“Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest.”—Paul Éluard

The weather has been horrendous today in Boston, and I’m not-so-patiently waiting at the airport with R for our flight home to Toronto. Our departure has been delayed four times already, but hopefully we’ll get on the plane before the night is over.

We’ve been away for three nights now, which doesn’t seem overly long, but we’re missing our boys. With our flight delay, we’ll miss seeing them before they go to sleep tonight, which will make four nights in a row without tucking them in. In the past, we’ve always looked forward to travelling, whether for work or pleasure, but now that we have K and B in our lives, we no longer enjoy going away for long periods without them. I’m in St. John’s next weekend, and then have more travel to Indianapolis, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Whitehorse, and R is going away to Uganda as well, so there will be more time away from them. The good news is that one of us will always be staying home with the boys during those trips, which makes things a bit easier.

While it’s hard for us to be away from K and B, I think they have a great time staying with their two sets of grandparents. It must be nice to be spoiled for the duration of a weekend.

This morning I ran the Boston marathon in heavy rain and winds. There was snow on the ground in Hopkinton where the race starts, so it was also a fairly cold morning to run. It was a hard day for most runners, whether elite or back-of-the-pack. In the male division, the eight elite Ethiopian runners all dropped out, and only two of the 11 Kenyans managed to finish. The finishing times for the top 10 male (which included Canada’s Reid Coolsaet) and female (which included Canada’s Krista Duchene in third) runners were much slower than usual, and I think most of the 30,000 runners would have posted slower finishing times than normal. Over 2,300 runners required medical attention, primarily due to hypothermia.

I had trouble staying warm during the race and also had to stop a few times to use a washroom. This seems to be a constant challenge for me while running in the rain (must be psychological). After running at race pace for about 12 km, I slowed down and just focused on maintaining a steady effort, finishing just under three hours. I’m hoping that by shifting my goals and using this race as a steady training run, I’ll be able to recover more quickly for my next race. When I finished, I became incredibly cold trying to get my gear from the pickup tents, so that was a bit scary. Thankfully I wasn’t one of the many runners who required medical assistance. R was spectating for a few hours in the rain, so she was also soaked and chilled to the bone. Marathon running (and spectating) is a stupid hobby.

Tomorrow morning we will see our boys and also Shadow, our puppy.