APR-B-7
THE
EVENTS OF THE WEEKEND IN BOSTON OF THE 106TH RUNNING
OF
THE VENERABLE BOSTON MARATHON:
FROM
BWI THROUGH PVD AND ON TO THE BACK BAY HILTON
FOR THE RENDEZVOUS WITH THE CLARKS AND DYSONS
AND THE AMAA—
THE
RON LAWRENCE ROAST, THE EXPO
AND THE GRAND EVENT ITSELF
ON A NEW ENGLAND SPRING PATRIOT’S DAY WEEKEND
AS
THE WORLD RECORD MARATHON TIME IS SHORTENED
BY
3 SECONDS—BUT NOT IN BOSTON
April 12—15, 2002
I am sitting through a sunny New England Spring Day, inside the Back Bay Hilton Hotel, a posh, but still overpriced place, where my run charge is only slightly more than the exorbitant price of the parking fee to leave a rental car for the abandonment price of four days in Boston. I had done somewhat better in looking for a reasonable way of getting to Boston, since I knew I was going to get hosed while here for a high priced hotel and the meeting itself which is now $575 for a day and a half meeting, for which I am supposed to be admitted free, as a benefit of getting a new sponsor, Nutramax Labs—a bone of contention with the AMAA, for which every other email I have sent them has been ignored. I logged on and got the lowest priced airfare I could get to Providence, which was a virtual cattle car coming up. I was first in line for open seating, and then was placed back in the last to board because of the number system they hand out for the rush to seats. Women with car seat babies had taken up more seats than their single ticket, so that had to be rearranged before I could sit, and I am not used to wasting a flight staring off into space without the amenities of a computer or writing equipment. But, I got to PVD and picked up the Avis rental car, a Pontiac Firebird, also reserved by internet, then drove into the Big Dig traffic jam around Boston, to make my way through the thick downtown by feel, until I found the Back Bay Hilton where that car is now hostaged.
I found Imme Dyson and Charlie and Cindy Clark and went to the Legal Seafood, for the first of several traditions in Boston, and we had—of course—the scrod. I gave them a few of the photos I had saved up, and we came back late to the Hotel. The first thing Saturday morning I went to the AMAA meeting, where we listened to medical talks on endurance athletic events, and also met a few folk, one of whom I had known before but not as well as I do now. Walter and Ruth Ann Bortz are from Stanford where he is a geriatrician, and writes a lot about how to live in full activity through age 100. He and she are trying for the over 70 year-old finishers’ prize newly instituted this year, and he runs one marathon a year. He is a “broad-strokes of the brush” kind of thinker, about aging (:”the flow of energy through matter over time”) and gives the kind of philosophic talk that I do, so we had begun talking about the Himalaya, and finished talking about swapping CV’s and bibliographies.
In the evening we had a
semi-roast for Ron Lawrence, a guru who was the founder of the AMAA, who no
longer runs the race, but has hung around it for some time after schmoozing
with the new runners of the boom in the US running world. I am easing on over into the senior set of
this organization as well, but like Charlie and Cindy and Imme, am one of the
aging but still running members. And,
now Walter Bortz is going to give it a try at the age of seventy-four—ten years
short of when Johnny Kelly quit after his last run. The Tom Bassler hypothesis that you are immune from the
then-epidemic of coronary heart disease if you run a marathon has since been
disproven, by at least one other guru who believed that until he died running,
Jim Fixx. But, exercise to that duration over time is probably likely to reduce
your heart disease rate to near zero if not actually at zero. So, Bortz has a hypothesis that there are only
four things that determine longevity and health: 1) Genes—determining not more
than 15% at most, and uncontrollable at best, since there are fewer than 2% of
diseases that are mono-gene; 2)
Accidents—that of being hit by an arrow, bacterium, lightning or tumor
that might otherwise interrupt life; 3) Maintenance—a constant activity for
which he calls the “Chronic Exercise Deficiency Disease”, prototypically
characterized by diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and diseases of development,
the opposite; 4) Aging which happens to all of us in the whole population at 2%
per year (in the lengthening of times in the marathon, according to Frank
Shorter, the last Olympic US gold medal winner of the marathon, with whom I had
my picture taken and who autographed a portrait for me for Joe), but 12% per
year for those who remain active at the level of the group we are preaching to
here. So, since aging and the genetics
are predetermined, and accidents can be avoided in some instances and are just
the fate of the draw in other instances, all of the health and longevity
choices that can be influenced are in this “health maintenance” category. The
Medicare prescription drug benefit, which will cure no diseases at all but only
palliate processes brought on by neglect of healthful processes, will cost 600
billion US $. The single best
prescription anyone can write for longevity and life to years is for
Exercise!---and, with the exception of this hotel and this meeting fee, the
cost of that is quite reasonable, since, I, after all, am running “The Boston”
in shoes that are given to me for being a test pilot, and I am making my way
down this fabled road on the 106th running in my seventh decade!
