On April 18,
1775, a regiment of British soldiers left Boston to seize stockpiles of weapons
being stored in nearby villages by local militia groups. A few messengers left on horseback to warn
the militiamen. The most famous of these
messengers was Paul Revere.
On the
morning of April 19, the British troops
met armed resistance, first at Lexington Green and later near Concord. These were the first two battles of the American
Revolutionary War.
The events
of April 19,, 1775 are commemorated by a local holiday called Patriots’
Day. In Massachusetts, Patriots’ Day is
observed on the third Monday of April.
The Boston Marathon
is normally held on Patriots’ Day. This
year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the race has been postponed until September.
Ordinarily,
I would have flown to Boston today. After
checking into my hotel, I was planning to join a group called Boston Squeakers for
a happy hour get-together at the Beantown Pub.
We can’t meet in person this year, so instead we had a virtual happy
hour using Zoom.
The first
time Deb and I traveled to Boston, we had dinner at Durgin Park. Durgin Park was one of the oldest restaurants
in the country. They served traditional
New England food. One of their signature
entrees was called Yankee Pot Roast.
They also had a signature dessert called Baked Indian Pudding. “Indian” in this context meant Native American.
Durgin Park
was my favorite Boston restaurant, and I made a point of eating there every
time I was in Boston. Sadly, they’re no
longer in business. They closed last
year.
I wanted to
have a taste of Durgin Park, so while I was chatting online with my fellow “squeakers”
I had an early dinner of pot roast. I
don’t have the recipe that Durgin Park used, but Deb and I sometimes make pot
roasts in a slow cooker, and I used our usual recipe.
I followed
that with a bowl of Baked Indian Pudding, topped with vanilla ice cream, just
like Durgin Park would serve it. I
actually do have their recipe for the Indian Pudding. It was on a flyer that we picked up when we first
had dinner there in 1991.
There were
about 49 of us in the Zoom meeting, and we each introduced ourselves and talked
about our experiences qualifying and either getting into Boston or getting “squeaked”
out.
Halfway
through our happy hour meetup, we were joined online by Dave McGillivray. Dave is
the race director of the Boston Marathon, and he answered questions for the
next hour.
Among other
things, Dave talked about the difficulties associated with rescheduling the
race to September. When asked what will
happen next year, if this year’s race has to be cancelled altogether, he
explained all the competing interests and how nobody has the answers yet. He also shared some of his favorite Boston Marathon
experiences both as a runner and as a race director.
Monday is Patriots’
Day. Most of the runners trained for
this throughout the winter. Monday was
going to be their big day. Now that they’re
in peak shape, many of them will go out and run 26.2 miles on their own. I don’t plan to do that.
I don’t
train for months for one big race.
Instead, I run marathons as often as I reasonably can, and the marathons
are a big part of my training. If I do
them often enough, I don’t need to do any other long training runs.
Excluding
one virtual race, I haven’t run a marathon since March 1st. I don’t know when the next one will be. It’ll be at least a few months, and probably
much longer. I’m keeping up my weekly
mileage, but I wouldn’t really call it training. Now, I’m just running to maintain a certain
level of fitness. There’s no real point
in running 26.2 miles on Monday. It
wouldn’t be the same as a race, and it won’t necessarily prepare me for my next
one. My next one might not even be this
year. Nobody knows when large events
will be possible. I’m crossing my
fingers on September, but that may be wishful thinking.
When I can
see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’ll figure out what I need to do to
prepare for my next race. For now, I’m
just running for exercise.
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