I know I am skipping ahead a little bit here as I still need to post Chiang Mai, Bangkok and New York, but this weekend is fresh in my mind and I know a lot of people were asking me how the Marathon went, so I decided to skip ahead and write a post about Boston and post it while it is fresh.

As many of you may know and from previous posts, during my travels I was training for the 2018 Boston Marathon, which occurred on Monday April 16^th of this year.  I qualified in December of 2016 and at that point I had no idea that I would be a world nomad come April 2018 but I was elated to ring the BQ bell and was almost in tears to have qualified for a race that many people only dream to run.  I had to wait until September of 2017 to register and by that time I was already in the midst of planning my world tour.  I contemplated not signing up because it would be a pain in the ass to train while traveling but I also didn’t know if I would ever run a fast enough time to re-qualify.  My thought process was basically, “if you qualify for Boston, you run Boston”.  So I registered and decided that I would figure out the training thing later.  I signed up for the California International Marathon on a whim again in 2017 (the race I first qualified) because of the amazing support the East Bay Beer Runners were showing for the runners of this race and so I thought I would join in on the fun.  Turns out I felt GREAT during that run and ended up improving my Boston seeding with a 2:57:48 finish.  That meant I re-qualified for Boston 2019 and no longer had to worry about having a good race or not this year.  It really took the pressure off.  Take a look at my other two posts about my road to Boston PART 1 and PART 2.

Skipping ahead a bit, I want to share my Boston weekend experience.  I took a bus from New York to Boston on Friday and upon arrival took public transit to the AirBNB where my family was.  I arrived and was met by my parents, my sister, brother and law and my 8 month old Niece.  After traveling solo for 2 months, it was really nice to walk into a room filled with family.  I dropped off my stuff anf spent a bit of time chatting and enjoying family time although at some point it was time to eat.  We opted for Mexican which is fine by me because I am always down for a Burrito, and this place did not disappoint.  I was still working on getting over my jet lag, so by the time we got home it was bed time.

The next day was bib pickup day, so the whole crew loaded up on the Green Line streetcar and headed into Boston to pick up my Bib.  I was seeded with bib 3422, which means that was my rank amongst the 29,700 competitors running the race.  That put me in the 4^th corral of the 1^st wave.  I was pretty proud to be seeded in approximately the top 10% of competitors.

By Saturday afternoon it became pretty clear that the weather on Marathon Monday was not going to be very good, so I had to start rethinking my apparel plan.  My initial plan was to just wear my Canadian singlet, but with heavy rain and temps in the low single digits on race day, I decided it was time to start thinking of a backup plan.  I decided to buy some arm warmers and was going to make a game time decision between, singlet, t-shirt or the participant long sleeve.  I thought about getting some compression socks as well, but have never run in those before so decided it was not a good idea to change things up that much.

I hardly ever buy my race photos, but marathonFoto was doing a expo special for $60 vs the $90 it would cost post race, so since this is the Boston Marathon, I split the cost with my parents.  I walked away from the expo with tons of protein bars, some nipple covers, a poster, gels, body glide and several random goodies.  I contemplated some additional Boston apparel, but thanks to my roommate Sara, I already had the famous jacket and I figured that was enough.  Leaving the expo we opted to walk downtown towards the freedom trail which takes you on a historical walk through downtown Boston.  On the way we stopped at sweetgreens for a healthy lunch and across the street there were people lining up at Trillium Brewing company.  WE asked what the lineup was for and they had released a Chocolate macaroon stout that day, so my dad and I figured we had to grab a bottle since that is his favorite desert.

I also got 4 cans of their IPAs and pale ales as everyone I know in the beer world told me to make sure I went there when in Boston.  I don’t drink for 7 days prior to running a race typically, so I had to buy them for later.  We continued into downtown when my mom reminded me that I still needed to get a pair of throw away pants for Monday morning so I headed to Marshall’s to see what I could find.  There wasn’t anything cheaper than $13 there so I headed to the clearance section of Old Navy which has a pair of pants for $8.5 taxes in which was the cheapest I could find.  We joined the freedom trial and followed that until we got to Quincy Market.

At that point my sister wanted to make sure the baby got home on time, so my mom, sister and brother in law took her home and my dad and I stayed downtown because WE WERE GOING TO THE LEAFS GAME THAT NIGHT!!!!!

When the Boston Marathon was set for April 16^th I knew that the NHL playoffs would be starting in that that general time frame and so was following the playoff picture pretty closely as the season came to a close.  The leafs looked like they would be playing Boston the whole time, but in the end it came down to Boston’s final game to determine if the leafs would be playing Boston or Tampa in the first round.  I was in Bangkok with a terrible internet connection so was following the game on Twitter.  If Florida won, the leafs would play Boston and if Boston won they would play Tampa.  Florida won the game which meant the Leafs would play Boston with game 2 being in Boston during Marathon weekend.  Since we were going to be in town already (me being in North America was a big deal) I knew I had to get tickets no matter how much is would put a dent in my budget.  My family thought they were a bit too expensive so was looking at other options, but in the end my dad joined me for the low low price of $200 all in per ticket.

