My taper was pretty good this year, and I felt very well rested heading into the race. I woke up around 5:45 on Monday morning and took the T to Park Street. Met up with my friend Steve and caught a bus out to Hopkinton.
The weather turned out to be pretty much ideal — around 55 degrees, partly cloudy, and a tailwind for parts of the course. Of course, when you’re waiting in the athletes’ village for over 2 hours for the race to start, 50 degrees starts to feel pretty chilly.
The village was crowded with anxious runners. I have to admit that I was definitely among the anxious. I had tried to go into this year’s race with no real race plan — just go out conservatively and run by feel. My goal was not to get too worked up over the race and just enjoy myself. But as race day approached, my nerves started to intrude. At least I didn’t obsess over my projected mile splits and my carbo loading in the days leading up to the race.
Around 10:15, Steve and I started making our way to the start. We dropped our bags at the buses, then tried to find our corral, which was at the very back of the second wave. We found the corral maybe 5 minutes after the second wave actually started, but being in the back, they hadn’t moved at all yet. In fact, we didn’t cross the start line until 18 minutes after the wave officially started. Thank God for chip timing.
