Monday, April 17, 2000 – Morning of the Race

I know that I woke up literally every single hour the night before the race, but it was not at all from nervousness or butterflies.  It was a feeling of such excitement that this day was finally here.  I had set the alarm clock for 6:00 a.m., but finally quit trying to pretend that I’d be able to go back to sleep at 5:45 and went ahead and got up.  I had already laid out all of my clothes the night before, including my spare bag that I would take with me out to the Athlete’s Village (the "Athlete's Village" are set up on the grounds at Hopkinton High School).  Once I had gotten dressed and was ready to leave, I gave my wife Susan a hug and kiss, and went over and kissed each of the kids as they slept.  Susan took a final photo of me walking out the door.  I could hardly believe that the next time I walked through it, I would have completed the 2000 Boston Marathon.

There are buses that shuttle the runners from downtown Boston near the Boston Common out to Hopkinton for the start of the race.  The buses are boarded by your race number, with the highest numbers leaving as early as 6:30 a.m., and the lowest numbers leaving around 10:00 (the race begins at noon).  One of my neighbors, Amori, had also qualified and her husband Bryan had come up to support her in the race. Since Amori and I were leaving within a half hour of each other based on our numbers, we decided to meet and ride together.  We met between 7:00-7:15 a.m. at the Boylston Street “T” stop (“T” is the local acronym for the transit system and a very easy and inexpensive way to quickly get around the city and many suburbs).  When I arrived I found her all ready to go.  Bryan surprised Amori by coming out from the hotel to see her off.  Amori and I are very blessed to have the spouses we have that support us for an event like this.

There were already thousands of runners lining the street, and yellow school buses lined up as far as you could see to take us out to Hopkinton for the start of the race.  We boarded bus #32 (I joked with Amori that it must be her day because that was her age and I said that bus #40, my age, was probably broken down somewhere) and headed out on our way to Hopkinton.  I think our bus finally pulled out around 7:45.

Naturally, the bus was filled with the excitement and talk about the race.  A common thread I began to notice was that almost all of us were going out on this journey for the first time.  The gentleman seated directly in front of us was from Chicago and had qualified there as well.  He had his cellular phone with him to call family and friends along the route.  The lady across the aisle from Amori was from San Francisco.  I will never know the story that a lady sitting one row up and across from me was telling to a lady behind her, but I watched as she began to cry as she spoke.  In my mind, I imagine that like many of us, she was overwhelmed by both the moment and a significant event that had occurred in her life, whether it was happy or sad.  Your emotions are at a crescendo at this point.  Since everything that is happening from this point forward is occurring for you for the first time, it would be quite easy to burst into tears or start laughing uncontrollably, perhaps even simultaneously.

I’m not sure if anyone else realized it, but I began to think about how long we were driving just to get out to Hopkinton.  I guess the total bus trip was around 45 minutes or so, although I did not time it.  I started thinking about the fact that to get back meant we were going to have to run.  I’ve always said that if anyone thinks about how far a marathon actually is from point to point, that they would never be able to do it.   Anyone who has ever done a marathon or any type of event whereby they were pushing their bodies and minds to the limit has experienced some type of huge swings in emotional and physical highs and lows.  Each person has his or her own way of coping with these situations.  From a physical standpoint, I usually try to think about different points along the course in terms of my familiar training runs back home.  If I have for example a distance of 6 miles to make, I simply tell myself that one of my short runs back home is a 6.3-mile course, and I try to imagine where I am on that course in my mind.  That helps me considerably.  For me at least, the mental part is sometimes much tougher.  Once your body begins to react to the physical exertion, the demon doubts begin to enter your mind. “What in the world am I doing out here?”  “I could stop right now and make the pain go away.”  “I actually thought I could do this?”  “I’ve never hurt this early in a run before.”  All of these and much more occur at some point.  I think that I deal with them best by just trying to stay focused on my pace and letting my body tell me how fast or slow it can go, or listening if it absolutely tells me that I need to stop.

