Boston Marathon

I was in Boston for the first three days of the week visiting Boston College. As it turned out, my hosts and I realized only a week or so ago that Monday was both a holiday in Boston (Patriot's Day) and also the day of the Boston Marathon.

My not-so-compenent taxi driver (Cambridge taxi #1260) dropped me off on one side of the marathon route and Boston College, sadly, lay on the other. The marathon route is crowded with on-lookers and also with Boston police. There are barricades. There are a lot of people running the marathon and, when I arrive, they are running fairly quickly, so even had I attempted to cross (with my roller bag in tow) I could easily have run into one or more participants. So, rather than having lunch with one of my hosts, I had lunch by myself to wait it out.

The marathon itself raises three mysteries. First, why do the organizers not set it up so that one can cross the marathon route while the marathon is going on? I have been to the Rose Parade in Pasadena and they are organized enough to occasionally open a passageway across the parade route. I suggested this to my hosts (one of them a devoted runner) and got an appalled reaction, but to me, after the first 100 people, why does anyone care about losing a few seconds? This seems like really poor organization to me.

Second, why do people participate in the marathon? I recognize that some spiritual traditions emphasize the salutary role of suffering, but this is self-inflicted suffering on a mass scale and with a big audience. Would the city close the roads if 10,000 people decided to walk through town hitting themselves with boards, like the monks in Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Third, and most mysterious, why does anyone watch who does not have a friend or relative running in the race, and among that group, why do they watch for longer than the two minutes it takes for their friend or relative to pass by? Watching the marathon, I can now attest from personal experience, is really, really boring. Excruciatingly boring. It is like NASCAR with no crashes plus you only get to see the winner once.

A few students had managed to get the second order condition right, as the marathoners and their audience had not. Their shirts said "You run, I'll drink."

After about two hours on my own, the marathon had degenerated to a walkathon, the crowd had thinned and the Boston Police were having lunch so I was able to cross the route without incident.