Boston Marathon, day 2

Today is Sunday, so it's our "tourist" day.  But before we go into downtown Boston, the kids ran a race on Heartbreak Hill.  Heartbreak Hill is the last of a series of races in the Boston Marathon in Newton MA.  What makes this hill so hard during the race is that it comes at around the 21 mile mark and it is a gradual incline for a half a mile.  Thus, the race is half a mile up the hill, and back down.  They staged this race so each birth year and sex was a group.  So here is Zachary lined up with the other boys from 2005.

When he got done running he said it was "hard"!  His time for the mile was 8:55.

Sydney is right in the middle, pink shirt and striped skirt/leggings.

She looked strong at the finish!  Her time for the mile was 8:21.  Great job by both of the kids.

We hopped on the T and headed to downtown.  Our first stop before the expo was the finish line.  We got some good pictures of the finish area.

At the expo we ran into a couple of friends and all discussed the topic du jour - shorts or capris? tanks or t-shirts? what is your pacing strategy?....

Dean Karnazes was at the expo.  That was pretty exciting to see a running "celebrity"!  In retrospect I should have gotten MY picture taken with him.  The kids got a poster signed.

After the expo we headed to the pre-race carb loading dinner that they put on for the racers.  This was a pretty good deal - a free meal for us!  It was a delicious meal of pasta, sausage, salad, Sam Adams 26.2 beer, and a huge goody bag of dessert treats.  We will definitely do this again.

After another long day in the city, we headed back home and rested.  Alan got read for the race and realized he left his pace band someplace (at home maybe??) and we needed to make a new one.  Good thing we had all the accessories to make a new one.