Boston Marathon 2025

 

Boston Marathon 2025

Monday 21st April 2025 (Patriot's Day, 3rd Monday in April)

42.2km, 3:38:50

https://www.strava.com/activities/14245528219

Getting There

We 4 went via a cool 5 days in Hawaii (mostly the big island, Kona, seeing Kīlauea erupting etc). 

Then Daniel and I carried on to Boston.

Boston

The city goes mad for the marathon. We stayed at the Verb Hotel on Boylston St next to Fenway Park. Nev, Rachel, Caitlyn, Jack  hung out in New York then Rockport before joining us at the Verb. We went to see a ballgame (Redsox)

Race Day

The morning was quite cold - around 8C probably, but sunny and little wind. Great!

Nev and I walked 3km to the bus pickup location, but were not allowed to enter together since I was in wave 3 and Nev was in wave 2. 

So I sat in Boston Common park by myself for an extra hour in the freezing cold, chilling down. Eventually at 8:15 I was allowed to board my bus (one of about a zillion) for the 45 minute drive to the start area.

The race does not provide a mechanism to transport gear from the start line to the finish line! This meant that a) I had to leave my (slightly) warm clothes at the start line for charity and b) I took only few warm clothes to the start line, hence I was cold all morning.

The walk through to the race start is also well corralled - you are forced into your correct corral and wave. So you start with everyone the exact same expected pace, but not your friends :(

Race

I started at 10:50am (!) and ran ok.

 The first 10km+ is slightly downhill, and I was jogging along easily at a somewhat faster pace than planned. So many people all around, but they were all traveling the same pace.

The energy and noise on the course was amazing! At times deafening when going past some girls colleges! They say 500,000 people support the race, with nearly 30,000 runners.

I had a Maurtens gel (sometimes caffeinated) every 30 mins and glugged a cup at pretty much every water stop (of which there were heaps!), sometimes having powerade.

By about 15km, I was already feeling fatigued. Not sure why. By 25km or so, I was tiring and walked up a couple of hills (including Heartbreak Hill later). I went for 2 quick toily stops to see if that would help my running (it didn't). I managed to jog the last 5km ok, but overall it was a tough race, probably mostly due to the large number of (gentle) hills.

Post Race

I eventually found Daniel, and later Nev and family.

Nev did 3:15, which he though was rather slow.

Robin from aus did 2:57, which he thought was very slow!

I had terrible DOMS in my quads for 2 days, but no other ill effects.

Dan and I drove around to Salem and Rockport.

It is getting ever harder to qualify for Boston, so I'm glad to have ticked it off my bucket list!