As was our standard, Jen and I were the first athletes to arrive at the technical meeting. This gave us yet another chance to nerd out and take photos, and discretely whisper as we watched all of the famous runners file in around us. Most came in right at 1:00 or just after.
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| Pre-Technical Meeting |
Des Linden walked in and we heard Jake Riley right behind us offer her a seat next to him. Surrounded by Olympians! Molly Seidel was one the last to enter. The list of the professional fields is here. I am most familiar with top U.S. women, so particularly notable to me were Steph Bruce, Sara Vaughn, Nell Rojas, Dakota Lindwurm, Elania Tabb, Kate Sanborn, as well as Des and Molly already mentioned. I also noted Charlotte Purdue (Britian) and Edna Kiplagat (Kenya). I know Kathy Derks, Paula Pridgen, and Joanna Thompson from other races/OTQ chasing/social media, and I run on rabbit with Mary Denholm. For men, I quickly recognized Jake Riley, Jared Ward, and C.J. Albertson.
Jen and I both wanted desperately to take pictures of everyone, and she mentioned asking for a group photo, but the vibe wasn't really one for photography and most people ran out of there when it ended, likely to get lunch. Some of the coaches/agents were taking photos of the presentation itself so I settled on that. We listened to the race director and professional athlete coordinator talk about logistics. The professional athlete coordinator gave an inspiring speech, including, "I invited every one of you here because you have a chance to win the Boston marathon tomorrow."
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| Jen knew Jared Ward from Utah running, so I did get an actual photo with this Olympian! |
After the meeting we went to lunch with Amy and Colin, and my friend Dave stopped by while we were finishing up at California Pizza Kitchen in the Prudential Center. My soon-to-be coach Nick also stopped by. We then headed back to our hotel room to prep our race kits and relax until dinner, which was at Wagamama's like the day before.
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| The gold Easter egg is from uniform check |
On our walk back from dinner, we passed by a work crew taking down the massive marathon expo sign. The sign had the date on it so I knew they couldn't reuse it, so I walked up to the man on the ground (the others were on a lift getting the sign down) and sweetly asked, "So what do you do with those signs?" He asked if I wanted it, which is how I became the owner of a huge 2022 Boston Marathon sign!
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| The sign |
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| They told me it weighed 40 lbs but I don't think that was accurate |
The story continues here.
Oh my gosh, how cool is that?! Where are you going to put your sign? What was in the Easter egg they gave you?
ReplyDeleteIt is currently in my workout room, which is also where all of my awards end up (except for the white squirrels)! I got Whoppers in my egg. They said some of them had little unicorns in them and I wanted one of those so bad but I thought it was inappropriate to open them all searching for one (I did discretely open a couple others).
DeleteOh my gosh, that's hilarious! I would have been tempted to peek in the other eggs too!
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