Besides Frank Shorter, I was met on the street by Bill Rodgers, who crossed the street to see me and greeted me by name, and had his picture taken with me, telling me he had enjoyed “Out of Assa: Heart of the Congo” and asked if I had been back to Africa recently. We had a good chat, and promised to meet again, since we had been haling buddies in the Cherry Blossom last week, and he congratulated me most on entering my 75th marathon, so far injury free.
So, now, the countdown. It looks alarmingly pleasant out there today, so that there must be some evil surprise in store for us, this being Boston. Since it is not sleeting and howling wind, it may actually be too hot. I am going to go look for sunscreen, since at least one thing seems apparent at the start, I will be going out in shorts and singlet—so at least I will look familiar to Camp Calvin!
I am packing off to the Pasta Pre-load Party tonight at City Hall Plaza—largely a party to get psyched up more than to get carbed up, since I hope I am as fueled as I need to be; now, I have to see if the combustion engineering has become decrepit through any low maintenance negligence!
As they said on D-Day, “Away all boats!”
106
Just wonderful! That’s all! Simply marvelous! After all the agony and ecstasy, all the hoopla of the Pasta Party which covered all the city and City Hall, and all the media buildup up and hype, it comes down to this---picking them up and putting them down in the grand-daddy of all distance races. I say it every time I start and all along the way----“I can’t believe I am running Boston!” And it was good on a “no excuses day.” All the worries that centered around all the weather forecasters who told us with absolute assurance---“There is no chance of rain, there will be a slight southwest wind and it will be sunny and clear with the high of 81* F by race time; the normal temperature for this time of year in Boston is 54* F, but we won’t see temperatures that low until Thursday at the earliest since an unseasonably high temperature will come in for the beginning of the week and peak on Patriot’s Day. It will be a good day for the more than a million watchers and a hot day for the runners.”
I would agree with that. An 81* day by the point of the Newton Hills is a prescription for 2500 IV’s and two or three deaths. Fortunately, all the forecasters were wrong—and big time wrong at that. It was raining when I woke up and it was foggy through the whole morning and the start of the race. It was so foggy that the scheduled flyover of the F-16’s that come streaking over Hopkinton at low altitude and turn on the after burners as a little bone rattling start to the adrenalin pump just as the Mass State Trooper crescendos the national anthem did not happen. Nor did the buzzing dozens of helicopters swarm overhead this year panning the crowd, and the snaking of the 17,400 lucky select runners with official bib numbers and twice that number as bandits jumping in make their sinewy slide down the sacred trail leading from Hopkinton to Boston. The ceiling was almost on the street level with the Hopkinton Plaza, and the misty temperature was in the low fifties as we huddled in the corrals according to our numbers shivering at the start of the race in singlets and shorts—just the way I always say we should be: “If you are comfortable at the start of any endurance event, you are overdressed.” And we weren’t and the weather was perfect for us. Not so perfect, of course, if you were a TV broadcaster, since the trucks with all the plastic shrouded TV cameras and microphones to precede each of the elite male and female leaders of the pack (who would be arriving by the elite bus, and who would go directly from the bus to the pews of the local Hopkinton Church where they would lie down on the pews to rest right up to the moment of the gun) could not send their “feed” to the uplink in the helicopter to broadcast for live TV. So, there was no live coverage from the ground of the front-runners until late in the race when the ceiling cleared somewhere beyond the crossing of route 95. For us, this was good, whatever it may have meant to give jet jockeys and helicopter news buffs the day off.
