I know, I know, long time, no post. I have at least three partially drafted race reports from the past year that I’ve never finished. And I do want to finish them! But in an effort to keep the backlog from getting any bigger, I’m just going to jump ahead to this past training cycle.
After the Kinzua race in July, I was solely in training mode. My next major “race” wasn’t a race per se. It was the Jimmy Fund Walk on October 6th, which follows the Boston Marathon course. This is a fundraising event for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and has a 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and full marathon distance. Well, of course, I was going to do the full marathon. Go big or go home, right?
I first heard about the Jimmy Fund Walk about a year earlier, when Chris Twiggs mentioned it on one of the Customized Zoom calls. Apparently, Chris’s dad did it years earlier and it sounded like a wonderful way for a back-on-the-packer like myself to “do Boston.” In 2024, the walk happened to be scheduled for the weekend before the Chicago marathon so I told myself that if I didn’t get into Chicago through the lottery, I would “do Boston” instead. And that’s what happened.
My last couple of long run/walks were, well, LONG. Since I wasn’t training for something with a real time-limit (I think the cut-off was 12 hours), I kept to a very slow pace. But of course that meant a massive time commitment and tons of “time on feet.”
I was also struggling with my sneakers. I have “princess feet” so I have a really hard time shopping for new shoes. Therefore, once I find a model that works for me, I buy as many pairs as I can find (and afford). Yes, I am a sneaker hoarder! Unfortunately, my stockpile of the discontinued New Balance 870’s had run out and, after coming back from
Disneyland in January, I knew that I absolutely had to find a new sneaker. After a couple of trips to local running stores, I finally found an Asics GT-2000 that felt comfortable and didn’t trigger any issues in my feet or legs. However, they did cause blisters on the outside of both of my big toes and heals. Cue the search for a cure. I tried different types of socks. I tried different ways of tying the shoes. I tried different kinds of blister pads and KT tape. You name it, I tried it. By race day, I was resigned to “what will be, will be.”
I had never been to Boston before so, while the primary purpose of the trip was the walk, I also wanted to do some tourist things. My Aunt S. flew to Buffalo from the Washington DC area and then drove with my mom and I to Boston on the Friday before the walk. For a whole bunch of reasons, we wound up leaving significantly later than we planned to so Friday was taken up with travel, getting settled in our hotel, and getting dinner.
Saturday was sightseeing day. We chose to do a hop on - hop off bus tour, in an effort to try to minimize our walking, but the reality was that we still wound up walking a lot. But for a history/museum geek such as myself, Boston was so awesome even if it isn’t exactly my preferred period of American history.
While we were on the trolley, we saw the finish line for the walk, which was already set up in the Boston Commons. This would wind up being very useful the following day. But more about that later.
Race Recap - The Jimmy Fund Walk, Boston, MA - Sunday, October 6, 2024
“Holy hell, that was hard!”
The morning started early. Not quite runDisney early, but early. The walk had a “rolling start” so the marathon distance walkers could show up anywhere between 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. Knowing this, I had planned ahead and our hotel was only one highway exit away. I had received my bib in advance by mail, but I still had to go to the staging area to pick up my t-shirt (the logic behind this completely baffles me - either send both or send neither). Then it was a short bus ride to the start line, which I crossed at 6:11 a.m.
I’m going to interrupt my narrative from time to time with some “I’m not in the running world any more” observations and the start line was the first one. We got dropped off, walked to the start line, and just went. There was no representative from the walk there. The only reason I was able to get a photo was because I offered to take photos for another group and in turn they offered to take one of me. Yeah, it was slightly anti-climactic.
My plan was to run/walk as much as possible. The roads weren’t closed so we were on the side of the road or on sidewalks and Chris had warned me that things could get crowded as time went on and the half-marathon, 10K, and 5K walkers joined the course. But that definitely wasn’t an issue at the beginning.
Unfortunately, my plan got thrown out the window fairly early when I started getting a sharp pain on the inside of my right knee at the start of every run interval. After a few steps, it went away, but my conservative run/walk ratio wasn’t going to work and I did a lot more walking than I anticipated.
One thing that I didn’t expect was that most people were in already formed groups and I was solo. I’m used to runDisney where you wind up socializing with the complete strangers around you and that camaraderie just wasn’t there. I was okay with it because I had a bunch of podcasts and other things to keep me occupied, but I missed the atmosphere.
Also, while there were volunteers and water/food stations along the course, there was almost no crowd support. Because we were walking on sidewalks, our bibs were the only thing to clue the general public that anything special was going on. Again, it was disappointing when I compared it to runDisney.
But onward I went, winding my way through the small towns along the course. Having watched the Boston marathon on TV, I could imagine these streets filled with runners and crowds cheering. Every once in a while I would see something like the “Mile 10 Provisions” store that reminded me where I was and the history of this route.
