You’re Doing It
This is why Marathon Monday in Boston is the best day of the year.
Some of my most formative childhood memories come from watching the Boston Marathon with my family. There were years of marveling at Dick Hoyt push his son, Rick, in his wheelchair. There was the year my mom went on training runs before getting four kids up and ready for school, sent out hundreds of letters to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and ran 26.2 at age 42. Years of listening to my dad and uncles reminisce about their younger years when they jumped in and ran as “bandits” without official numbers. Years of doing the math to track people we knew before the BAA App was a thing. My mom would pack a cooler of sandwiches labeled with our names, and chopped deli pickles that she made sure to get from Burlington Cold Cut Center. My dad packed the chairs and brought his tape-on-the-antenna portable silver radio to listen (through static) to the Red Sox game. My siblings and I piled into our minivan early in the morning before the road closures with posters, rollerblades, and cheering voices in toe. We’d arrive hours before the athletes made their way to us, and we filled the time with trips to Dunkin’ Donuts, bathroom stops at “the rug store” across the street, and rollerblading up and down Washington Street.
Then long awaited moment would come: police cruisers with their lights signaling the first athlete in the wheelchair division. I watched with childlike wonder as these athletes turned a challenge that life handed them into an accomplishment filled with grit and perseverance. What an important lesson in action for Younger Me to witness. For me, watching the athletes in the wheelchair division and the elite runners was a similar experience. Both acts of endurance sent me reeling: HOW do they do that? What is their training like? Where do they live? How many of these have they done? Do they eat french fries?
Marathon Monday is the best day of the year. The city of Boston has the privilege to host top athletes from all over the world. We get to witness things like the dramatic sprint to the finish between first place Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir and second place Ababel Yeshaneh from Ethiopia. But, to me, that’s not what makes it the best day of the year. I remember still standing on mile 16 later in the day, rocking more freckles and maybe a slightly sunburnt nose, while the marathon volunteers came by raking the piles of cups that were tossed to the side by runners. The crowd of spectators had mostly cleared, but there were still athletes coming through. And we kept cheering.
The athletes that came by while the cups were being cleared around them: they are what make it the best day of the year.
As I got older, my Marathon Monday tradition changed from watching with my family, sandwiches, and rollerblades to going to a bar near Fenway in the morning, going to some of the Red Sox game, and then back to the bar with my friends. We’d find our way to a spot to watch runners for a little bit, but it wasn’t the focus of the day. Fast forward to this year where I watched the 2022 Boston Marathon at the halfway point with my team at B/SPOKE Studios. I work the front desk at the B/SPOKE Studios Boston locations, and they host a marathon cheering section at their Wellesley location at Mile 13.1. There were B/SPOKE teammates and clients running, and we were THERE FOR IT. Fully equipped with the motivating beats of DJ Sprino, amazing vendors, spin bikes on the sidewalk, and our loudest collective B/SPOKE “woo!”
With my family a few miles down the road, the feeling that I had watching the 2022 Boston Marathon surrounded by my Team at B/SPOKE brought me back to my roots of Marathon Monday viewing. My years of Bud Lights at Fenway were fun, but my experience this year reminded me of what Marathon Monday is all about. The childlike wonder that I had all of those years ago came rushing back as I watched the athletes in the wheelchair division. The feeling of awe returned as I watched the athletes in the professional running division sprint by.
But, as the cheering sections on the streets thinned, and the gaps between groups of runners widened; it was the cups-are-being-swept-up-but-I’m-still-going athletes who motivated me the most.
At one point as the police were putting out cones to start to reopen the roads, I spotted a woman who had a gritty “I’m gonna do this no matter what” look on her face, and I heard myself yell “YOU’RE DOING IT!” I could tell that the partial smile and thumbs up she gave me took a Herculean effort. That woman was my Marathon Motivation.
You know those moments? When you can’t find the beat during a fast jog in spin class; when you sleep through your alarm and you show up at work with unbrushed hair; when you say ‘I’m sorry’ for a misstep; when you say ‘It’s okay’ to someone else’s misstep; when your words aren’t impeccable but your intention is; when you’re worried that the thing you’re doing doesn’t look like the way someone else is doing it; when you feel like your version isn’t as shiny as someone else’s.