I had come down in the elevator to join Charlie and Cindy Clark and Freeman and Imme Dyson to go by the MTA to City Hall for the Past Party—the annual gorging on the pasta feast put on by Ronzoni’s sponsorship and thousands of helpers they recruit from Honorary Chef Bill Rodgers on down to the Boston’s finest beat cops—who had variety from their steady doughnut diet, from the look of every one of them. As I was in the elevator, a fellow riding the same car noticed my Marine Corps Marathon 26 tunic from last year, and asked me about it. He introduced himself as Todd Whitthorne, an amiable and handsome fellow who was a WRC TV news sportscaster in Washington before he joined the Cooper Institute as a disciple of one of our AMAA members, Dr. Kenneth Cooper, who coined the term and started the craze on Aerobics, and who spoke at the 1996 meeting at the occasion of the 100th running of the Boston.
Todd told me he was a lone ranger here and completely outclassed, since he had run only one marathon and that was San Antonio—which I had also when I had visited Michael and Judy two years ago in San Antonio. They even sent me a Malachite plaque for being one of the first runners in my age group to cross the line in their 25th anniversary race. Todd said he would surely appreciate some advice from a real veteran such as I from my many runnings of many marathons, and especially this one, the classic of all for which he felt under trained and just privileged to be here among the elite of the sport. He had got the tag from being part of the Cooper Institute as a courtesy from the AMAA, when no one else there was going to take it and it was offered to him. I said I would help him and introduce him to a few more elite—and I did---Charlie Clark—whose 25th Boston was the 100th; Imme Dyson, who has regularly come in first in her age group, and I wagered she would do so again today ---she did 4:09, but I do not know what the other women’s times were. We all went off to the pasta party, and went into the huge party thrown under the big top for thousands more than the number of runners---since it also fed all the volunteers and anyone else who had bought a ticket. It was well-organized, and I wandered around later talking with several friends and fellow runners, one of them a 76 year-old man doing his 122nd marathon while holding the fastest marathon time in South Carolina for the seventy plus males. Everyone of us here has a story, I suppose, and most of us will be more than happy to tell you all about it—and how we came to be here to take it all in!
(REMEMBER MY “RULE TWO” –AFTER THE “SHIVER AT THE START OR YOU ARE
OVERDRESSED “RULE NUMBER ONE”---
“DO NOT OVERHYDRATE ON THE WAY TO HOPKINTON
UNTIL YOU ARE OFF THE BUS!”
Todd had sat with me on the bus as I told him several hours of stories to keep him from being nervous about the everlasting ride at highway speed to Hopkinton. It takes longer for the bus to make it to Hopkinton than it does for the leaders to make it back to Boston on foot. That is the reason for the rule about hydration, since these are school buses with no rest rooms and very high window openings!
We had a very much non-running obese out of state woman bus driver with an attitude. She was lost. She stopped to ask a cop (also from out of town) “Where is Corella’s market?” She meant to ask where is Collela’s market, and she is supposed to use the permit displayed in our bus window to park in the lot behind the market, but she insisted she was dropping us off and going on. So, when Charlie Clark---who, after all, has only made 30 consecutive trips out her on Patriot’s Day gave her the directions that I could have done as well having been out here each of the last dozen or more years, she turned and snapped at him “I’m asking him; you folks keep quiet back there!” After all, we are only runners. So, at least we were off our feet, though our bladders may have been fuller than we might like, we were still wearing warm-up clothes, and we were not pacing and shivering at the start—so we made some further detours and turns, due to a driver who did not know where she was going, asking out of state cops where the wrongly named market parking lot was, where she planned to drop us off instead of park, while behind her were perhaps representatives of five hundred trips out to Hopkinton (even given that half might be Boston first-timers) and how we do the drill of parking behind Collela’s Market and using the bus as the baggage depot.
When we got dropped off (we did not convince her otherwise, so we had to use two of our other buses for our baggage and refuge after walking about) I went with Todd and another young fellow who was a family physician from Somerset Kentucky who was also running his first Boston, but he sounded like he was faster than we would be. He was very curious about any help I could give with the course and the orientation to Hopkinton, however, and our first trip was to my favorite secluded greenfield behind a fencerow. The Hopkinton lawns are always a lot greener after Patriot’s Day. We then strolled over to a couple of landmarks I offered to show them, the starting line for the mandatory pictures and the “It All Starts Here” sign, of which I have annual photos. I also saw the Hoyts of “Team Hoyt” being interviewed by a pancake makeup wearing sportscaster TV male and female duo, each cheerful Twinkies in the smart running dress that would never be worn while sweating. The Hoyts are my heroes, and especially the father of Rick, now forty years old, whom his father has pushed in a wheelchair (and even on a raft in triathlons) since Rick was born with severe cerebral palsy, and was advised to put him away in some custodial home. Rick is a big guy now, and for 60 marathons and 22 Bostons, they have been regular entrants and also around three hour pace. He is built like a fireplug and powerful but short, and I always say hello to them each time and take their picture. This year I had seen them in the Expo and delivered their pictures from our last Boston rendezvous. Team Hoyt starts fifteen minutes early, but usually paces the elite women at a pace that is incredible for the amount of labor he has to put out.