Since I wasn’t drinking, my typical pre game for a hockey game was a little different and since it was two days before the marathon, I had to carb load.  The freedom trail had popped us out in the northern part of the city and thus Italian restaurant haven.  We also saw plenty of people walking round with Mike’s Pastries boxes, so we asked around and apparently it was a famous cannoli place around the corner.

Since we had time to kill and it seemed to be a famous place, we searched it out and eventually located it.  We got our Canoli and then headed off in search of an Italian restaurant for some pasta.  We were walking down the street when this very Italian man was putting out a sign in front of his place and made a comment about our jersey’s.  He wished us luck tonight and said that despite our attire, we were still welcome in his restaurant.  All of the places looked to be about the same price and there were a lot so this gave us the reason to go to that place.  I had a nice spaghetti and meatball dinner and my dad had zitti with clam sauce.  It was delicious and we were now all fueled for the game.  We meandered our way to TD gardens in search of the brew pub that was around the corner.

There were a small spattering of Toronto fans walking towards the garden but in general it was mostly Boston fans and they were very vocal about their thought of us.  In general things were pretty light hearted, but in some cases a few people took it a bit too far.

Although you kind of expect that when in enemy territory during a playoff game.  We made it to the brewpub and upon entering were greeted by a collective BOOOOOO from the entire crowd followed by a Let’s go Bruins chant.  We were for sure the only leafs fans in the joint, but decided to stay and see if we could make some friendly banter with the locals.  We were pretty successful and my dad told his Pat Quinn story 4-5 times to different people before finishing his beer and heading to the arena for warm ups.

We got there about an hour early to make sure we got a good spot for warm ups.  It was worth it as I ended up on the glass at the Toronto warm up end.  Warm ups didn’t start until 7:40 or so, so we ended up waiting for a while but made friends with the other Toronto fans nearby.

When the team finally took the ice, it was pretty exciting.  There weren’t that many leafs fans overall, but many showed up for the warmup and so it was pretty fun to cheer them on during the warmups.

At the end of the warmup Matthews and Marner stayed on the ice together for about 5 minutes after everyone else had left.  At the end of their date, Marner came around the boards and flipped me a puck!!!! I hadn’t seen any other pucks being flipped into the stands as many of the people were pretty focused for this game, so I would like to think I got one of the only ones.  It was labeled with the game and the teams and said official warmup puck.

It was pretty cool and a great souvenir to an otherwise dismal game.  When we took our seats, we did get razed a little bit, but in general the people around us were pretty nice.  I started getting messages at that point saying people has seen us on TV. On our way into the game, we had seen a TV cameraman on the street and he filmed us with a red light on so thought there might be a chance we made it on TV.  After the first goal we were apparently shown on TV again looking sad but I have yet to see that footage.  As the Bruins scored more goals and people drank more, the razzing got more heated.  Still fairly light hearted, but there were a few groups who were a bit belligerent about it.  The craziest thing was when the Leafs scored at the other end of the rink, it was difficult to tell there was a goal other than the goal light going on.  The arena was dead silent and even when it became apparent that it was a goal, nobody really cheered, even the Leafs fans.  By the end of the game the final score was 7-3 and all of the Bruins fans had claimed victory on the series as we exited the building.  We made our way to the subway with our heads held high and reminded them all it was a best of 7 series.

The next day, I wanted to take it easy the day before the marathon but the family wanted to go see Fenway park.  I opted to stay home because there wasn’t enough space for me in the car anyways.  I ended up being lazy at home for a few hours which was nice.  They then said they ere heading to Cheers for lunch and I decided it might be a good idea to move around a little bit so jumped on the street car and went to meet them.  I asked if they were at the original cheers on Beacon Hill and I was given the affirmative.  When I showed up, I couldn’t find them anywhere.  Turns out they were at the market location which is not the original.  25 minute walk later and I found the family!  A breadbowl of Chowda and soda water was just what the Dr ordered.

After lunch, I had wanted to drive the course prior to the race, so my sister and brother in law went home on the train and my parents and I headed out to Hopkinton to the start line.  As we drove, it really started to sink in for my parents just how far 26.2 miles is.  As we continued to drive to the start, they kept commenting just how far it was.  To be honest it surprises me sometimes too.

We made it to the start line, got some photos and then headed down the course.  We stopped at a liqour store for some Massachusetts beers and eventually made out way to the finish, where I jumped out and got a few more photo ops.

We headed home and cooked some pasta for my final carb load.  I prepped my race gear, my post race gear and took my flat mike photo.  By 10pm I was ready for bed and fell asleep pretty quickly.  My mom was going to drop me off at the start line rather than take the bus from Boston with gear check which saved me about 2 hours of sleep, however it did mean I had to forgo gear check and rely on my parents to bring me warm clothes after the race.

I woke up at 6, had some food and then my mom and I took off for the start line around 7am for a 10am race start.

If you want to read more details about the race itself. Click on my Race report located here.

I guess when I am bored and sitting on a long flight, you start to ramble as this post has gotten pretty long.  I think I might break it up again.  Pre Race, Race Report and Post race coming up.

Race Report – Here

Pot Race – Here