3:10 to Boston

Cloudy, foggy, damp...but no rain.  It was actually kind of mild.  The gloves and long-sleeve shirt I'd brought along, I left in my parents' car when they dropped me off a few blocks from the start/finish line.  It was about 7 a.m. and as I made my way to the lineup along the ocean promenade (basically, a boardwalk without actual boards).  I found the pace runner holding the sign that read "3:10".  "That's my guy," I said out loud.

I had one mission - to qualify to enter the Boston Marathon.  As the world's oldest annual marathon (112 years strong), there's a prestige and honor that goes along with running Boston, but in order to do it, you must run another marathon and meet the qualification time for your gender and age.  Mine is three hours and 10 minutes.  This, then, was the focus of the past four months of training.

While waiting at the starting line (and surprisingly near the front, I might add), I kept repeating my mantra (a takeoff on that movie "3:10 to Yuma"), "3:10 to Boston, 3:10 to Boston..."  I spotted my mom and dad waving to me from behind the railing and since there was plenty of time, I gave them both one more hug and they wished me well.

The opening announcements commenced, offering some interesting tidbits of information: Of the 8,500 runners, most were doing the half-marathon and only about 3,500 were running the full 26.2; the man who was singing the national anthem was also a runner and has run in each of the 11 previous NJ Marathons; most fascinating to me was that a bunch of Navy servicemen from New Jersey, stationed overseas, ran the marathon in the early morning aboard their ship.  Wow.

But the news that probably shocked everyone was that the race was actually going to start on time.  Sure enough, not long after 7:30, the horn blew and we were off.

"3:10 to Boston," I kept repeating.