We were going to wait for Johnny Kelly at the pagoda in the Hopkinton green, but the fellows were nervous about going too far from the portapotties and also getting back to the baggage bus and off their feet. We stripped down to the singlet and shorts I had advised, and even smeared on sunscreen. A passing pair of bandits with magic markers wrote “GLENN” down each arm, and I had the Calvin singlet for Camp Calvin to recognize. I was also “Carrying the mail” for Camp Calvin, including a “Thank You” note for being there, and also pictures of my brief stop there last year on a similarly warm day (at that time, anyway, before the on-shore breezes caught me after the I-95 crossing.) When I delivered the mail, it was a bit sweat soaked, but then, neither snow nor sleet…..etc.
We made our way into the Corral 16, about two blocks behind the elite starting line. We watched as hundreds, and probably thousands of bandits streamed by as we stood, all of them looking for a place to jump in to the course wherever they could so as to be able to say at some future date that they were “in the Boston” and running with the elites. More power to them and anyone who is trying to run this, or any other race. The Boston tradition is rather “Bandit friendly,” as contrasted with New York, where a runner without an official number visible is boxed in and ejected over the fences by bandit busters—these are, after all, New Yorkers! I congratulated several cute bandits who ran along side me for a while, but most only put on a few miles, and quite a number were walking within the first third of the race. This is the first Boston since September 11, and it is run on Patriot’s Day, so there were a lot of flag-bearers on the run, but that is unusual here, whereas I have seen that in every one of the seventeen Marine Corps Marathons I have done.
BOOM, went the gun. We all stood in our Corral. We walked forward, and stopped. This is what Champion Chips are for—I will be scored, as will all others except the front-running elite, who compete on “Gun Time” in trying to beat each other, whereas I am beating no one but me, and I will be scored as starting when my chip crosses the mat. In fact, not only am I known on the course by my own (personal, not rented for this race only) Chip, which is a Boston 2000 millennium (104th running) Chip Number CG 64578. Anyone who knows this number or my name, can log in on www.championchip.com or www.bostonmarathon.com or the website of any race I am running at any time anywhere in the whole world, and can follow my progress on line. In fact, as I only learned later, someone had done just that, experiencing the vicarious thrill of running Boston seeing my chip light up the sequential mats placed every five kilometers along the course as I crossed them, and following my pace and timing even more closely than I could at the time I was doing it. You can log on to the champion chip site and say—“I see Geelhoed is running in South Africa today, and not doing all that well, either, since it is almost two hours and he is only now crossing the half!”
Twenty-two minutes! That is how long it took me from Corral 16 to get on a walk/trot to the starting line. I then held back deliberately to a steady slow pace, since I always run the first downhill half of Boston too fast, and dart around the slower runners “clotted” in front of me. As I had explained to Todd, who stayed just two paces behind my left shoulder, trying very hard to keep me in sight if I speeded up, I have learned to use the slower runners at the front end of the race to cure me of this over-running the first half by not bobbing and weaving and covering much more of the course in a zig zag pattern, and putting knees at risk in “cutting.” So, this is the point to put the head back and to enjoy the crowds with all of small town Massachusetts, Hometown USA lining the road and cheering. High Fives to the little kids of Ashland, and do not be discouraged when we get to the first mile marker and see an official time of 35 minutes for that first mile. WE are not in a race yet, and even my watch which I punched after the opening mat reflects that 13 minute shuffle for the first mile, after which we will loosen up toward a nine minute pace of steady efficient running loosening up and unkinking for the later struggle with the hills. As always in the first five miles of Boston my shins (“tibialis anticus”) compartment is tight and hurts from putting on the breaks, but that is even more reason to start slowly and “negative split”---i.e. each successive mile goes faster.
