Marathon Monday

Marathon Monday Today is the 121st Boston Marathon, the oldest, and most famous, marathon in the world. The race begins at 10AM in Hopkinton, a suburb of Boston, and winds 26.2 miles  through Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, Brookline, and finally Boston, where the freshly-painted finish line welcomes runners home, under the protective wing of the Boston Public Library, and in the company of all those who ran before and with them. Today, Ill also be watching, rather than running, the Marathon, for the first time since 2013, when the Tsarnaev brothers killed  my friend Martin, and later  MIT Police Officer Sean Collier. Regular readers of this blog may recall my post, last April, about  MIT and the Marathon, and what each taught me about the other. One hard lesson Ive learned, as a described in that post, that its possible to overtrain both body and mind to the point where either/both get injured. Thats what happened to me: overuse injuries in my knees and hips that never got any better because I didnt take enough time to heal. And so Im listening to my doctor, taking the year off from running, doing different things, trying to focus less on growth and more on recovery until Im better. In some ways Ive found recovery harder to handle than training. When training for something, I can set and focus on a goal, and break the pathway up into parts, and solve them in sequence, and, if I set it up right and did everything correctly, I could get the thing I wanted. The pathway to recovery is not always so straight and manageable. A lot of healing is out of your hands. It takes time and patience and coming to terms with the fact that some things are out of your control. It requires a different kind of discipline, and ultimately peace with yourself and the world youre entangled with, to achieve. If youre like me if youre like a lot of people at MIT you might also find recovery harder than training. What I can say on this side of both mental/physical overtraining is that its really, really important to know when you need to rest. I think the students we admit are, in general, often better with training than they are with recovery. And if that describes you, consider this my encouragement to start practicing that as well. Youll need it at MIT, and, as it turns out, for the rest of your life, too. Im not sure what Im going to do today. I might swing by HMart, buy some snacks, and hand them out along the last few miles to provide calories and encouragement to other charity runners. I may hang out with my brother who will be watching from an apartment along the route and cheer from the windows. I might go sit for awhile at Seans memorial and just think. Maybe a bit of all of the above. For the first Marathon Monday in awhile, Im trying not to plan everything out, but to switch it up, and have it be a rest day rather than a training day. Its a small change, but just like with training, a bunch of small changes can add up to a big one; indeed, its the only thing that ever does. If youre along the route today, the Globe has published a guide for spectators; if youre following along at home, you can  review the schedule and elite runners, track the leaders, and watch a livestream. You can also track specific runners on the BAA website. Good luck to anyone who is running today, including the members of the MIT community, some of whom are profiled in the video immediately below. Ill be thinking of, and cheering for, you. Post Tagged #Running Marathon Monday Yesterday was the third Monday in April, meaning it’s Patriots’ Day (a holiday celebrated almost exclusively in Massachusetts and Maine). The third day in a four-day weekend, it also marks what has been a Boston tradition â€" 115 years running (no pun intended). Of course, I’m referring to the Boston Marathon (won by Kenyan runner Geoffrey Mutai in record time). A number of MIT students run each year, but even for those (like myself) who don’t know anyone participating, there’s quite the celebratory atmosphere. I made my way from North Station to Kenmore Square around 11:20 am; thanks to the number of spectators heading that direction on the T, it took 45 minutes to go (compared to the usual twenty minutes). Despite the extremely packed state on the trains, Kenmore Square is a nice place to watch the marathon because there’s so much space and it’s not actually packed there. One of our fraternities, Phi Sig, hosts a Marathon Day party every year at their house, which is located along the marathon route on Commonwealth Avenue. They were doling on hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken burgers to the mostly MIT crowd there, although it was quite clear they couldn’t make the food fast enough to keep up with the demand. Thanks to sponsorship, they were also handing out free energy drinks. They also had a dunk tank, which was only in intermittent use â€" i.e. when one of the Phi Sig brothers (or friends of Phi Sig brothers) was willing to take a dunk. Oh, yeah, but the marathon. See, it’s very exciting. I got a rather precarious shot from above the action on this segment of Commonwealth. And I’m reminded again how nice Kenmore and the Back Bay are. The number of spectators increases one walks the final mile toward the end of the finish line. By the time I reached the final corner of the marathon, where runners turn off Exeter Street onto Boylston Street, I simply couldn’t move any further. Nevertheless, thanks to my long wingspan and an articulating screen on my camera, I still managed to get a shot of the frenzy over the final few paces. Now, I’m not going to tell you how to spend your weekends, but do be sure to spend at least one Patriots’ Day watching the Boston Marathon.