Because this was a walk, there was an actual lunch stop at Mile 16 and, since I was doing a lot more walking than running and my feet were starting to chirp - loudly - at me, I decided to stop. Remember that saying “nothing new on race day?” Yeah, I should have listened. At lunch, I had a turkey sandwich, thinking that I’ve eaten turkey and cheese as part of long runs before so I should be fine. Spoiler alert - I wasn’t. For the next 10+ miles, I had significant stomach issues that slowed me down even more.
It was also about this time that I hit the Newton hills. I kind of knew that the course was hilly - hello, the one of the most famous landmarks on the course is Heartbreak Hill - but I didn’t anticipate the length of the climbs. And even though I was primarily walking, they still wore me down both physically and mentally. When I got to Heartbreak Hill (did you know that there isn’t a sign identifying it?), I thought “if this isn’t Heartbreak, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” My knee was giving me a significant amount of grief, I was trying to figure out what I could keep in me as far as fuel, and the blisters on my feet were getting more irritated with every step. Any thoughts that I had of a time goal had been out of the window hours before and now I was going with “forward is a pace.”
One thing that was concerning was the lack of walker support between the aid stations. Again, I’m used to runDisney and their bikers. For the walk, if you had a medical issue, you were very much on your own. And even at the aid stations, they weren’t much help. I stopped twice to get Biofreeze for my knee and both times, the volunteers had to actually dig around and find it in their supplies.
Okay, let me take a step back here and highlight one of the things that made this walk special. All along the course, there were sandwich boards with stories of cancer patients that have been helped by Dana-Farber. As we passed each one, the walkers would touch each one and I was reminded that, as hard as things got as the miles went on, why doing this was important. Also, I had placed a sticker on my back in memory of a dear friend who had passed away from breast cancer seven years ago. At one point, another walker saw that I was having trouble and asked me about her and that was exactly what I needed at that moment. Rose never knew me as a runner, but I could imagine what she would have thought about this whole thing. And that kept me moving forward.
So when is a marathon more than 26.2 miles? Well, when there’s construction at the finish line of the actual Boston marathon so we have to go somewhere around 27ish miles. The way the walk was set up, there were some signs indicating when to turn, but for the most part, I was following the person in front of me who was following the person in front of them, etc. As I got into Boston, this got harder as we all got spread out. I never got to the point where I couldn’t see someone in front of me, but it got close. However, somewhere along the way, someone missed a turn and we all followed the leader. One group stopped to try to figure out where the course actually went, but I could see more walkers ahead and I kept going, hoping that they knew where they were going. They didn’t, but at that point, we were close enough to the Boston Commons that I had a decent idea of where the finish line was (it was a good thing I had seen it during our trolley tour the previous day).
Someone decided that it was a good idea to announce the name of every person crossing the finish line. Therefore there was a wait to cross the finish line. Who thought that that was a good idea at the end of a marathon?
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of our adventures. While I was walking, my mom and aunt had spent the day sightseeing, figuring that they could use the hop-on/hop-off trolley to get to see me at the finish line and then we could all use it to get back to our car. However, the buses that were taking the walkers back to their cars (remember, it is a point to point course) actually completely gridlocked traffic in the area. They missed seeing me finish and made it complicated to meet up with the trolley (we had to walk UP Beacon Hill to get to the next stop). By the time we got back to the car, I was cold and very, very sore. The worst part was the blisters on my feet, which were gruesome and incredibly painful. Plus my stomach wasn’t thrilled with me for the rest of the evening. Oh, and that knee pain! Never had it since (knock wood) and to this day, I have no idea what caused it.
Am I glad that I did this? Yes. Now I can forever say that I’ve done the Boston marathon course and that is something special. Will I do it again? Definitely not the marathon distance. Chris has mentioned putting together a Customized team to do the walk and I might be willing to do the half marathon distance. Or maybe I would be “race support” for the team. I definitely want to go back to Boston and do more sightseeing sometime soon.
Lessons Learned:
- A normal marathon training plan isn’t adequate for this type of walk. I wish that I had walked more during the training rather than using run/walk.
- Nothing new on race day! The walk information wasn’t clear about what foods would be available at the aid stations and I assumed that they would be runner friendly foods or at least have a variety of selections. Looking back, I could have stopped at a convenience store along the route to buy something.
- Make sure that I have a turn-by-turn course map!
Also, by the time I got to the "hills", I had already run hills that no one eve mentioned. To this day (and I am originally from MA), I can't tell you which hill was Heartbreak--they all were!
For those of us in Buffalo, Canadians are like our closest cousins.) The trip back and forth to bib pick-up doubled as my warm up and I got to the start line right on time (barely). However, a lot of other runners weren’t as lucky since, in addition to the parking issues, the race hotel shuttles had significant problems as well. 
