APR-B-12
THE BIG BOSTON BEAN:
THE “PATRIOT’S DAY” HOLIDAY WEEKEND OF THE
107TH RUNNING OF THE BOSTON MARATHON
I am here in the Hilton Back Bay Boston Hotel, which I feel like I own a fair share of it, since each year the three-day minimum charge sneaks up another ten per cent. The AMAA meetings in the last three years have been in this hotel, which is why I reserved it for this weekend last year for this one. But, the Colonnade, where the meetings had been for many years before that, had remodeled, and the AMAA meetings are back there this year, which only means that I have to walk through the Prudential Plaza to get there. I checked in by coming here by means of the MTA from Logan Airport, but it is a very confusing way to get around after surfacing from the subway, and each Bostonian I asked, told me to go a different way, as I am rolling a sixty pound suitcase behind me. I finally found it on my own, from the multiple times I have flailed around this central part of downtown, and I had one big advantage this time---I did not have to dispose of a rental car in three days of parking at $35 per day.
I unpacked my gear and put away the visiting professor stuff, and unpacked the runner’s kit, and assembled what I would need for the race on Monday, an a few things I had brought for the people I had planned to see here in our usual running pack. One of the first rituals--set up by Charlie Clark, who has done this race twenty nine times, and has established the sequence of rituals on Friday night, Saturday noon and Sunday night, is that we start off with the Dysons, Clarks and Geelhoed at Legal Sea Food--the old one and not the other three which are here around as clones. We would meet at 7:00 PM in the Colonnade lobby.
I walked over through the Pru Plaza and arrived at the Colonnade a couple of hours early, so that I went to where the meeting is usually held and there met Barbara Baldwin and Salvi Mulgal who are the AMAA staff. Later Judi Babb arrived from California. They were trying to stuff the AMAA athletic bags which wee a gift from Nike, and I volunteered, stuffing 140 bags, and getting one for myself--which later I found out was not coming to me in any event since I had not registered for this meeting of the AMAA having qualified as an open masters runner directly with the BAA. But, I hang out with the usual suspects, in any event, since I know the members who have been coming to this meeting for a decade or more as I have. The Boston is a grand party, and I am always overwhelmed each time I hit the course, not only participating in the celebration but chanting “I can’t believe I am running Boston!” And I have kept on running it without a skipped race for over a decade now! This is a long time after I had a small boy named Donald on my shoulder on Commonwealth Avenue watching as they ran through freezing rain, and he asked “What are those funny men doing, Daddy?”
“Some day you might understand, and possibly even join them!” I had replied, never dreaming that I would be the one, not only running Boston, but returning consistently to run it each year. That even included the 1996 100th anniversary year, when I came “Out of Africa” to run it---as, of course, every one of the top ten finishers and most of the first 100 also did!
To give you a somewhat lower key observer’s view of the Boston Hype, I append a story unique to those who follow this sport in all its tradition-steeped glory:
Idiot's Guide to the Boston Marathon
By Bill Simmons
Page 2 columnist
This article which could not copy to be pasted gave a humorous view, as I went out to walk the Freedom Trail, attend the pasta Party and also go through some of the meetings of our AMAA group before turning in early to run the Grand Daddy of all Marathons!