Beating the Brutality of Boston's Blizzard

Alright, so it wasn't that bad, but it was pretty brutal when I checked the weather for the day of the Boston Marathon at 10 am. The Boston local broadcastors were saying that there were 50 mile an hour wind gusts, and heavy rain at times. It wasn't looking too promising for the 111th Boston Marathon runners. According to one runner, "It was amazing. God was there! The rain stopped, the wind died down, and it was 16 degrees(celsius) out. Perfect running conditions". That runner was my dad.

My dad is a 44 year old father of two children(my younger sister, Felicia, and I) and is married to Teresa. He has been running for approximately 8 years now and last year he was finally able to achieve his goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. What you have to understand here is that the Boston Marathon is one of the 'big kahuna' Marathons in North America. In order to run this marathon, one must qualify for it.

I would like to say my congrats(and show him off) for his long awaited accomplishment. This years Boston Marathon hosted just over 20,600 runners. They were split up into 2 waves, the first wave which included the elite athletes and the fastest runners to make up the first 10,000 runners. The second wave included the second 10,000+ runners. My dad was blessed to be a part of the first wave of runners as his time qualified him to be in it. He started off really good at the beginning of the race but due to an aggitated knee, he slowed his pace down a bit but still finished the 42.2km race in 3:28:50. No matter what, it's still a great time to finish with.

Here's the rest of the stats to help show you how well he did. Overall, he finished the race in 5229th place. For his gender and then his age bracket(40-44yrs old) he finished in 4479 and 1640 respectively. His placing does two things for him. First, he can say that he finished in the top 25% or 1/4(which ever way you want to look at of all who ran the race. Secondly, because he enters a new age bracket for next year, he's already qualified for the 2008 race. So my kudo's goes out to you dad and a job well done on all that hard work that you have put into this. I'm proud of you and your great accomplishment!