Our joint end-of-April trip to Boston to run the marathon was our first real trip away together without the kids since we’ve had them, and our first joint race since Barcelona in 2010. And it’s fair to say we were excited.
As we crossed the border and began our trip to Málaga airport, Faye phoned the local radio station to enter a competition to win some cupcakes from our favourite bakery, A Piece of Cake. We didn’t win the cakes - but we did get a decent shout out, which definitely added extra cheer to the morning.
Talking of shout outs, let’s give one to the Aer Lingus crews we encountered outbound - for all the wrong reasons. They were bad on the first, short flight to Dublin, cheerfully informing us there would be no food at all on board with zero apology, but even worse on the long haul, with clear disregard for paying anything other than lip service to their jobs. Noisy, rude, inattentive. Worse, they cheerfully fed Faye her pre-order gluten-free meal, which clearly contained both pasta and bread! When we pointed this out, they gruffly swapped it, again with no apology. Poor.
We were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived in America, managing to leave possessions both on the plane and in the taxi, and frankly unable to communicate with the poor girl at check-in. It was almost comical. Couldn’t get to bed quickly enough.
Role call in the hotel reception just before heading out for the buses to take us to the start line - Tim, Mark, Faye, Brad, Phil.
We were staying dead central in Chinatown at the (frankly extortionately priced) Courtyard by Marriott Hotel. As we were pretty much opposite the Wang Theatre, this meant we got to see the relative popularity of what was on there. Some nights it seemed packed with people who’d come to see comedians/acts/singers we’d never heard of, but one night on our way home we noticed with some amusement that Michael McIntyre was playing there. It looked like they definitely had tickets left and we were tempted for a second, but once we remembered that we actually turn the TV over when his show is on, we thought better of it. (Sorry, Michael.)
Meeting the crew
Our first full day in Boston had us meeting up properly with friends Brad, Sharon and later Mark, spending time at the Marathon Expo (where we also met up with fellow Gibraltar resident and marathoner, Tim). We obviously all purchased expo swag, including the obligatory Boston Marathon jackets, and also caught some of Ashley Paulson’s amazing 100-mile treadmill world record attempt, which she’d later succeed in breaking. Faye in particular was very interested in the ‘Buzz Bomb’ under-the-tongue caffeine powder wraps they were giving out at the attempt and which appeared to be fuelling Paulson, and she vowed to use one at mile 20 of the marathon.
The official Boston 5k pre-marathon run was in full swing as we were visiting the expo, with thousands of runners on closed streets and huge support - what would the real marathon feel like, if this was just the preamble? We did get to have our own taster of running around Boston the next day (the day before the marathon) when we all joined a ‘pop-up’ 5k shakeout run, organised by the people from The Marathon Podcast and one of the ‘runfluencers’ Faye follows on Instagram, Coach Megan Cooke. It was fun to run in a pack and see another side of the city.
Phil & Tim in the starting pen just before our race began. It was cold…
Weather for the whole stay was cold but mercifully the wind wasn’t too bad and the sun was out a lot of the time, with only a few showers. We were enjoying walking around the city centre, especially on Boston Common, which is a proper city park. We found Boston to be as we remembered from Faye’s marathon 11 years ago - a bite-sized and definitely European-feeling city, with its warehouses, grand colonial buildings and dockyards. It feel as much Liverpool as America.
Carb loading
By this point we were well into 48 hours of taking the carb loading very seriously indeed. We’d basically hit a routine of wandering around the city, finding somewhere to eat and drink, and from that place, planning the next place where we were going to eat and drink. We were topping up by eating pre-cooked Tilda rice out of the bag, cold - not to be recommended as a culinary experience to be quite frank. Only later did we discover the microwave by the ice machine on our floor in the hotel, which would have improved things immeasurably.
Better were our Chinese, Thai and Japanese meals out, and we also became regulars at a breakfast place called Cafe Bonjour, where we had excellent traditional American (not French) breakfasts most mornings at 7am, just before it got busy. However, the one day when we got there late, they told us it was a 40-minute wait, which we endured in the cold and rain. Tragedy turned to comedy as they called out party names that sounded like my name (‘Jill!’) and the time slipped to 40, 50 minutes, an hour… at one point they said ‘one second’ - we had literally made it to the inner door at this point - only for us to have to stand around for a further 10 minutes while they continued to sort things out. However, it was all worth it, and it was to be the place we’d have our final meal together before parting at the end of our time in Boston.
The marathon itself was immense, and you can read all about how Phil got on here and how Faye got on here.
Well-earned pancakes for Faye the day after the marathon.
After the utter high of marathon day, we did encounter a sobering sight on our final morning. A whole block was cordoned off by the police with several cars and an ambulance and what was clearly a body in the road covered up by plastic. We shuddered and took another route. Later that day we took a ‘duck tour’ on a tourist bus which turns into a boat in order to give us a loop of Boston Harbour. The guide was an amusing chap and it was genuinely fascinating to be shown where the fighting kicked off between the British and the colonialists, and to be told several times we were driving over parts of Boston that had been reclaimed from the sea.
The DOMS report
The ultra runners among us appeared to be coping OK with fatigued legs, even - in Faye’s case - heading out the next day for a run. But for the mere mortals, the Marathon’s infamous hills had really hit our quads hard, making any walking - but especially downstairs, into the metro for instance - excruciating. It was ‘good pain’ though, and it was fun to take the metro to the airport on the way home rather than a taxi as we had on our way in, which had been a traffic-choked, mainly underground tunnel experience. We were certainly sad to see friends peeling off in ones and twos for onward journeys until it was our turn, and we weren’t really looking forward to the red eye flight back to Dublin then Málaga, although this time the crews were better, and they had managed to get some food on board, well done folks.
Boston is definitely one of the great marathons, it gave us an unforgettable (very) long weekend away, and the people were amazing from start to finish. It was am incredible experience - one to remember forever, for sure.