It was a dark and stormy night...
Yeah, like a cheap mystery novel. The rain was driven into the windows by fierce winds, as the lovely Francine and I would wake up and anticipate a cold-and-nasty-weather marathon. The weekend wasn't all that bad though.
We arrived in Boston around noon on Saturday and took a taxi to the home of our good friends Joe and Julia. They recently bought a house in Brookline and are in the midst of remodeling/restoring, so parts of their new estate resembled a nuclear holocaust. Just the kind of place a guy loves to see and hang out in--a great project in the making!
We went on to the expo to pick up our race packets and a bunch of stuff we didn't really need. I had no more than walked in before Austin, one of my shipmates on the Ioffe saw me. Mike and Christina were there as well, so we enjoyed a brief reunion before heading off in our various directions.
Saturday night was the annual Dead Runners Society encounter dinner at Big City. Nice place, nice people, and about 40 beers on tap. I had a pint of Brooklyn Brown Ale, then noticed that they had Sam Adams Cherry Wheat on tap. Cherry Wheat has special memories for me--the first time I tasted it was 14 October 1995. The Chicago Marathon expo the day before my first marathon. I ordered a pint, fondly remembering my first taste and the journey that I've enjoyed since that day.
Sunday was the bagel brunch, in recent years hosted by Julia and Joe, but due to the construction project it was moved to the home of Joan Cook and Conrad Halling. Again, a nice time with way more food than one should reasonably eat, but with friends one should reasonably have. I love Dead Runners encounters, because I get to meet some of the people I've been interacting with on line since 1994.
Afternoon was a trip to Eastern Mountain Sports to pick up a little wet-weather gear for the lovely Francine. Then we hopped on the T and went to town where I met Adam Jacobs, editor of thefinalsprint.com, for an interview. Yes, that's right, I got interviewed in Boston, just like the speedy guys. Pretty cool. It's on The Final Sprint website. http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2007/04/boston-marathon-video-podcast-don-kern-part-1/
and
http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2007/04/boston-marathon-video-podcast-don-kern-part-2/
Pretty nice. Adam has interviewed me a couple of times before, but this is the first time we met face-to-face.
Race report to follow in part 2 sometime later today.
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