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COVID, week 60 + 7:47

COVID, week 60 + 7:47

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Sixty! Sixty of these things. We’re staring down the final month of school, and it’s already feeling like summer around here with the string of 80-85 degree sunny days we’re in. What is time? What are seasons?

Anyway. The fam and I spent all day yesterday (in between distance learning pockets) celebrating A’s birthday. Unlike pretty much every other birthday (with the exception of last year), we were able to celebrate together all day long — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and mini-breaks throughout the day — which was pretty memorable. 

I lost count of how many times she said that yesterday was the best, most awesome, day ever. 🙂

And for what I think is the first time ever, I made it through one of my kids’ birthdays without crying at all for the entire day. It only took a decade.

party on!

–

Does 7:47 mean anything to you? If you were hoping to run Boston 2021 — in October this year — after yesterday’s announcements, it certainly does. 

With the pandemic moving Boston 2020 from the spring, to the fall, to ultimately virtual, applicants for Boston ‘21 — who could use times from mid-September 2018-onward — had to not just qualify but had to be 7 minutes and 47 seconds faster than their qualifier. 

For the youngest AG for men (18-34), that means their 3:00 BQ (that would allow them to apply in the first place) ultimately had to be closer to a 2:52 (!!) to ensure their admittance. For the youngest AG for women, their 3:30 qualifier had to be closer to a 3:22 in order for them to participate. 

The 7:47 cutoff is the largest since the BAA began handling registrations in this manner. It’s economics 101, right? Demand has outpaced supply, and particularly in 2021, with the race having only about 20k runners, instead of the usual 30k, to comply with COVID protocols. There’s more people who want to run Boston — who have qualified to run Boston — than there are slots available in any given year but very much so in 2021. 

Of the 20k runners, 16k (or so) were qualifiers, with the rest going to charity runners and invited sponsor athletes. According to Sarah Lorge Butler at RW, 14,609 qualified runners got in; 9,215 qualified runners applied but were denied.

Think about that: over 9,000 runners qualified … but still got denied. Ouch. 

Stacey and I both lamented that we’d love to hear John’s hot takes on all of this. 

If you recently qualified for Boston, applied, AND got in, I am so excited for you and can’t wait to hear all about what Boston ‘21 was like, assuming it goes on as planned. The press releases make it sound like there are going to be so many modifications from “Boston as normal” that it sounds like it’ll (understandably) have an entirely different feel and vibe. 

Regardless: Boston is Boston, and I hope you are stoked and very proud of your accomplishment. You absolutely should be because you worked hard and earned your spot at the starting line. Revel in that, baby! 

If you recently qualified for Boston, applied, but didn’t get in, I feel gutted for you. I’ve known many who this has happened to over the years, with some people missing Boston by literal seconds — either because they weren’t faster than the BQ-minus-cutoff time by just a few seconds, or because they missed the qualifying standard itself by a veeeeery small margin —  and I know it is tough to swallow. It sucks when you work really hard and still come up short; understatement of the century, I know. 

Nonetheless, please be proud of what you have accomplished already because that is a huge undertaking in and of itself. I’d encourage you to keep fighting — keep showing up — to try to make it to the starting line in Boston. 

It All Starts Here! -Hopkinton, 2010. (No Athletes’ Village at this year’s event makes me wonder if they’ll move the sign for COVID-compliant photo opps)

It’s worth it, it’s tough, and you are tougher. Maybe it’s not this year, but you can do it. You got this. 

–

And finally, happy early mothers day to all the rockstar moms and the mom-like rockstars out there this weekend.

I know this is a holiday that can be fraught with emotion for so many, and I’m thinking of you, too, and sending love. I hope you know how very loved you are, regardless of your maternal status. 

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COVID, week 58 + seismic

COVID, week 58 + seismic

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It’s the theme of the past seven days since I last wrote: seismic. 

Today would be John’s 58th birthday. 

It’s a weird feeling, like you’re forgetting to do something, when someone you love, who has recently died, has a birthday. 

There’s no group text with the birthday gal/guy and all your mutual friends, with everyone heaping on their birthday wishes; no rash commentary about aging (or for runners, no “hey at least I gained a couple minutes on my BQ window!” or “I moved up an AG!”); nothing like that. 

Instead, the group text is with everyone else, everyone but the birthday person, acknowledging how bizarre and unfair it is that the deceased isn’t here for his or her birthday. Pretty much everyone’s birthday in 2020 was muted, dimmed, by the pandemic; I doubt John thought that his “pandemic birthday” would be his last. 

It’s brutal. 

To memorialize John and celebrate what would have been his 58th birthday today, on April 21, all of us from our FF BB ‘10 group decided we’d run 4.21 miles and then jump on a Google Meet chat tonight to pay our respects. 

I ran my typical workweek route from home through ARP, turning around a little later than usual because I had a little more pep in my step, and simply enjoyed the morning, listening to a SWAP podcast for the first ~30’ and then the birdsong for the balance, the ~3.8mi to get back home. It was lovely. I thought of him the entire time.  

from this morning’s run at 4.21 miles

long live John. -his FF BB fanclub harem

*

In the past seven days since my last writing, life has begun to shift. Last week Thursday, I was one of the 12,000 (!) people vaccinated at Levi’s Stadium on April 15, the original day that the state of California increased vaccine availability to everyone 16 years+; I say the “original day” because I guess the county or state moved it to 4/14 midweek, but by then I had already secured the appointment. 

I got to spend close to 3 hours at Levi’s Stadium with thousands of my best stranger friends as we moved through queue, after queue, after queue to get our Pfizer shot. 

It was amazing. I was so excited and happy to be there. I would have brought at least A with me so she could witness history being made with this large-scale public vaccination campaign, but alas, she was still in school when I left. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t bring my kids because they would have been bored to tears and over it within the first twenty minutes, ha. 

4/15/21 – Pfizer shot 1

Honestly, it was like being in line at Disneyland, multiplied by being in line for TSA, multiplied by going through customs for international travel, multiplied by being at the DMV. I kept thinking to myself that if this were a ride at Disneyland, we would all agree that it’s pretty fast-moving. We rarely stood still. (And of course, C, who got his shot at the same place just a couple days later, was in and out in fifteen minutes. Seriously!!?) 

In my tribute to John a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I rarely run on the GRT anymore but that from now on, in the infrequent chances I were there, I’d think of him and of our ten-miles-in-the-pouring-rain run wherein we ran to Levi’s so he could see it up close. How interesting that out of anywhere I could have gone to get my COVID vaccine, I went to Levi’s. For sure there are specific considerations that went into play that made me go there — appointment availability, location, ease, all that stuff — but still. It makes me wonder. 

I would have loved to tell John that I got vaccinated there.

*

Last thing. I think yesterday’s ‘guilty’ verdicts for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over 9 minutes — which a seventeen year-old, Darnella Frazier, documented on her phone, whose video spread around the world last Memorial Day and helped advance a national (international) reckoning supporting Black Lives Matter — I think yesterday’s ‘guilty’ verdicts have already become something seared into our collective memory. Where were you when you heard the verdict? (Costco, grocery shopping, glued to NYT). 

It is progress, advancement. 

More than anything, it’s accountability. It’s an exception to the exception, but finally, there is accountability.

It is horrific and inexcusable that it came at the cost of human life and in no way does it atone for the countless other Black and Brown people’s lives lost at the hands of a white supremacist society, generally, or at the hands of law enforcement officers, specifically. We can’t bring back those we’ve lost, unfortunately. 

Nonetheless, it’s a step — roger that, a seismic step —  in the right direction.