Happy Patriots Day!

What? A holiday you've never heard of? Patriot's Day? What kind of Patriot are we talking about?

Massachusetts has a state holiday today honoring the American Patriots of the Revolutionary War. Patriot's Day is celebrated on the day of the battles at Lexington and Concord. Yes, this is indeed an anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride to inform the Patriots that the "British are coming!".

Now, although this is an important American day in history, the real reason for the Commonwealth's love of Patriots Day is really because it's also.... Marathon Day.

Yup, in only a few hours, hundreds of thousands of runners will stampede right through my town on their way into Boston. They start in Hopkinton and run 26.3 miles, all the way into Boston. It's an amazing race for many reasons, but for the people in my particular suburb, it's the day our little city gets divided in half. In other words, you can't get there from here. The road that the Marathon is run literally divides our city in half. You can't drive across, you can't ride a bike across... if you have business in one side of the city and live on the other side, you have to drive about 10 miles out of your way in order to get across the street. It's wild.

We view the Marathon every year from the lawn on our City Hall. It's right across from the famous statue honoring Johnny Kelly. It's also the very start of Heartbreak Hill. We like to cheer on the runners there because they face a horrible uphill battle for the next few miles. Heartbreak Hill has been known to destroy the dreams of many marathoners.

This year, for the first in many years, we're experiencing a very bad storm, a Nor'easter. It isn't going to be fun to watch the Marathon in the pouring rain, so we're probably going to stay home. I can't even remember the last time we missed the race. I'm feeling pretty sad about missing the fun. We usually run into so many people we know, and it's the one time of the year when the entire city, from Hopkinton all the way into Copley Square where the race ends, come out to socialize, to party, and to cheer on athletes from all over the world. We're very proud of our Marathon in Boston, and it is going to be sad to see the poor runners drowning as they run along the sodden path.

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