We went cruising through the familiar towns I know well from this roadway---Framingham, Natick, as I had told Todd when to drink and how much, and when we would make our single pee stop along the reservoir’s far side at the 8.5 mile spot in Natick. We would be seeing Camp Calvin just beyond 9.2 miles where I would deliver my mail and snap a picture at Camp Calvin, which I passed so quickly they scarcely had time to hear me shout greetings and get the message I dropped in their hands.
At about 9.5 miles, I realized there were water droplets falling ON my new Boston 2002 cap, and not FROM it of my own making. “So much for your TV weather casters again!” I said as a light and welcome sprinkling of rain fell. “Make that a Half Million spectators now, just when I know I am going to need them!” But the rain was light and transient and did not dampen what had forewarned each of the first-timers around me---“Don’t let me pick up the pace through Wellesley, or else I will have to turn around and go back to run through again!” I had told Todd.
“Can you hear them?—they are only a half mile ahead!” The wall of sound got me drawn over to the right side of the road along the snow fences. I knew that if it were hot, I would be treated not only to the high audio volume, but the Bikinied Women of Wellesley as well—some years I have seen the tough ones standing out there in less than I was wearing in sleety wind. But, I got out in front and Todd followed me through the gauntlet, as I gave high fives to a couple thousand screaming nubiles—after all, it is about the only annual chance I get to be treated like a rock star driving beautiful young women to mindless incoherence!
Ah, well, my race is pretty much over, and now I have the long slog that goes up the four hills of Newton after I cross the half way mat where the Marathon Foto professionals are on an overhead bridge while I still have a triumphant smile from my Wellesley séance!
We hit the half at under two on my watch with a consistent nine minutes going from 9:04’s to 8:15’s in the twelve miles since the slow first mile. This is the rate and pacing that I like and the strategizing is paying off. My anterior shin tightness is now gone, since we are off the downhills, and I do not feel any lactate buildup. I asked Todd how he was doing since he had lagged a bit behind but he was feeling OK and I said I was going to pick it up a bit from 14 to 16, but would back off as soon as he felt tight, since we would make ONLY ONE stretch stop and that would only be at the water stop at mile 24. We would other wise walk not one step of this entire course except for safety slow down at the water stops, at which we would drink first a half cup of water, and then a half cup of Gatorade, until we hit the Gu gel spot at mile 17, when we would pop tow of those near the water stops and chug two water only full cups. We would need to get some sustained blood glucose going at that point for the Newton Hills, since we would have burned the glycogen laid down by pasta parties and power bars by this point.
Our strategy held. It worked perfectly as we climbed up over 95 and started down the long slope to the Newton hospital where I would then be climbing the first “non-hill” as I described it to Todd. “This is not a hill, so do not even factor this one into your strategy—since we will have four of those in sequence; all we will do is shorten our stride and maintain the same work, which will drop us down one minute in pace; do not look left or right at the walkers, since you are running your race with your own v veteran-approved strategy, and we are going to take the first one right after this little rise which will just tell us to prepare to shorten our stride for the next uphill.”
We took the first one in stride. If anyone sighed relief, they would be snookered by the next. I pulled in toward the center, no longer waving and giving high fives to the side crowds. Deep breaths to wash out any lactic acid and just steadily keep the pace. When we crest the third rise, we will loosen up from the inevitable tightness by shaking it out on the downhill side. I have a ritual I do each year when I bottom out at the nadir of the road just before Heartbreak Hill looms ahead. I turn to salute the bronze statue of Johnny Kelly—Young and Old—giving a high fives salute at the top of the next famous hill. You will enter it after that and say “Well, is that all there is to it?” But, do not get fooled by the first part of the easy slope. It keeps on going after most of the runners have not. There is a flattening and then a rise that is cruel at the point in the race where it is found. No road should rise to greet you at twenty miles in when you will likely tighten up and get a lactate load in your legs. So on that half mile we will be doing a five minute half mile, but steady high stepping and two thirds up hill, pull your head back on your shoulders and smile at it, since when we get to the top of that last rise, I am going to grab your hand in a Johnny Kelly salute and tell you ‘Heartbreak is History!”
And, so, we did!
