I'm to the left in the black t-shirt.
(Picture borrowed from the Oiselle blog)
After finishing my cold brew coffee I hopped back onto the T with my roommate and we went to the fancy brunch for the Hyland's athletes, family, friends and staff in town for the race. It was amazing. You really couldn't beat the view from the rooftop!
As if that wasn't cool enough, we found Dave McGillivray there! He was talking about when Meb won the Marathon in 2014 and how everybody was really rooting for him. The catch was although Dave was on a scooter alongside the elites he couldn't cheer on the runners. So a couple of days before the race, Meb told Dave his strategy. Then on race day Dave kept motioning to him to ask if it was going okay and Meb would just barely nod in his direction.
Not going to lie. It was ridiculously awesome to get to rub elbows with runners like Alison Desir (founder of Harlem Run), Candice Huffine (a plus-sized model recently featured in Runner's World), Rahaf Khatib (a runner trying to raise money for Syrian refugees, @runlikeahijabi) just to name a few.
After having a lovely brunch and a couple of these cupcakes...
My roommate and I decided to split ways since she wanted to get some rest for the Marathon and get some work done. To give her some time to get work done I ended up going towards the expo again just to have a look around and track down Eataly.
While en route to the expo I saw ultramarathoner Scott Jurek doing meet n greets in front of the Clif Bar kiosk and figured why not go say hi? There wasn't that much of a line and I had nowhere to be! I ended up asking him what his advice for a first time marathoner is, and he said to take nutrition (gu, chews, etc.) every half an hour even if you don't think you need it.
Naturally I also got some full sized Clif bar samples of peanut butter banana, chocolate peanut butter filled, and peanut butter filled along with some of the new ginger ale flavored shot blox. (I love ginger--why haven't running companies gotten on that until now?? It's supposed to be great for nausea and stomach issues and runners are notorious for having all kinds of stomach issues while running! Even if it doesn't actually help, I love ginger!)
After getting the Clif bars, I found Eataly and returned to the expo since there wasn't a line to get in just to see if I missed anything. (I hadn't, but I got a few more freebies like samples of the new Nuun Performance and Kind bars!)
After the expo I checked out the Runner's World pop up store (not much there since the space was mostly for talks by famous runners like Bart Yasso) and the Adidas Runbase store. The Runbase store was kinda crazy and the prices were too, but I got to see the 3D layout of the Marathon course!
And they had this chalkboard out front
By the time I got out, Scott was done doing meet and greets so they took down the velvet rope for the line and I could get a great picture of this!
Isn't it weird to think about how women have only been able to run the marathon in the last 50 years?
After that I headed just next door to Eataly. (Seriously, it was next door to the expo the entire time! I must've walked past it a dozen times until I actually paid attention!) It was basically Italian foodie heaven.
Each one of those wheels of parmesan was about the size of a car tire and weigh about 84lbs!! (And yes, that is a sign that says "Please don't touch the cheese wheels.")
They had pasta in every size and shape you could imagine, all kinds of sauces, steaks aging in refrigerators in full view, imported cheeses, gelato, and best of all several places to eat! I ended up grabbing two reasonably priced bags of pasta in shapes I had never seen before (which is saying something after being to Italy) and headed to the prepared food counter. Since it was mid-afternoon by this point I decided to bring some food back to the hotel and call it a day. I got a rotisserie chicken salad, eggplant caponata, and a fregola pasta salad. (Fregola is a pasta that looks really similar to israeli couscous.) After checking out the finish line one last time...
The tree where the first bomb went off
The far end of the finish line!
I thought this would be a fun photo to take since not many people can get this kind of view!
Then I headed back to my hotel with my shoulders sore from the hoodie and overload of clif bars samples in my drawstring bag and a little paper bag full of food. I spent the rest of the evening relaxing and packing since I would be heading home the next day immediately after spectating the Marathon.
So fun that you were in Boston and got to go to the Oiselle meet up! I spectated for Boston one year and it was truly amazing.
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