Boston by Caitlin

So Clay's accidental post several weeks ago pretty much summed up our trip to Boston.  It was hot.  Other than the heat it really was a nice excuse to go on a little vacation, especially on a vacation to a city since all of our vacations so far have either been out west to visit my family who live in a town with less than 1,000 people, or camping somewhere.  I have been to Boston several times as a kid, but was never really in the middle of the city walking around by myself.  We had the pleasure of staying with a high school friend of mine, Kristi, who just recently moved to the city herself to live in the same city as her boyfriend.  It worked out perfectly as Clay and myself would have gone crazy sharing a hotel room with both his parents, and his brother.  Kristi is living at her boyfriend's apartment in Cambridge, just a couple blocks off Harvard Square.  We really enjoyed walking around Cambridge and eating some great food while we were there.  We even got a Trader Joes trip in!  We took in the craziness of the expo, went to some coffee shop that the folks on NPR rave about located just off Boston Commons, I walked the Freedom Trail with Clay's mom, walked down by the Harbor, and even got Clay a sweet bow tie at a shop in Cambridge. 

                                          Kristi and I down by the Harbor

On race day Sharon and I decided to do some sightseeing while the guys were running since she hadn't had the chance earlier on since Bill wasn't wanting to do the walking around thing.  We decided to try to see the front runners come across the finish line.  I had thought about taking the subway out to heart break hill and watching there, but we just decided to stick around the finish.  Because we didn't show up at the finish hours and hours early, and also because we did not have the special vip passes to really even get on the same street as the finish line, we really weren't able to see much.  Kristi came down and met us on her lunch break and we found a spot by a big screen where they projected a video of the runners, and we could just see the heads of some of the finishers go by.  Jonathan and Bill both had rough races dealing with the extreme heat, blisters, cramping, and other ailments.  They both ran in the 3:30 range which is pretty slow for both of them.  Clay ran a bit slower, around a 3:45, but looked the best out of the 3 at the finish line.  Really, when he saw the weather report, he already made his mind up that he was just going to take it easy and not push it.  He was way more amped up for some upcoming trail races, and wasn't really too excited about running Boston, more just doing it to check if off the list, and plus it was neat to run it with his dad and brother.  He said that one thing he loves about trail running is the solitude of it, and there were so many people at Boston, he got tired of being surrounded.  He actually said he started to dread aid stations because of how many people you had to dodge.  One thing that he really enjoyed about the race though was seeing the whole community come out and support the runners.  Besides the aid stations provided by the actual race directors, kids were out on their front lawns spraying runners with hoses, handing out orange slices, and ice pops.  That I think is one of the aspects that draws us to the trail running community, is the camaraderie found there.

So now Clay is off to bigger and better races I guess in his eyes.  He is very excited to head up to the Massanuttan 100 this weekend to pace Adam Casseday and get a taste of that distance.  We will also be heading up to Highlands Sky 40 miler again this June for which his whole family will be at.  All of the Warner men including his brother-in-law Jimmy will be running that one.  As for me, I just finished some PT for my IT band and have started running again.  My long run is up to about 5 miles :)  But I am thankful that I can run and my goal of doing a 50k before kids is definitely still out there.

                                           The Warner men after the finish