Boston Will Be Back (I Hope)

I spent the early part of Monday as I have the past several Patriots Days - watching the Boston Marathon with my kids. Conor, 11, has always been the most taken with the race, watching from start to finish, and getting mad when his brother would switch over for a Red Sox score.

This morning, I asked him if he’d like to run it one day, and he responded with an enthusiastic “yes!” I told him that I knew he would some day, because he can be a very determined kid and has the lean body that lends itself to running.

As for myself, I’m shaped more like 5’10” 200 pound fire hydrant than anything built for speed over the long haul. When the time comes, my lifetime achievements won’t take long to list in my obituary; but, between 1992 - 2004, I did finish the Boston Marathon six times, anywhere between about 3:20 and 4:30. Those are some of the most memorable days of my life.

Marathons are not special in themselves because anyone can run one. If you take the time and dedicate yourself to running regularly and stretching out those long runs, anyone in good health to begin with can do it.

But Boston is special, and not because of the runners. The crowds that line the streets from Hopkinton to Boylston Street are as much a part of the race as the runners, themselves. Now 10 years removed from my last Boston, I still have vivid memories of some of the people cheering along the way.

The kid standing in front of his house in Framingham offering oranges he cut up and put in a bowl.

The Wellesley College girls, who cheer just as much for a schlub like me as they do the leaders. Hearing their roar well before you can even see them gives me goosebumps even as I think about it now.

The woman near the top of Heartbreak Hill who, seeing my obvious suffering at the time, told me she knew I could make it, she just knew it because I was almost there. She was right.

To the guy who ran alongside me trying to convince me that finishing his beer was my ticket to a strong finish. I politely declined.

And the finish line crowd, lined up 10 - 12 deep, urging me forward down Boylston Street, a stretch I have walked before and seems much shorter when you are walking it on a leisurely Sunday afternoon than when you are running the last .2 of 26.2 miles.

Thinking people in that crowd were blown up today breaks my heart. As far as I know, I don’t know any of them, personally.

But I do.

They are my dad meeting me after my first Boston my senior year of college in 1992. They are my brother on that same day, at the time an 18 year-old in treatment for brain cancer, who I thought of every step of the way.

They are my mom, probably worrying the whole time I was running that I’d hurt myself or get sick or something, until she saw me cross the finish line. They are my father in-law, not even flinching as, exhausted and dehydrated, I puked on the way home when he picked me up. They are my wife, hugging my disgustingly sweaty and salty body at the finish, and taking care of me at home afterwards.

They will be me, one day, cheering on Conor, because the Boston Marathon is the world’s greatest race, and it’s right in our backyard.

Guys and women like me can run the same course on the same day as the greatest runners in the world, with 500,000 people cheering for us all, spraying us with their garden hoses, offering us oranges, and thrusting cups of water in our hands (and other liquids, especially in the Boston College area).

Boston will be back. It’s too good not to be. It might not be exactly the same for a while, but it will be back. I’ve always hated the cliche “Everyone’s a winner,” but, next year and beyond, that will be true in Boston.

We were all watching the news coverage this afternoon and evening. Conor looked at me and said, "I'm still gonna run it."

I believe him.