The Boston Marathon

This past weekend was a long weekend in Massachusetts, to celebrate Patriot's Day. We celebrated by spectating at mile 10 of the Boston Marathon. 26,000 runners! It was a big race. The original motivation to fight the crowds and see this historical racing event was our friend Jo. She flew in from Hawaii to race, after qualifying for Boston last December at the Honolulu Marathon. Jo is kind of a marathon pro. She's done 4 marathons and 5 others as the last leg of an Ironman. Not a shabby resume! We got together on Friday night for dinner in Boston's North End (read: Italian). I asked her if she was injury-free and ready to go? Her answer: yep. Seemed almost too good to be true. It was. Poor Jo came down with a nasty virus that had her feverish and pretty ill by Monday morning. She withdrew from the race. But Jo can hold her head high. She did what was right for her health and with the number of races under her belt, there was bound to be one that didn't work out. Too bad it was Boston. To those not familiar with the world of endurance sports, Boston is to marathoners what Kona is to the iron people. In short, its a big deal. We're all hoping Jo will be able to use her qualifying time to race next year. 

Speaking of next year, Greg and I got quite inspired, as we always do when spectating at events like this. We saw fast runners, not so fast runners, smooth runners, awkward runners, barefoot runners, even an older gent pulling a cart holding his oxygen bottles. Oh, and there was the pregnant woman too (!) The winning times were something ridiculous like 2:09 for the men and 2:32 for the women. After the race Greg and I found ourselves on the marathon website looking up qualifying times for next year. Hey, one can dream ..... or get a military slot ;-), or just regain our sanity and stick to cycling!