When I Weathered The Unthinkable At The Boston Marathon

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It’s April, so that means one thing for marathon runners out there: Boston Marathon time. It also means I receive my annual flick of a reminder that things don’t always pan out as you fear they will. I learned that at my first Boston Marathon, and I’ll always thank that race for this life lesson.

It was April 2007 when I stood in my hotel room in Boston, eyes glued to the TV screen while readying myself for the most exciting race I’d entered to date, the Boston Marathon, mecca of marathoning, the cherry on top of the race list that all of us runners kept tucked in the privacy of our weekly mileage log.

Today, looking at the race list I kept over the years, I’d done three marathons and four ultras up to that point. I was still relatively new to the sport. Boston had been on my bucket list well before I broke ground on my first marathon. It was a dream come true.

Now, there I was in Boston, laying out my clothes on the hotel bed for the next morning!

And there on the television, the weatherman was telling us Boston was about to collapse before our eyes.

Gulp.

A big nor-easter had descended into place that night, all hell had broken loose — temps tanked, winds blew fierce, rain poured. The local news couldn’t stop mesmerizing over the idea that their esteemed marathon might be canceled. My eyes were glued, in shock, while my hands kept readying for the day to come. You don’t train so hard for a dream race only to quickly give up hope, especially after you’ve traveled far and paid decent cash-money for a hotel.

But your eyes don’t leave the screen either. My breathing was shallow that night. My eternal optimism mode was slightly in gambling mode, too. I still placed my hope on an open start line the next morning. My only worry was how much gear I’d packed for such a weather threat: none.

And, I’ll be completely honest, I hadn’t quite heard of a thing called a nor’easter back then. If I had, I had no idea what it was other than something that happens in the northeast, right? Or — no?

I went to sleep that night with fingers firmly crossed over each other, hoping for the best. In no time, morning hit, along with a reality check: Boston was still standing. The nor’easter hadn’t blown it away, drowned it, or frozen it to smithereens. Instead, while the storm was still in full swing, there was no news that the race had been canceled. I grabbed my running pack and thin jacket, swallowed breakfast as I walked, and headed to my car.

The one thing that, for me, became a slight deterrent to running Boston, as I ended up doing it three times and then retired from the idea, was the lengthy commute required to get to the start line. I don’t know another race like it, though they might exist out there.

To get to the start line of the Boston Marathon, you need to either take public transport to the race buses, which then take you to the race location, or drive and find parking, but either way, just reaching the race buses takes some doing. Then, after a nice wait on the bus for your fellow runners to board, the buses take some time getting to the start. But you’re still not there. You must walk to the start from where the buses drop you off. It’s a production.

However, for the 2007 race, having that lead up to the start was beneficial. It enabled you to watch, in real time, this historic storm slated to eat Boston slowly wane. If your hope was still through the roof, it now felt justified in staying the course. This is when I started to notice that maybe the news hypes things more than is warranted. Yes, I did not know this back then. Believe it or not, that race was my first inkling that amped-up weather reporting was a thing — that amped-up news was a thing.

If I came away with any grand prize from that experience, it wasn’t the finisher’s medal I received. It was the awareness that sometimes catastrophic predictions don’t pan out. Or maybe they often don’t. Or maybe over the years, so much has changed and developed in the attention economy that news isn’t considered news anymore unless it's amping up something.

On that day in Boston, we runners took to the start line fearful of what increasingly appeared to be just another day of running. There was a little chill in the air, and perhaps some water drops from the sky — I can’t recall anymore. What I do remember is that my fear kept bumping up against the fact that the day was actually perfect for running because, of all possible conditions, you don’t want heat when you run.

Executing a challenging undertaking like a long-distance run always boils down to two things: the tools you have available to help you (aka gear) and your resilience to stay the course. Resilience is built over time. Tools arise when you learn that, indeed, you need them. They can include not just the gear you take with you, but the tricks you discover.

If you have gloves shoved into your running pack, great. If you don’t, you quickly learn to pull your fingers inside the cuffs of your jacket. Problem solved. If the cold outperforms your thin jacket, you learn to exhale inside the neckline of your clothing to generate enough heat to edge your core heat back to stable. If you brought a wool hat instead of a hat with a brim, and it starts to rain in your eyes, you learn to yank your hat out a tad, right above your eyes, to provide a small barrier.

You adapt to your circumstances. You enjoy your run and handclap strangers who pack in droves along the Boston racecourse. You cross the finish line in joy and shock that you finished your dream goal.

It all turned out fine. But even more than fine. It turned out incredible.

The thing with me, and maybe you, is that I don’t always need amped up news to nestle catastrophe inside me. I can do it all by myself, thank you very much. And when I do, I often call up my lessons from running to talk myself down, stick my face inside the figurative neckline of my shirt, breathe in and out, and warm up my outlook on life. I remind myself that it’s not as bad as I’m telling myself it is. I look back in time and see that it’s often never panned out terribly, or even slightly off kilter.

This is because, more often than not, many things work out mercifully, beautifully, predictably well.

Looking Back at 5 Times That the Weather at the Boston Marathon Was the Absolute Worst

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Have a nice rest of your week, all. Happy Spring!