My transportation hassles pale in comparison to greater events.

Race day tomorrow! Brooklyn isn't all that far from RI, and the Northeast Corridor has this public transportation thing pretty well worked out ... most of the time. Under normal circumstances, grabbing a train to the city on a Friday afternoon would be an easy solution to the question of how to be in Prospect Park for a 10am Saturday race check-in. Leave school around 3, grab a 4:00 train, be in the city in time for a late supper and a good night's sleep. Right?

In case you haven't heard (and in that case, seriously? how?), today's circumstances bear absolutely no resemblance to "normal." The iPhone app from which I'm posting apparently doesn't allow me to create hypertext, so here's a link to a page full of haunting images of deserted Boston streets during today's lockdown: http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/16-eerie-images-of-boston-on-lockdown?s=mobile

I guess Amtrak isn't equipped to originate trains from Providence, so all service between Boston and Penn Station has been canceled, at least until after the time of my train, and there is (unsurprisingly) no room available on later trains.

All of this is to say, I'll deal. I'll find a way to get to Brooklyn (current strategy involves driving to Stamford and taking MetroNorth), and I'll race tomorrow. And if I don't, somehow, I'm out a $35 race fee and I'll find another race another day.

This whole thing is so much bigger than my little weekend plans, it feels ludicrous even to type the words.

Thinking of all the scared people, the medical and safety professionals in harm's way, the people locked down away from where their loved one are, even those who are simply inconvenienced by not being able to leave home for the day. All of those people, and many others, have it much worse than I do. Even if it is supposed to be thunderstorming in Park Slope at precisely the time I expect to be walking from the subway to my sister's co-op. I have a rain jacket.

Perspective.

Peace be with you.

Incomprehensible.

I've been planning, for a while, to start updating this blog again. Now ... I understand that the prevailing wisdom in light of events like yesterday's is to "keep calm and carry on," but it seems impossible, even without having been directly affected. I was not in Boston yesterday. I am not a marathon runner, nor do I particularly aspire to be. Boston is, however, the city of my birth. I grew up in its suburbs, in a town small enough that, when traveling more than a few miles from home, I learned early that the answer to "where are you from?" was always "near Boston." I've never actually lived in Boston, chose to go to college in California rather than Cambridge, but I did spend six weeks at Boston University during the summer before senior year of high school, along with every Sunday afternoon for the five school years I played with (what was then called) the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. I grew up knowing that the Celtics were World Champions, the Museum of Fine Arts stands among the finest collections in the world, and the BSO is the standard against which all other orchestras should be measured. The "Pru," located right near the finish line, has always been my favorite sky-scraper, small though it must appear by the standards of Manhattan, never mind Dubai. Boston sets itself up for a lot of jokes at the expense of its lofty self-image, but it's always been the Hub of my Universe.

And Patriots' Day? That little town where I grew up was once part of Concord. I haven't really aspired to running the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston, but I have regularly walked the approximately seven miles to the Old North Bridge after gathering in our town center at daybreak. By the time we're home again, the Marathon is running and sometimes the elite runners are already crossing the finish line.

To think someone would want to spoil that, to cause such willful harm ... I just can't. The injuries I've heard reported are just horrifying. I will never understand the cowardice necessary to do something like this. On top of that, several of my friends remember that I'm a runner and know I live in the general vicinity of Boston, and at least one person was genuinely frightened for my safety yesterday. Although there wasn't any chance of my being there, the concern of my friends brought the events even closer ... and I do have friends and colleagues who were in Boston yesterday, and thankfully made it home safely.

So. Totally freaked and saddened though I am, the best I can do is to keep running and feel blessed that I have that opportunity. My goal hasn't changed, and I have plans to make progress this year. I'll keep updating this blog, albeit sporadically, as I go.

Here's what I've been doing lately:

I realize I let this blog's first birthday pass without fanfare, while in the midst of a long winter's nap of non-posting. Trust me when I say that I've been doing any followers out there a favor: during the winter, when conditions can be dark and icy and otherwise unappealing, I stay reasonably in shape for running by regularly doing a thirty-minute "free run" on Wii Fit Plus. For those not familiar, this means I hold the Wii remote and run in place, watching something else on TV or listening to the radio, for thirty minutes. There is no balance-board feedback, and the distance reported means absolutely nothing in relation to how far I typically run in thirty minutes on the road. In fact, there is really no reason why I need a Wii in order to do this, but I've tried just running in place while watching TV (or holding the TV remote), and I couldn't keep it up for more than ten minutes. "Free run" tells me when I have 15 minutes left, then 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 10 seconds ... and then plays a happy little fanfare and tells me I'm good. Apparently, I need this validation. My point is, though, that this would make for some very dull blog posts.

Now that it's spring, though, I've managed a few runs outdoors (which I've logged with RunKeeper but forgotten to update in DailyMile, which is why the widget hadn't changed until I finally got caught up after writing this post). I braved some near-freezing temperatures during my March break to get out in the daylight hours:

Smith College campus, about 8:45 a.m. on Saturday, March 21,
end of a 3.16 mi run in 32:50.

 It's even starting to get light out early enough to run before work:

Monday, April 8, about 6:15 a.m., along Narragansett Parkway in Warwick.
3.00 mi in 27:26.

And I have a race coming up this Saturday! It's really strange to think of racing after yesterday, but then again, I think the best thing we can do is to keep going and show we're not going to be cowed. I feel it's appropriate, somehow, that my next race is in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, not far from the location of messages like this one:

And more like it, shown here on Gothamist.

Even with everything that's happened this week, I'm excited for this race. My training times have been (a little) faster than ever, lately, and this will be the first race where all three members of my immediate family will be able to be there to cheer me on ... well, unless the current weather report is right and it rains, in which case they'll be cheering me on in spirit from a warm, dry location.

NY is number nine, and I will hit #10 this summer (possibly Vermont on July 20, if another one doesn't come up sooner). I'm going to keep at it, and be thankful that I can, and over time, I'll cross 50 finish lines in 50 states.