As I write this, I'm sitting in a hotel room in downtown Boston, not more than 1/4 mile from the finish line of the marathon. It was a very early start to my day today. There's waking up at the crack of dawn, waking up at 0 dark 30, and then there's waking up in the middle of the night, which I did today. My flight left at 6:15 AM, so I needed to wake up around 3:15 AM to get on the road, get my car parked, and make it through security with enough time to get some breakfast. Needless to say, the puppies were not even awake. They meandered outside after I roused them, but quickly returned to bed. I made it to Sea-Tac in record time (around 40 minutes), got my car parked, and caught the shuttle to the airport. I haven't been on a plane trip since they instituted the new body scans. I felt like I should have at least gotten a kiss. They even checked underneath my watch band. Oh well. Had a nice leisurely breakfast of oatmeal and coffee (patronizing Starbuck's), and got on my plane. And sat. Without moving. Turns out we were going to be delayed a bit. Since my layover in Chicago was 1 hour, I didn't sweat it too much, although I hoped that I would stay in the same terminal, since O'Hare is a huge airport. The flight wasn't particularly eventful or memorable, although the United flight attendants definitely could use some personality lessons. And they managed to bang my elbow and foot in one of their mad dashes with the drink cart.
Got to O'Hare in plenty of time, and, true to the Ling corollary, turned and walked in the wrong direction. Here's my excuse: we arrived at C-17 and my connection was at B-14. I figured that I would need to follow the numbers to C-1 where there would be connecting corridor. Of course, had I looked in the other direction, I would have seen the sign that said, "B concourse." But anyway, I reached C-1 and it was a dead end. Since when have airports created their terminals where the lowest number gate was at the end? Hmmmph. That was okay; it gave me a chance to stretch my legs, and I was pleased that my IT band wasn't complaining. As I wandered through the airport, I looked for a pizza place that was selling slices of "Chicago-style" pizza. Unfortunately, they were only selling whole pies, so I passsed on that. I wasn't even really that hungry, but was thirsty, so I stopped and got some water and a banana (again patronizing Starbuck's).
I arrived in Boston around 5:00 PM local time. The last two times I was here, it was a quick shuttle bus to the subway, and then a pretty straight shot to downtown. This time, the instructions were to take a bus to the South Station, and then get on the subway. For some reason, that was the recommendation from the MTBA, so I followed that. I thought that maybe things had changed since I was here last in 2006. I won't be doing that again. I figured out the way I had done it before... after I had to change off the second subway to get to my hotel. I had the whole "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" thing going today.
After checking into my room, I quickly changed to get in a short run. I wanted to head to the Charles River to run. The weather was great! Upper 50's and sunny. What a welcome relief to run in a t-shirt and shorts. I ran along the river, crossed the bridge into Cambridge and ran by MIT. There were a lot of runners out, most of them plugged into iPods. I caught and passed one guy just before going on the bridge, and he picked it up to stay with me. I could hear him huffing and puffing right behind me, so I picked it up to see what would happen. He stayed with me, so I picked it up again. I was feeling good, and I think it was because of the weather. I crossed back over the bridge and headed for the Citgo sign. What's the Citgo sign? It's a huge sign in Kenmore Square along the marathon route that is 1 mile from the finish. So, I wanted to get to the Citgo sign and run along the marathon course. It turned out to be a very nice 5+ mile run, with my IT band acting up here and there, but not complaining too much.
4 days to go!
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