We Are All Here

With less than two weeks to go until the marathon, the topic of conversation seems to have switched from travel logistics and ensuring safety to the emotional aspects of taking on the 2014 Boston Marathon. Journalists speculate what the day might be like for runners and spectators. Runners make decisions about what kind of day they want to have—will I go all out and hope for a certain time? Will I take it all in and just enjoy the day? Will I allow myself to get emotional and cry for the last four miles if I feel the urge?

This time last year, I felt completely unprepared. I wasn’t sure I had done enough to get where I wanted to be, and I felt like there were so many unknowns about the day. This year, I am back with a vengeance. I truly committed to my training schedule this winter and I feel that I have done the work. I’ve been forced to think through every piece of Marathon Monday. What I will bring with me to Hopkinton and what I will have to give someone else a few days before so that it will meet me at the finish line. Exactly how I plan to carry my phone with me. How to pace out the first 5 miles.

Still, I am anxious. We are all anxious. No amount of planning and rehearsing can take away the fact that we all remember last year, when any planning and rehearsing we had done went out the window in an instant. It’s hard not to worry that something could happen again. I may not sleep the night before we run, but I am adamant that anxiety will not consume me once I get to the Athlete’s Village. This year we will make a statement so much louder than fear and worry.

I want to spend April 21st focused on courage and tenacity. I want to celebrate every morning that I got up in the past two years and hit the road, even when I really, reeeally didn’t want to. I will remember everything my teammates have overcome in the past year, especially those that are running with new injuries or chronic illnesses. I think of all the people on our team who run because they were at the finish line last year, and I look back on all the runs where I passed someone running in a 2013 Boston Marathon Volunteer jacket. I imagine the spectators who will come out in droves, despite their own anxieties about what the day will bring.

I will look around me at the starting line, and Natick Center, and Wellesley College, and Heartbreak Hill, and Boylston Street, and I will think, “I am here. We are all here.”