The Boston Marathon: Scenes from Four Blocks away and Two Hours After

What, you expected on the scene, up-to-the minute coverage from a blog?

The weather really put a damper on the marathon scene - or what I had expected the marathon scene to be, since this is my first year working on the day.

A large area around Boston Common was shut down when I got to work, and Charles Street was completely filled with parked school buses sent to ferry in spectators and volunteers.

But those poor runners. They had cold air and raw, heavy rain blowing directly into their faces for the entire day. In fact, the weather was bad enough to cancel the traditional Marathon Monday Morning Red Sox game. But as far as I know the marathon itself has never been re-scheduled.

A few hours after the end, though, we did see a lot of folks in giveaway rain ponchos wandering about, and lots and lots of umbrellas.

Of course, I wasn't going out in it.

Maybe I'll run a marathon someday. Probably not. I seem to be going in the other direction, exercise wise. Although my phone tells me I'm getting my 10,000 steps in every day, with the walk to and from the train station and a day working on my feet, those daily 10k runs of my employment-gap year are quickly receding into the past.

A funny shop-related marathon story:

Several years ago, a runner came in, a few minutes after completing the race. He wanted to buy a celebratory cigar, and the boss obliged. He went to light it up right away, and the boss said, "Hold on a minute. You just ran a marathon. Maybe you should wait a bit." The customer insisted he was fine, lit up... and puked all over the floor and across a display case. Didn't offer to help clean up, either. (After all, he had just run 26 miles.)

As a whole, the city felt kind-of subdued and determined today. It was kind of fun seeing these runners wandering around most of the afternoon, with their skinny legs and shiny ponchos. But there wasn't much else going on. Even the subways (which I rode both ways from the train station, on account of the shitty awful weather) were at half capacity. I think most of the locals decided to stay home and leave the wet streets to our visitors.

How was your Patriot's Day? Did you go running?