Category: Life with Pratts

Boston’s Run to Remember

Boston\'s Race to Remember 2008

Today I got up bright and early (OK, maybe I wasn’t feeling so bright) and drove to Boston to do the Run to Remember. It’s a half-marathon, 13.1 miles, and it commemorates Massachusetts law enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty. With a huge police presence, it’s the most crime-free race going!

I finished in 2:04:31, and that comes out to one minute per mile slower than I did two years ago. I couldn’t run it last year because of my ankle trouble. Between this race and the marathon last month, I’m feeling confident that I can bring myself back up to what I consider to be good shape.

Much of the Run to Remember is along Memorial Drive in Cambridge, going past MIT and down to Harvard and back, but the start and finish go through Boston, which sure looks different than the last time I ran this race. The elevated highway is completely gone now, in post-Big Dig Boston. The total cost for the massive project, known for its mismanagement and corruption, was about $14 billion over 25 years. Compare that to our occupation of Iraq, known for its mismanagement and corruption, which costs about $12 billion per month, with no end in sight, and none promised by John McCain if he becomes President.

100.3

No, 100.3 isn’t the frequency of a favorite FM radio station, it was my temperature last night. My fever has broken, but I’m still miserable with a very bad cold, the worst I can recall having in many years.

Carol says because of the fever and muscle aches, it must be the flu.

Mentos Moment

Click to enlargeYou’ve perhaps, if not probably, seen videos of what happens when Mentos candies are dropped into bottles of diet cola. The reaction is due to the carbonation, and diet soda is better because it isn’t sticky. There’s now a Geyser Tube™ kit you can buy that will make it possible to waste some Mentos and a bottle of soda from a safe distance for ten seconds of excitement. Eric and his cousins Sarah, who pulled the string, and Kate, who complained the demonstration wasn’t very exciting, demonstrate.

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/Mentos.flv 440 330]

I’m glad Eric took the video in front of the garage. This gives me a chance to tell you that Glenn, our contractor, is visiting again, but there’s no big project like last year, when he remodeled the porch. In a few days the bit of vinyl that’s above the garage door will be gone, replaced with cedar shingle, and that chimney will be removed. It belonged to a wood stove that was gone long before we bought the house ten years ago.

Pratt Garage

Boston Straggler

Done! You don’t get a medal if you don’t finish the race, and my finish time in the Boston Marathon, as tracked electronically by ChampionChip® was exactly 4:35:00. That put me in the back of the pack, but given my overall readiness, and my ankle’s tenuous condition (it held up pretty well), my most optimistic estimate was for 4:30, so I’m pleased with this result.

The weather was pretty good, although it got sunnier and hotter than I thought was expected. The “ultra sweatproof” sunscreen I used did OK, but I still have some mild redness in a few spots.

I must say thank you to all of the volunteers, especially those who hand out the water and Gatorade, and the people at the finish line who provide the space blankets and unlace/lace shoes to get the electronic chip. Thank you everybody!

As always, the spectators are super. Running past the screaming women of Wellesley College is the one time I can get a sense of what the Beatles heard constantly for at least a few years.

This year I would also like to say thanks to the guy doing a good job of singing Buddy Holly’s “Every Day” at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the Framingham/Natick line, and to the college kid in Boston who was blasting Blind Faith’s “Well All Right,” which also happens to be a Buddy Holly song.

There are, however, two annoyances I see every year during the race:

  • It’s nice that some of the spectators want to hand out their own water, but they should use paper cups. Plastic cups don’t crunch down flat and they get in the way.
  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is always well represented, and I certainly respect and appreciate the work that’s done there. But their charity runners have a habit of running side-by-side in large groups, sometimes across almost the entire road. Once their initial euphoria has worn off, and the running gets much more serious, after ten miles, they start to break up into their individual paces, but prior to that they are clusters of rolling road blocks.

So that’s it! All done, and I feel OK. Time for a shower and nap.