The weather did not wind up being nearly as bad as everybody had claimed that it would be. That being said, I had some trouble keeping up with my race plan. I started out all right, but I never really got into the groove. I’ll follow a similar pattern with Boston as I did after New York, and split up the pre- and post-race summaries from the race splits.

The day began with my friend and I taking the shuttle bus to Hopkinton. Some National Guardsmen forgot to relieve themselves before we left, so they had the bus stop along the way when it wasn’t moving too much anyway. Once they were off of the bus, one of the women near the front yelled, “No peeking!” and she got off as well. My friend and I just waited until we got to the Athlete’s Village.

The village was fairly crowded, and there were quite a few large puddles (not all visible to the naked eye until you fell into the grass) so our feet got pretty wet. We were able to find port-o-johns with fairly short lines, though. Some water and a few bagels later, we located the baggage buses and then just did our best to stay out of the rain.

I knew better than to wear as much as I did, but I was worried about the rain that I might face combined with the wind. I changed into some dry socks and put my race clothes on before dropping off the baggage, and then my friend and I jig jogged to the starting line. I was number 1658, but I moved back a corral so that I could start with my friend and have slightly less incentive to go out too hard. When they announced that there was two and a half minutes left, I thought that they said that there was 30 seconds, so I stripped down a little earlier than I needed to.

The rain had basically stopped shortly after the gun. There was a bit of a sprinkle coming down, but nothing like it had been earlier in the day and shades different than the day before. The start of the race was very similar to two years ago. I started my watch as I passed the mats, and then I crossed the starting line about 5 seconds later. You might think that I would remember something like that before it came back to bite me a second time, but since it really made no difference whatsoever I was not too worried about it. The race had begun.