Saturday at the Boston Marathon

After a long day heading east yesterday that required a 2:45 am PDT wake-up to catch a flight from Seattle to San Francisco before connecting into Boston last night, today was all about getting to the Marathon expo, swag, the requisite event pictures and coordinating post-race meeting logistics (which can be surprisingly hard at Marathons like Boston or New York given how tight security is).

Swag.

Took us a while, but I eventually found my name right here!

Should be crossing here somewhere around 2:00 - 2:15 Monday afternoon.  

Winds were absolutely howling on this afternoon's run.  The large flag on the U.S.S. Constitution was fully caught in the strong, icy wind.   It's still winter in Boston.  

The weather here is clear and bright today but with a high temperature of maybe 50 and 20 mph winds out of the east, it's frigid at times.   Tomorrow and Monday will be progressively warmer and ideal for a marathon.  The only thing I'm watching for at this point is whether we may have a dead headwind out of the east on race morning which is especially tough here in Boston as the race runs exactly one direction for 26 miles - east.    I'm not going to sweat what I can't control, I will make my final race plan out tomorrow afternoon once I see a forecast I can believe in (the weather forecast here for Monday has been swinging up as high as 72 degrees with winds out of the west all the way down to 60 with a 10 mph headwind out of the east).

This morning's visit to the marathon expo was especially challenging with our 2 year old (Jayden) in tow.   The exposition hall was mobbed by 10:00 am (and becoming increasingly so) so I got my racde packet, some basic swag, made a full pass through the hall -- and simply got out and away to conserve energy.  I'd love to spend a couple of hours just going to each booth and even getting some autgraphs (Scott Jurek was on hand this am with Shalane Flanagan this afternoon) but my focus is the race and not a lot of merchandise I can otherwise get online.

Jayden and me at Fanueil Hall doing some tourist stuff.  It seems like 3 lifetime's ago when I first visited here in 1984 while stationed at Ft. Devens, MA and we took the train from Ayer, MA to the Old North Station close to here.

This afternoon I got a quick 3 miler in with some strides.  Legs as always feel dead the day after flying which is why today's run was even more important so I could get them moving and the blood flowing before doing a final shake-out run tomorrow where the legs should feel more fresh.   My right leg tendon continues to be moderately painful until it warms up (generally after 5 - 7 miles of running) but at this point my tendon would have to snap for me to not run on Monday morning.

Tonight is a big night for eating.   Looking forward to dinner in the North End and some wine and lots of carbs.