Boston -- The Long Awaited Race Report (Part 2)

The saga of the Boston Marathon continues.

So marathon morning I got up at 6am and had my coffee, took a shower and had some of my hot cereal greul that proves to be a good choice for race day. It was tough to get more food in me. I was more carbo loaded than I have ever been. I was good to go. I stepped out onto the little porch on my hotel suite and the day was perfect... it was living up to the predictions for 55 and cloudy that it had promised. It was around 45 at that hour and I felt good. I dressed in my yellow Go JC Go shirt, put on my windbreaker, grabbed my fuel belt and headed to Hopkinton for the 8am bus. Since the roads were all closed, we had to be bussed in, so you had to get there nice and early. I got to athletes village around 8:30 with 2 hours to kill until my wave start time. What to do.

Shortly after I got to Athletes Village, I found Steve Runner. That was cool. It was nice to finally talk to him live. Steve is really good at inspiring people and I've been listening to his podcast almost since I started running, so it was nice to finally get to interact with him. We chatted for a while and he recorded a little of it for the podcast, and then we parted ways to get ready for the race. When the first wave started lining up, something truly horrifying happened. The clouds parted and the sun came out and next thing you knew, it started to get hot. Very hot. And that was the worst possible thing in my book. By the time I lined up with the people in my start group, you could see the mad dash and scramble to get sunscreen. For me it was too late-- I have such sensitive skin that I have to be careful which sunscreen I use. And there was no way I was going to be able to do much about it now. In 5 hours, I'd sweat most of it off anyway. So I needed to suck it up. Standing in my corral waiting for the rope to drop and for us to start moving, it finally hit me like a load of bricks what I was about to do. But before I even had time to get scared, we were moving and my first marathon was under way.

Goal number 1 was to not come out too hard and fast. That was hard. Everyone came out like gangbusters and you could tell that it was going to be way too fast for most people to keep it up. But as Tara reminded me, I need to run my own race, so I did. And I took my time. The first several miles were great. Favorite moments included just before the mile 1 marker, when some little kid told me I was almost there. He was awesome. There were tons of people cheering even at the very start and almost right away my Go JC Go bright yellow shirt started becoming a very audible cheer in the crowd. It was awesome. Coming into mile 8, I met up with my pit crew all in bright green Go JC Go teeshirts and more posters than I could imagine. I was thrilled to see them and stopped and traded out some water bottles and handed over my windbreaker-- it was getting really hot and I needed more water, I could tell. I tried not to stop for long, but did what I had to do and was off and running again.

Mile 9 things got messy. I developed a very painful cramp in the bottom of my left foot. I stopped to try and stretch it, but it wasn't happening. My best bet was to just keep running and hope it worked itself out. It didn't. And it made for a very painful remainder of the run.

The miles just kept going from there. It became very stop and start because of the pain in my foot. When I could run, I was running solid 9 something paces, but the walking was really killing me because of my foot. I just kept trying to gut out as much as I could. I remember at one point somewhere around mile 11, this guy yelling out to me COME ON JC, YOU AREN'T GOING TO QUIT NOW! when I just started to walk for a second to loosen up some of the pain. And I yelled back that I'd crawl across that finish line if I had to. That got me a lot of cheers. And the Go JC Go cheers continued. When I got to Wellesley College, I was very close to the outside of the street and wound up right smack against the barricades with the screaming Wellesley Girls. One of them reached over and kissed my cheek as I went by and there were lots of screams "JC We Love You!" The crowd was really hard to ignore. Much harder to ignore than the pain, so I kept running. The distance between Wellesley College and the Newton Wellesley Hospital felt unending. I remember just wondering how I was going to make it to the 128 Crossing, much less the rest of the way. Whatever comfort I could find, however, was in knowing my family would be there and if it killed me I would be running when I saw them. So I ran on with the occassional walk break for less than a minute.

By the time I met up with my family again, it was just before the turn towards Commonwealth Avenue, and what was arguably the beginning of Heartbreak Hill... the several miles of hill after hill after unending hill. It's so much more than a single hill, but I knew this already from having biked and walked it for years. I knew too well how long this stretch was going to be and as I came upon that turn I ran into the now growing contingency of the pit crew. Kelly and her girlfriend Patty, my sister and her partner had all joined. So Kelly, Marisa and my sister Alycen all jumped in to run a little bit with me. While it was such a comfort to have them all there and I could fill them in on what was going on, the point at which they all left was probably my lowest moment... my crisis of faith, as it were. I knew I had 10 more miles to go and I did not know where I was going to find the strength to get there at all. I was exhausted. I was feeling so done. I was in pain in my foot and it was starting to affect my calves and I had what felt like an insurmountable series of hills before me. I wanted to cry, but honestly, I felt so exhausted that even that wasn't an option. So I did the only thing I could think to do-- charge up the hills. I let myself walk on the flat parts, but come hell or high water I was running up those hills. And I did. One after the other. The funny thing is, every time I would approach a hill, someone would call out and cheer for me... even more if I was walking. And the whole way through whenever anyone called my name, I had made a point of thanking them and acknowledging them. And this seemed to stir the crowd even more as I got to this point. I had groups of frat boys and 10 year olds and housewives and old men and whoever just cheering GO JC, GO JC, GO JC! and so I'd kick it up a hill and hear the crowd burst into applause. It was unreal. But that crowd just kept me going and going and going.

The run down the hills and into Cleveland Circle was rough... it really does take a beating on your legs. But I got down and the BC crowds were cheering even more for me. It was so funny at one point, this woman caught up to me and asked if I was the JC everyone was cheering for. It was as though I had become a crowd favorite. And thank god, because I needed it. I met up with my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin as I turned the corner onto Beacon Street. Again, it couldn't have come at a better time because I now had about 5 miles to go and had no idea where I would find the strength to do it. So that stop meant the world to me. And off I went again.

I wont sugar coat how hard those last 5 were. By the time I hit them, there was a lot of run/walking going on. 21 miles was farther than anything I had ever run before and it just never seemed to end. And every step really hurt. But not in the ways I had expected. My knees felt fine. But my feet were done. And the exhaustion and overheating had taken its toll. And I just wanted to get it all done and over with.