Boston Style

April 23, 2018

Greetings from The Big Swim,

                                

Doubt.

At the six-mile mark I was wondering how I was going to get to mile seven.  My legs felt like cement.  I began to imagine there was more wrong with me than fatigue. This is not the level of confidence I was hoping for, twenty miles from the finish of the Boston Marathon.

We expected the weather would be challenging.  And then it was colder, the rain was harder, and we were leaning into a headwind that gusted 20-30 mph for every step between Hopkinton and Boston. 

Boston Style.

In true Boston manner, the runners adapted.  They pulled on second hand clothes, layered on whatever they could scavenge to stay warm.  Runners wore shower caps.  They wrapped their feet in plastic shopping bags, duct taped sheets of plastic around their shoulders, swaddled up in ponchos and raincoats and tailored garbage bags.  They wore bright yellow rubber kitchen gloves to keep their hands warm.  The species that survives is not the strongest or the fastest but the one that can adapt.    

Before the race began, we gathered at Athlete’s Village, a field behind a school in the tiny town of Hopkinton.  It was a mud bog that seemed to be set up as a refugee camp.  Runners stood in the rain for hours, huddled under tarps or umbrellas, or crowded in the food tent.  When it was time for my wave to head to the start, chaos had settled in.  The officials, seeing that the crowds were growing impatient, finally just gave in and everyone surged for the start. 

Saturation.

The water streamed across the roads, pooling in low places, splashing over the curb.  And the rain pummeled us all.  Shoes filled, shirts stretched into skirts, socks squished, as we tried to absorb the weather.  Once you are saturated, you can’t get any wetter.  But you can get colder.

The temperatures stayed above freezing, a mixed blessing.  Snow might have been easier to take. 

I knew I was under-dressed for the conditions, which is why my legs were numb at six miles.  This was the outcome of four days of changing my mind about what to wear.  This heading should have been “Follow your instincts.”

We’re all in the same river.

Everyone around me was wet and cold, and they were not yielding.  They pushed each other, helped each other, made the best of each mile in front of them.  Our cheerleaders lined both sides of the streets in the freezing rain and told us how amazing we were.  They handed us water and hot chocolate, gave away their gloves, donated raincoats, so we could finish what we started.

It is an irresistible example to follow.

The Wellesly girls were out in full scream, soaked sirens, urging us into the second half.  They held wilted signs like, ‘Kiss me I’m Unemployed’.

Somewhere in the teens I stood under someone’s umbrella for a moment while my numb, slippery fingers fumbled to open a Gu packet.  I was shaking from the cold, and I watched the steam come off my arm.  My body heat escaping, leaving me.  The man holding the umbrella said: “You guys are nuts.”

It can’t get any worse. 

It turns out it can.  We came to Heartbreak Hill, many of us reduced to trudging at this point, grinding up the inclines. The rain had never relented, driven by the wind, and now, as if it had been waiting for the most challenging part of the course, it surged.  The rain punished us in torrents, huge chilling drops turning the rivers on the road into stippled liquid.  We could not see the pavement in front of us.  A runner near me held her arms out and looked up and said to God: “Are you KIDDING me?”

Trust your training. 

Somewhere after 21 a switch flipped.  Something I had put in back in February, pushing through blizzards, some toughness I had set aside during hill repeats in gale force winds, resurfaced.  I tucked in behind two other runners and we began passing people, weaving through the bedraggled competitors splashing ahead of us.  I know that this strength had been there for 20 miles.  Note to self: better to remember that at mile one.

Right on Hereford, left on Boyleston.

This is the last two turns before the Boston Marathon ends.  It is one block, a few hundred feet between what might have stopped you and what you get because you didn’t let it.

Here the runners redeemed their own Boston Style.  They shed the layers of plastic and hand-me- downs and sodden cotton sweatshirts and Target bags.  It looked like a Goodwill donation box had exploded during a monsoon.  Maybe they wanted to look good for the finish line picture.  Maybe it was just another part of the transformation into Boston Finisher.

The finish line will make you cry.

The broad street stretches out for three tenths of a mile.  It is lined with people on both sides, and the sound is so loud you cannot believe it comes from them.  Through the rain I could see the finish line, blurred in the bathroom glass effect the rain provided.  Emotion welled in me, closing my throat, and I gasped to hold that back, desperate to run just a few blocks more.

Kindness.

I crossed the blue and gold line and walked a few steps and turned around and welcomed the runners behind me.  We raised our hands, and congratulated each other, and then turned in the downpour and went to find our medal.

I asked a volunteer: “Are you handing out the heat blankets?”  She looked me in the eye and said: “I have the honor of putting them on the runners.”  She helped me put my arms inside the blanket, put the hood over my head, and folded me up inside it, sealing it over my chest.

Saturated and overflowing. 

The rain spilled out of my eyes in warm streams down my cheeks.  I took a few shaking steps and lowered my head and added my few drops to the puddles on Boyleston Street.

Hope this finds you dry and warm,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith