Boston 2008: Race Recap

Another year, another Boston. This time, the crowds and weather did not disappoint, and it was a fantastic race. I was happy to be staying with my friends Jeff Pham and Kalid Azad at Jeff’s place in Boston, which was right next the course. I even made it to see the Women’s Olympic Trials Marathon, which took place the day before. Also in town from Seattle was Hannah Beren, a friend and fellow runner, as well as some of my teammates from Club Northwest. At the expo on Sunday, I bumped into Jeremy LaBuff, an old teammate from Rice, Ashlee Vincent, a friend from Portland, and met my cousin Kristin Martin, who runs for Northeastern. The world gets continuously smaller, and the running world, even more so… Although I didn’t do much marathon specific training, I got a case of goal-inflation a few weeks ago when I realized that the New York City Marathon this fall was a lottery system, so no guaranteed entry unless you have a competitive start qualifying time. For males my age, that’s a 2:55, which was about 14 minutes faster than I ran Boston last year. I had not entered a marathon with a specific goal/pace in mind before, which made this race different. I always have target goals, but no real consequences if I don’t hit them. After waking up at 5, and heading over to meet Hannah at the buses, we finally made it to Hopkinton and the Athletes village at 7:30. The 2.5 hour wait passed surprisingly quickly, as each trip to the port-o-john took 45mins thanks to the massive lines. I started out pretty far back, and went out slow at just over 7 minute pace, thanks to the crowds. Boston is the only race I ever run where I’m so far back in the pack. Humbling. The race went surprisingly as planned, and I had really even splits, despite the rolling course. I was varying between 6:32 and 6:46 for most of the race. The Wellesley Scream Tunnel was glorious as usual, and I stopped for a quick kiss from an adoring fan, which slowed me down by about 7 seconds. I was cursing myself later, because at mile 20, I was behind pace by 45 seconds, and still had a couple hills to go before heading into the homestretch. I managed to work the hills at 6:43 pace and for the 3rd time in a row, I was clueless that I was going up Heartbreak hill. There are so many other rolling hills prior, I’m never sure when I get to that final one. I pushed hard on the downhill following Heartbreak and hit mile 22 in 6:16, which got me within 20 seconds of being on pace. My legs were really starting to hurt with 3 miles to go, and I constantly switched back and forth between saying “It’s okay, I won’t hit 2:55, I can go 2:56 and it will still be okay. Maybe they’ll let me in NY anyhow” then I’d get angry and swear at myself to keep pushing. I hit mile 25 on pace, and with one mile to go, I had exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds to hit the finish line before 2:55. It came down to the last 800 yards on the home stretch and I pushed hard, and came in 6 seconds under my goal at 2:54:54. I was hurting pretty bad and a bit shaky so they took me into the medical tent. I wasn’t celebrating yet because it wasn’t for another hour that I learned that I had gotten my time. I had stopped my watch after I crossed at 2:55:11, and was scared that I had missed my goal by a couple seconds. Hannah had a fantastic race as well, coming in at 3:16. My friends Kalid, Juju, Momina, Jeff and Ash were all at the finish waiting for me. If it were not for my Boston friends, I probably wouldn’t return every year to run this race. They truly make it a worthwhile weekend, and the race is that much more fun when you can celebrate at the finish with friends.