:30 minute per mile pace! It was awe inspiring watching these superhuman runners go by. That's Kara Goucher in the back, she is just as buff and fit in person as she is the the running magazines. She ended up taking 5th for the women, amazing!

The men came by next, they had started about half an hour after the women but they were closing the gap pretty quickly. They were running at a blistering 4:40 mile pace!

Not far behind the elites we saw Taber's friend from Alaska, Jerry Ross, who finished 39th out of 27,000 in 2:24:32, a 5:31 pace! Taber and Jerry ran cross country together in high school so it was really cool to see him killing it at Boston.

Soon the street turned into a river of bodies as the runners started coming through in droves. Everyone looked so strong and amazing. I saw a woman with "mother of 4" written on her back. It made me tear up a little to see her doing such an incredible thing after having 4 children!

After a couple hours of watching the runners we decided to try to get downtown to see the finish line and meet up with Taber's friend Jerry. On our way to the T station we passed a water stop, kind of crazy to see all those cups.

Getting into town was a little more intense then we expected. Between patriots day, the marathon, first day of spring break in Mass, and the Red Sox game, the public transportation was jam packed. The T was very slow moving and it took us an hour to go 8 miles. During that hour Cam conveniently decided to have a massive blow out on the train and was screaming his little head off demanding to be changed. Couldn't exactly change him in that crowd so he just provided some jarring background noise for all the lucky passengers. When it was our turn to get off people were seriously shouting, "LET THEM OFF! BABY COMING THROUGH, LET THEM OFF!" I think they were trying to be nice, but also happy to get the crying baby off the train : )

It was worth our brave foray into town though to meet up with Jerry and catch up with him and chat about his amazing race.

He is a huge Celtics fan and Taber had tickets to the game the next day so Jerry actually changed his plane ticket and stayed an extra night to go to the game. True fan right there!

Cam was a champ during our marathon day of marathon watching. Besides his little blow out on the train he just hung out in the back pack and took little naps here and there. I'm glad we had a chance to go down there and be part of the electric atmosphere on marathon day. Living near Boston rocks! :)