“Your Boylston Street moment will make everything worth it. There is nothing like it. When you’re out there today, struggling, hurting, wishing you stayed in bed this morning, visualize the finish. Imagine all of those people going crazy while you make the final turn. That’s why we’re doing this. You’re going to have that moment.”
So my charity team’s coach said last year, the morning of April 15th, 2013. The run that day was beautiful. People were out, I was enjoying myself; I was in pain but it was all going to be worth it.
That’s what they told us.
Then the unthinkable happened, the one thing that didn’t scroll through my mind the night before as I failed to sleep. Two bombs went off, killing people, scarring some, hurting many. At a marathon, on a sunny day, in Boston. It didn’t make sense.
I struggled for a year with trying to understand this thing that had happened. I thought about it every day, without fail. Running wasn’t fun anymore. It haunted me; I would break down every now and then for no apparent reason. Walking through Jerusalem last summer, I cried and could think only of that day. I knew I would run again, to finish, but starting to train was hard. Everything this past year was hard.
The weekend before the marathon this year, Boston was buzzing. There was a calm excitement, a held-in energy throughout the city. Everyone was hopeful – no one was certain. I wanted my Boylston Street moment. I wanted to have what everyone said made it all worth it. I wanted the people who were on Boylston Street last year to come back and see it again, do it again, erase the taste stuck in our mouths. I was antsy and nervous. I wanted it to be over with, so I could go to sleep having run a marathon, rather than going to sleep not having run one like I had for the past year.
So many amazing people came out to run this unlikely distance. I ran for charity, and most of us running for charity are not fast, and we don’t care about our time. I wanted to finish this race. I wanted to get that moment. I wanted people around me to soak up the universe with me for a few hours, swimming in love and bigness.
I think we did that. As I passed the spot I got stopped at last year, the world I saw became surreal. People multiplied. Everyone was everywhere and I wanted to be everywhere at once, but I had no energy to be. One foot in front of the other, and I kept going in my path. When I finally turned right on Hereford St., and left on Boylston St., the only thing in my mind was “finally,” and a smile.
And the Boylston Street moment is exactly what everyone says it is. It is the biggest celebration, a party just for you and also for the sun and for the species. It’s cheering, it’s sweating, it’s crying, it’s sledgehammers hitting your quads, it’s those sledgehammers turning to pillows. Nothing hurts on Boylston Street. Everyone is your family, and you are so big and open and relieved. After 26 miles of everything hurting, I crossed the finish line as quietly as I crossed the start.
I was not alone, and the celebration was not just for me. It kept going long after I crossed, and it started long before. I ran over the finish line quickly once I saw it, but I want to live in the moment before that. I want to exist in the time where the pain relents for a minute, when the finish line is in sight, when you’ve run for so long and yet the only thing, truly the only thing you can do is keep running, with a smile on your face and energy in your being.
I know now why that moment is addicting. I know now why people come back to Boston. All I wanted was to finish the race – I didn’t know what kind of magic Boylston Street truly held. I would run again just to be at that part before the finish, before the release, the stopping, the medal, the hugs. I would run again just to be big in the world for a minute, in a way that can only come after struggling for so many miles.
That kind of bigness inebriates you, makes you whole, unites you with everything. And it’s over before you know it, because the one thing you’ve been waiting for and working for and dreaming of is the one thing that ends it: the finish line. Then you’re back to your real family, your real friends, your pain, your knees aching, your head reeling, your skin salty, your mouth dry. But hugging everyone, seeing their pride and their faces – it’s not that different. You can be big in different ways.