Right on cue and of on target, I ran forward along toward Boston College, telling Todd over my shoulder that we would let it out a bit here to pick it up a full minute on the second mile after a half minute on the first as we saws Boston College, where the coeds and others were spread out longer than Wellesley and tried to come up to half their volume for a longer distance. Todd said “At that pint I thought I had lost you, since I could not pick it up and it was all I could do just to keep you in distant sight.” I may have contributed to this since I had a tall man with a long shadow over my left shoulder and I kept half-turning to my left and saying encouraging things to him and he kept grunting affirmatively. When I said, “OK, now we are turning it up the second half minute on the pace,” he blurted out “I can’t stay with you going that fast!” When I turned, I saw that it wasn’t Todd, but a second fellow who had picked up on my “On Course Coaching” and had taken a ride for that first mile up to Boston College. We had negative split this part of the course, but it had knocked a bit of stuffing out of Todd who came up when I backed off.
I said, “When we come over this next little rise at this bridge, you will see a famous Citgo sign, and that is Kenmore Square. Focus on the sign and ‘Reel it in’, since that is a place you will be in the next penultimate minutes—that is the landmark for one mile to go! We will stop just short of Kenmore Square and take in two cups of water while doing a slow deep squat for a stretch. Then there is no more stopping or slowing until we get to Commonwealth Avenue and I will give you the strategy for the finish when we are there.”
Todd caught up, but was hurting a bit when we made our twenty-four mile single stretch stop at the last real water station we would hit. As we went through Kenmore Square, I said that we would shake out a little on Commonwealth Avenue and then would come to Hampshire for a right turn of five hundred yards. We would then turn left onto Boylston where the race is won or lost, so save something for this last straightaway. At this point, with 386 yards to go on the 26-mile marker, I will start the kick. Here there is no tomorrow! You will not have to pay back this lactate debt until your are in the chutes, so spend everything you have been saving to this point, since this is the dance floor where it counts. Besides, you will have thousands of cheering fans yelling for you, so pull along my left side and we will grab hands and give a high five salute as we cross the mats. Here comes the Hampshire right turn—are you ready?” I heard no answer, but he was still there.
As we veered to the left for the turn onto Boylston, I heard Todd ask: “How much further did you say?”
I yelled over my left shoulder: “This is it! 385 yards, Thanks are, Queen Victoria! There is no tomorrow—let it rip!” I kicked into the sprint, and reached around with my left hand and grabbed only air.
I slowed and made a half turn, and saw Todd with his head down and pumping but he waved me off with his hand, so I straightened out and with my head back flew across the mats alone. He followed me a minute and a half later, stiffly limping into the chutes under the watchful eyes of the medical aides whose jobs are scooping and running to the medical tents. “He is just fine!” I said “And no one will ever be able to take this away from him—he just did Boston and did it well!”
Now, we did the high fives, and the ceremonial medal hanging with a few photos in the chutes as we looked like wind blown and salted baked potatoes in our Mylar shiny capes. We chugged several liters, and limped around the corner, where he was chilled, so I took the long wary round by going into the Copley and using the indoor overhead glassed-in walkways to be inside out of the wind where it was warmer and where we could stop and stretch just outside the Marriott lobby on our way back to the Back Bay Hilton. There we would meet the rest of our AMAA gang. I had my post-run blood drawn to compare with the results of the pre-run sampling (my twelfth year of mobile guinea pig status) and had a shower in the guest suite we had stocked with extra towels. When I cam back to see Imme and Freeman, Ron Lawrence and Charlie and Cindy and take a few celebratory pictures that Imme can send out by internet to her sister in Germany (she does not yet know of the surprise, that I had photographed her with a camera to send digitally to her European family at last week’s Cherry Blossom Ten Miler race in which she took first place for her age group!) I heard from each of my friends the effusive thanks I was getting from Todd and a couple of others for the “On-Course Coaching”, as in “I could never have done it without you. Although I ma not sure about that, I know they followed the strategy well and turned in a very good personal performance on a great day for the Boston’s 106th running. The Kenyans, as usual, swept the men’s and women’s first half dozen places.
I did not stay to see the race results on video, since, I am on the run as well. I drove the rental car on to Providence, and flew back to BWI and on to GW, and now am on my way to Charlottesville for a lecture at UVA, and tomorrow, Frankfurt, with the next day Delhi to Dharamsala, and in two weeks more Kathmandu and Lukla, and two weeks later, the Everest Trek Route up through Namche Bazaar to Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar. So from a great run in the classic granddaddy of all Marathons I am headed for another return engagement, this time with Chumalunga, the greatgrandaddy of all mountains. It, like Boston, is there!