the Way of the Turtle

BOSTON
Monday, April 20, 2009

As in the Boston Marathon, of course... which had its 112th running today. Anyone who's read this blog for a while should have a pretty good idea of my disdain for cities... I have no desire to even visit NYC again, much less run a marathon there. But for some reason Boston holds an allure... some of it may be from repeated viewings of a somewhat obscure movie called "Saint Ralph", about a teenager who latches onto winning the Boston Marathon as the miracle which will bring his sick mother out of a coma (trust me, it's a much better movie than that sounds!) It may also be the prestige that Boston has... so much so, that it can actually require runners to meet a qualifying standard (a 3:20 marathon for me, currently) and sell out year after year.

I don't know that I'll ever qualify time-wise... though a 4:45 marathon might be a lot more doable when I'm 70, if I'm still able to run... but it's also possible to run as part of a fundraising group. So it's always possible that someday I may be writing about having run Boston instead of just thinking about it.

(As a side note... numerous runners in the various local groups I follow ran today... many of them doing quite well indeed.)

JMH