Race Day

The first time I "woke-up" was roughly 1am.

"Attention, there has been a reported emergency in the hotel. We are checking to verify, please wait for directions"....."Attention......"

This played at least 5 times with a blasting fire alarm type sound.

Confused as could be I realized this was not my alarm and luckily I had managed to fall asleep. However, my brain was now in overdrive and falling back to sleep would be my normal bargaining with my brain, begging....pleading....that I needed this rest.

When my alarm sounded at 5am I was already half awake.

My gear was set-out and I had opted to 'drink' a cup of oatmeal as directed by one of many pieces of advice I read about preparing for a late start time. I gathered myself and headed down to the lobby to say a final farewell to Mom and Dad before my journey began.

Thanks to some key advice I got the busline earlier than advised and made friends with a runner from NY who was really nice and since we were both alone we clung to each other.

The ride to Hopkinton seemed to take hours. The sun was shining, it was a GORGEOUS day. We arrived at Athlete's Village and secured a corner spot with a fence for a back rest. A generous stranger offered us a tarp to sit on and we wrapped up in the garbage bags I had brought. The sunshine was nice but the air was crisp and the breeze was bite-ie to say the least. I sat and tried to take in every sight, every sound and watched the port-o-pottie lines grow and grow. In hindsight, I went to use them too late. We ended up barely getting to the 14-thousand corral before the gun went off and even had to jog a little. The .7 downhill walk to that point was torturous. The energy was insane....people were tossing clothes left and right and scrambling to their corrals.

I made it to my corral with a few minutes to spare and randomly met a familiar face seconds before the gun. He would later tell me he could tell how nervous I was at the start....little did I know.....