Boston Marathon, 2008

(Click on the picture for a full size version)

I think I'm still running for Mom.  Yes, I still have two kidneys, that saga is a whole other story.

I had some pretty good training going, up until a month or so prior to the marathon this year, then schedules and kidney testing disrupted things a little bit in the final month.  However, the good news is that as a result, I didn't have my usual opportunity to hurt myself in the last month of training!  Whoo hoo!  For the first time in more than a few years I showed up feeling pretty good at the starting line!

We had a couple of rookies this year (and already a couple for next year!), Rachel, the new whipper snapper in the fitness center, and Rucha, the Everyready Bunny of the fitness center.  I'd arranged to get Rucha to the start (and hopefully home from the finish, if she'd have the patience to wait for me at the finish line), then, the evening before, Ranger Dave left a message on my cell phone that I retrieved on marathon morning.

"Hey Brian, this is Dave, um, my weekend vacation plans got cancelled and I ran 5 miles a couple of weeks ago, so I was thinking about running the marathon today..."

Typical Ranger Dave!

Anyhow, I won't go into boring details, the weather was perfect, nothing was physically broken, and I had a decent day of running.  Not my best, not my worst, I'm blaming my slow second half this year on a little case of the sniffles I developed a few days before the marathon, but I started feeling good, and finished with nothing broken, so I'm calling that a success.  I brought my camera along, but neglected to bring the battery that was still sitting in my charger, so the only picture I got was taken with my cell phone.

Rucha (and pretty much all of the other Mass Soles) kicked my butt, as expected.

That's my sixth Boston, and seventh overall!