Start Line-Hopkinton

Jake drove Tee and I out to Hopkinton so we wouldn't have to ride the shuttle bus. Tee is a friend of Kelly and Jake's (now a friend of mine!) from SF who was fundraising and running as a member of Team AAC. Kelly set us up on a runners blind date being as how we run about the same pace and she figured we could run the marathon together. It was a match made in heaven. More on that later.

Traffic was good until about 4 miles from the Hopkinton exit and from there it was stop and go, a mixture of buses and cars like ours. It was bizarre. Runners who had been over hydrating for the race started coming out of the stopped buses and cars, walking over to the side of the freeway to urinate. I kid you not. Men and women both; none of which seemed to care if people watched them relieve themselves by the side of the road. How civilized! It was gross.

We got as far as the bottom of the off-ramp where the state troopers made all runners get out of cars and get on the shuttle buses for the rest of the trip. We were piled in these school buses like it was commute time subway trains. A couple of guys behind us started talking about the ban on headphones for this marathon. One guys said he was bummed he couldn't have his i-pod because he liked to listen to books on tape while he ran. Books. On. Tape. I said to Tee, "Gosh, I wish I had Harry Potter to listen to while I ran a marathon!" Idiot.

We got to the Athletes Village with about an hour and a half to spare. Just enough time to stand in line for the bathroom (port-o-lets). About an hour before our start time, the clouds parted, the sun came out and the weather was gorgeous.

About 10:15am they had us wind our way down to the start line. All 20,000 of us. It was quite a scene. Start time was at 10:30 but we didn't actually get over the start line until 10:45.

And so it begins...

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