Since I, along with the rest of cyberspace, am not entirely sure which of you actually first uttered my all-time favorite quote (“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”), I apologize to you all en masse.
Why? It has been brought to my attention that I have been taking your “shorter = better” implication to an extreme the utterer (whoever you may be…perhaps you could raise your hand?) would likely loathe, and by that I mean I simply don’t write anything anymore–nothing long, nothing short, nothing of any length in between. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zippo.
I also apologize to you, dear reader, for leaving you in a lurch, for having gone radio silent on you. (Even though truth be told I don’t entirely think this apology necessary, since I distinctly remember closing out my last post by wishing you a good off-season and saying I’d see you again in the spring. But let’s just assume you’re right and I’m wrong since that is usually the path of least resistance and at some point between my 38th and 43rd spin around the sun I decided that I do like that path quite a bit, thankyouveddymuch).
Apologies over. I am back. And in deference to Pascal-Locke-Franklin-Thoreau-Cicero-Wilson, I promise to keep this first missive pretty short. (I’ll save the long ones for other topics, like, for instance, the names of my blisters).
On “normal years” many of you wouldn’t even know that Monday is Marathon Monday here in Boston. But this is no ordinary year; the media is all abuzz since the Marathon took on that outrageously unexpected extra layer last year and over the course of the last week crazy people have tried to further freak us out by bringing confetti-filled rice cookers to the finish line.
I know this is gonna sound really bad, but I want my old marathon back. I am bone-tired of the tv guides to Boston Marathon Bombing specials. While it is super-sweet, I don’t want churches knitting scarves for the runners. I want to go back to the time that those knitters didn’t know when the marathon was, let alone how long it was. I want the usual progression of the day: super-speedy elites followed by those damned fast “this is not my job and I won’t get a paycheck for it but I will still rock it in under three hours” peeps. And then I want the legions of charity runners–those who earned their bibs by raising money for one of a myriad charities, like I did when I ran in 2011.
On a certain level, I know this marathon simply can’t be normal. But on another level, I crave it to be.
Thousands of the runners who didn’t get to finish last year will have a go at it again this year. Many of them are charity runners; one of them is my friend Christy. I was on my way with her then-fiance to the finish line last year when the bombs went off. This year, I’ll be there too (with her husband this time 🙂 ). And this year, Daughter #2 is her Boston Children’s Hospital patient-partner, for reasons regular readers of this blog will already know but others can read about here.
If you are still looking for a way to contribute to Marathon Monday, visit Christy’s fundraising page here.
As always, thanks for stopping by. Apologies for the radio silence and I pormise not to take Pascal-Locke-Franklin-Thoreau-Cicero-Wilson to the extreme. Get in your intervals and cheer on your athletes and I’ll see you at the finish line!
Take care,
– cj
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