The Boston Marathon is tomorrow morning. That sounds strange; this is the first year that the races starts in the morning. The starting gun will be at 10:00 for the first wave of the start, rather than at noon as it has been for the past century or so.

The weather forecast is not looking good, but it is not looking as bad as it did. The latest forecast calls for it being miserable before the race starts, and gradually improving around the time the gun sounds. The chance of precipitation goes from 100% before 10:00 to 90% afterwards. It’s a trend that I would like to see widen!

I do not know yet what I am going to wear to the starting line. I went to the expo yesterday, but I never got around to buying a disposable jacket. I will have to make do with a garbage bag or borrowing some layers that I can toss aside. As my friend and his wife are cleaning up and making piles for clothes donations, I have already scored some pajama bottoms that can be removed at the starting line and tossed aside.

The expo did not seem as well laid out this year as it did two years ago. Maybe that just had to do with it being new to me then, or because I went when there wasn’t as many people. This year, navigation was difficult, and I had trouble finding the stalls that I wanted to peek around in. I wound up leaving the expo and visiting some of the stores on Boyleston street in order to find some of the last minute items that I had wanted to purchase.

The plan is to take advantage of the pasta dinner tonight. I think that Boston could take a cue from New York, though, and hand out the meal tickets with the race shirts instead of the bib number. The meal tickets include what time you are supposed to arrive to eat, but with them being tied to the bib number it is difficult or impossible to find somebody to trade with so that you can eat at the same time as family and friends. If they handed them out with the shirts, then you can could meal tickets that are around the same time of the day as the other people that get their race bags at the same time as you.

As was my experience two years ago, everybody I spoke with yesterday was extremely happy and helpful. The volunteers who help the Boston Marathon run smoothly are some of the nicest people that you could hope to meet in this area, and they help to make sure that the entire process is smooth for the runners.

Good luck tomorrow to anybody that is running. For those who are not running and who are not out watching the race, you can track the progress of the race from the Boston Athletic Association home page. The page should change to make the tracking options easy to find. My bib number is 1658. I have been trying to set up the athlete alerts to appear on this website, but I am not sure how successful I will be. I did not get it working until about a month after the New York Marathon, so I completely missed the race. Hopefully it will work a little better this year.