A man with partial arms and legs, striding down the street on metal prosthetics.
A blind woman tethered to her guide, carefully running alongside.
A father of four stopping to hug his children and his wife, grabbing an energy pouch, and running ten more miles.
A grown son in a blue track suit, curled inside a mobile bed, pushed by his mother.
A wheelchair racer with leg-thick arms propelling himself down the course.
People of all abilities, shapes, and sizes.
Young women, young men, middle-aged women, middle-aged men, old women, old men.
The fit, the fat, the long, the short, the wide, the narrow, and everything in between.
They all had numbers, nearly 20,000 of them, and they all ran the Boston Marathon this week.
My amazing niece Molly was one of them. My daughter Julia and I drove to New England this past weekend to see her do it. It was the first running of the marathon since April 2019, and a special October version at that. Organizers had canceled or postponed the previous ones because of the pandemic. Julia and I love road trips, we love Boston, and we love Molly. We had to be there.
This was Molly’s third time running Boston, and she’s a seasoned veteran. She takes her year-round training very seriously, and after the postponements and cancellations of the past 18 months, she was absolutely ready to go on Monday.
So was her mother. Molly’s mom, my sister Elizabeth, could not be more dedicated. The night before, in Elizabeth’s kitchen as she got ready to bake cookies for the afterparty, Ebeth walked us through her carefully conceived plan to see Molly run in two different spots: at mile 17, just before Heartbreak Hill, and then again at mile 26, just steps from the finish line in Copley Square.
Some of us would have to leave early to drop Zelda off at doggie day care, so we’d need two cars. After the 90-minute drive from New Hampshire, we’d meet up in Haymarket Square, at the garage, pee at the food court (bathroom code 6577), and jump on the T. Ebeth would have arrived first and bought fare cards for us out-of-towners. And she’d have snacks.
Once on the T, we’d ride out to Newton, a Boston suburb. We needed to arrive at mile 17 no later than 11 am, so we’d be sure to see Molly run by. We would spend a short time cheering at mile 17, then as soon as she ran by, we’d rush back to the T and head to the finish line. Once there, about an hour later, we’d push through the crowds and root for Molly when she rounded the big turn and disappeared toward the finish.
We could carry no bags, to avoid long security lines, and we’d need to keep in constant contact with each other via group chat. I set up the chat, and I added my two nephews, who are college freshmen—one at Boston College and the other at Tufts. They would travel separately to mile 17. There would be six of us in our small band of Molly supporters. Her friends would be an independent spectating group, but we’d meet up with them after the race to have pizza and hang out in at their place.
“Don’t forget the cookies, Chris,” Elizabeth texted me at 8:15 on Monday morning, after she and my brother-in-law had left with Zelda.
Then our marathon adventure began.
