For the past few years I had somehow managed to avoid the Boston Marathon. I was either preparing for a wedding, traveling, or just trying to get out of town for the three day weekend. But this year I decided to give it a new look because it made a great way to see my family in Newton and was the sort of activity that works well with a six month old baby. Madeline turned six months just last Thursday. Time flies.

We decided to get to the event early this year camping out near the 20 mile mark on Comm. Ave. According to other locals near us that puts us somewhere before heartbreak hill so the people passing by were generally cheerful. The race starts with a bunch of people who get to leave early so they don’t get ensnarled when the mass of humanity comes rushing through. The first folks to flash by are the wheelchair racers. I think we came outside just as the leaders for the wheelchair race past us and it didn’t affect me as very interesting other than to see the different designs of wheelchairs that followed. Most of them racers rolled their chairs by turning the wheel directly but a number of less able bodied looking folks either older or heftier appeared to be gaining a mechanical advantage through a crank driven chair design where they could turn the crank with their hands using what looked like bicycle pedals. We pondered the rules of the wheelchair race and without ever actually examining them I determined that they must only allow some people to use this design because it offers an advantage if they can attach gears to it.

The women came next. If you aren’t an elite woman runner then you probably won’t win the Boston Marathon, or at least you won’t appear to win on the news. The elite women get to start an hour early or so from the rest of the racers. It does pose the question and problem that a very fast late starting woman could beat the time of the best elite woman racer even after the elite racer had been crowned the winner. That would make for an interesting outcome but it probably won’t happen in my lifetime unless someone tries that T riding strategy again and T riding is probably much harder now that they are using RFID to track the runners as they proceed through the race.

The first women came through looking very impressive because their physiques made it clear that there was no room for body fat on them. One woman passed by and I thought I was looking at those charts from the gym where they show where all the muscles are that you are working out on the weight lifting stations.

My dad kept pinging back and forth from inside the house to watching the Red Sox game and race results to being outside where he could see the race. I never cared about who was winning. I was more interested in just watching the racers pass by and watching Madeline’s reaction to being outside in a crowd. The crowd around us started to build after the women passed by. Until then it was a small spattering of onlookers doing a little bit of cheering. A guy looking much like Ray Romano was together with a group of friends who were all prepared to root for a number of runners. They had signs ready and even t shirts to show their support. Down on the corner of Water Street a group of kids who looked drunk but didn’t reveal a source of alcohol (maybe they were devout Christians drunk on religion?) had gathered. I figured they were somewhere between high school and college students. They were goofballs but entertaining. When the mass of humanity arrived they learned that they could get a lot of reaction out of the Korean’s running by going crazy when a Korean passed by and yelling about how much they loved Korea.

The men leaders ran by quickly. I had figured that a Kenyan or Ethiopian would be leading but it looked like a Caucasian man was actually leading the race at the 20 mile marker. My dad let me know later that the winner had been Kenyan or Ethiopian and set a new course record by two seconds but I never looked for his picture. I was more interested in the mass of humanity to pass by after the leaders.

The Hoyts must start the race with the wheelchair racers because they were running very close to the men’s leaders and I don’t get the feeling that a man pushing his 30 year old handicapped son in a stroller could compete with 20,000 healthy runners for times. From what I could tell the Hoyts are in their own category of runners, determined to beat a disease, and they win the category every year. They may have gotten more cheers than the leaders running past with the trucks and giant clocks.

The race then devolved into what I was looking for. Plenty of the racers had painted their names or countries on their legs, chests, arms, and backs. That allowed us cheering section folks lounging on our Target outdoor recliners sipping wine in a Solo cup to tell “Amy” that she was “looking good!” or “Todd” that it was only a “Few more miles”.

Nick and Christina arrived because we had heard from Andrew that he was going to run as a bandit, a non-official runner. We had to essentially provide a constant watch for Andrew in case he passed by. Finding someone that you know is running the Marathon is like playing Where’s Waldo for five hours. You look at every body that passes and try to match it against your expectation to what a friend or family member might look like after having run 20 miles. Christina hadn’t been to the Marathon in a while either and she was amazed at how many people the Ray Romano character knew because he called out the names to encourage so many runners as they passed by. She caught on that he was reading their numbers and we all were taking turns calling out encouragement to the runners. We took special pleasure in the MIT runners as they passed by and Nick and I settled on the encouraging phrase for MIT runners – “Move that beaver!”

Scattered among the crowd of runners are a number of entertainers. We had hoped to see someone with a hat and a beer hanging from it but were disappointed on that front. We did see a Spiderman and Riddler separated by 30 minutes. A nerdy guy was running with a beanie on his head. Some folks were wearing large afro-wigs. The MIT folks, probably because they are shy and can’t figure out how to get a date, posted their cell phone numbers on their backs with messages to the “ladies” to call them.

Having watched people pass by for about four hours and consumed a few too many hamburgers and hot dogs we decided that it was unlikely that Andrew was going to appear. What made this clear was the sad bus full of people passing by. The bus picks-up the straggling suffering masses who can’t continue to the end and takes them to the finish line so that they can go home. In front of the bus a police car calls out that runners should move to the side of the road because it will shortly be open to traffic. One Canadian from Edmonton stopped his running to talk to us to complain that he had thought the race would be fun and he had traveled just to experience it but that it was too long and crap. I wanted to give him a lecture that 26.2 miles is the same anywhere and that he didn’t need to go for a run in Boston to learn that he wasn’t a marathon runner but instead I nodded and waited for him to painfully continue running.

Madeline appeared to have a good time for the day. So did I. I would run it if I wasn't so afraid of what it would do to my back.