There are so many aspects to this event that I wish everyone was able to experience, and the Athlete’s Village in Hopkinton is no exception.  When we arrived around 8:30 a.m. and stepped off the bus to temperatures in the low to mid-40s with a brisk wind out of the east (meaning we would be running into that wind all the way back to Boston). We were at Hopkinton High School and followed the herd of runners and volunteers to the back of the school where the Athlete’s Village was set up.  At the top of a slight hill, I could see to my right a giant white tent and then another just like it directly in the middle of the field.  These were more the size of circus tents that probably had 4,000-5,000 runners underneath each one.  The yard of the grounds not covered by the tent was a bustle with runners going back and forth, probably trying to keep warm.  I followed Amori’s lead that we hurry to get inside one of the tents and get a spot on the ground as quickly as possible, and I’m glad we did.  This turned out to not necessarily be an easy task, even though we were one of the early buses.  When someone finally got up and moved, we pounced and quickly staked out our piece of land that was a grassy area about 5’ square.  This would be our home for the next 3 ½ hours.  As the time wore on, this 5’ square took the shape of an oblong amoeba as other runners scooted into the tent and the crowd pressed closer.  There were long lines within the tent stretching far outside with probably a thousand or more runners in each waiting for bottled water, bagels, and other food items, as well as plastic bags to sit on or wrap around themselves to shelter the wind.

Another thing that struck me were the number of portable toilets outside.  I have no idea how many there actually were, but they seemed to be lined up in rows that stretched to the horizon, with lines of runners standing in front of every one of them.  Amori and I would take turns getting up to go to the bathroom so that one of us could stand guard on our precious spot of ground.   Most of the bathroom lines lasted anywhere from 20-30 minutes, so by the time you got to the door, you did not know if those around you were jogging in place to keep warm, or jumping up and down to keep the excruciating pain in their bladders at bay.  We runners are an interesting breed.  Our sole purpose in life at this point is to hydrate ourselves to the point that we have to urinate constantly, much like a fountain that has a continuous flow of water.  However, we are truly fulfilled if the all important and nearly religious experience of the pre-race bowel movement (or “purge” as I like to call it) occurs at this time.   There is never any other point in our adult lives where open discussions of #2 are so freely bantered about.  The pride displayed on the runners faces who have managed the feat within a few hours or minutes prior to the race, and the envy of those who are sure that the largest BM of their lives will occur shortly after the gun goes off, is beyond explanation.  In comparison, I can imagine all of us going back to our respective places of work and standing by the coffee machine and telling a co-worker how great it would be if we could go #2 before the big meeting today.  For the record,  #1 was fortunately my only calling this day.

The time seemed to pass very quickly as we shared our journeys to this point with those packed in around us. Again, most of us were there for the first time, some having easily qualified, but the vast majority having barely made it just like me. I think the runners that really missed most of the experience of being in the tent were those that brought novels or newspapers to read to pass the time.  Perhaps they were doing this for the umpteenth time  and it was old hat to them, or it was their own unique pre-race way to just relax.  In any event, I can never imagine being here again and doing anything other than walking around and talking to the other runners.  I recalled being out of state a few months before and being in a specialty running store and one of the clerk’s seeing my Boston Marathon t-shirt and asking if I was going to be running in the event.  This guy was exceedingly obnoxious from the moment you walked in the door and had a very “know it all” attitude about him.  He proceeded to tell me how “eeeeaaassssssiiiilllllyyyyyyy” (making sure he drug it out) that he had qualified for the Boston Marathon, but he had “aaabbbbsssssolllllutttellllly” no desire to run it.  I came within a fraction of a second of telling him that I was “gggglllllaaaaddddd” he was not running it, less he ruin the experience for the rest of us (I will not mention the state or the store, and this is definitely a rare occurrence).   Regardless of the personalities gathered in Hopkinton that day, I met not one single person that was not thrilled to be there.

Around 11:30 a.m. we picked up our bags and started walking up the street outside of Athlete’s Village toward the start line to our respective corrals. The buses also have signs on them for race numbers to it makes it much easier to find your bus at the end of the race after you cross the finish line. After I passed my bag through the window to the volunteer, I made the final couple of hundred yards walk just taking in the excitement around me. As I made the final turn to enter my corral, I looked to my left and saw the sign that I had seen so many times in newspapers and publications. The sign is just adjacent to the starting line and says, “Boston Marathon – Welcome to Hopkinton - It All Starts Here – Hopkinton to Boston 26 miles 385 yards”. I had finally made it and knew there was a glorious day ahead of me.