Even when you spend far more time on the race course than you intend, plan and hope for, the Boston Marathon always seems to go by in a blur. Once your bus pulls into the parking lot at Hopkinton, it's like a ticking bomb counting down ever so quickly until the start gun goes off. While my race may have been a disaster (stay tuned for the race report on this one--hopefully tomorrow), I still managed to enjoy the sights and scenes on my way into Boston and across the finish line. Meanwhile, many others had awesome races, especially from the rumblings I heard about the elites before I had a chance to check the results. During the day I was curious about how the elite race panned out, and now that it's over I'm wishing my hotel room had Universal Sports so I could re-watch the race when it comes back on at midnight. But until I can actually watch that coverage, I'm working off this list of my top 10 memories from the 2011 Boston Marathon:
1. Desiree Davila finishing second by two seconds, PR'ing and becoming ridiculously close to being the first American woman to win Boston since Lisa Rainsberger in 1985 (2:22:38)
2. Kara Goucher's first marathon back after baby and she PR'd, besting her time from the 2008 NYC marathon (2:24:52)
3. Ryan Hall besting his own American record and finishing fourth in 2:04:58.
4. Joan Benoit Samuelson's age group win in 2:51:29. She still has it at 53, even if she doubted her ability to finish under 3 hours this time around.
5. Seeing the Pesky Pole Marathoner on the course--I knew he existed from Flickr pictures, but can't remember if I've actually seen him on the course.
6. The costumed on-course entertainment. A guy ran nearly in the buff, only wearing a tiny loin cloth, some cloth wrapped around his bicep and a long black wig (I wish I had my camera with me for that one). The very convincing guy dressed as a girl cheering the runners from the sidelines--he even caught a photographer's attention as I saw him in this boston.com slideshow. The two guys dressed in suits and running--one only had the tie and jacket, but the other even donned the pants.
7. The number of Nike shoes I kept spotting. There were Lunaracers, original LunarGlides (this woman's looked so clean compared to my first pair, which are too worn out to use for running), LunarGlides 2+, Frees, Pegasus 27+.
8. The number of charity runners. So many singlets and T-shirts for Dana-Farber, Children's Hospital, Griffin's Friends, Bailey's Team for Autism, the Boston College bookstore, and countless others that I read as I ran but can't remember now.
9. The screaming girls of Wellesley. I knew they were loud but they seemed even louder than before--and I couldn't block them out as well as I usually do, I think a result of my iPod dying as I passed the campus.
10. The epic fail of my own race 55 minutes in. More on that in another entry.
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