From Tempe to Boston

With the excitement of Ironman Arizona barely in the bag, we turn to the Boston Marathon. While I'm sure there are others out there, I know of one tri-blogger who is running the race, today. And one thing is certain. The winds that plagued participants at IM Arizona continued their journey and now harass those in Boston.

None other than TriBoomer was invited to run the Boston Marathon in recognition of his efforts at raising money to fight bloodborne cancers. He is wearing bib number 24923, and you can track his progress here. As of this writing, Boomer has been tracked through 10K in a time of 1:08.

I'm hoping their tracking is delayed, as the race has been in progress for nearly two and a half hours, at this point. Given his pace, Boomer should have been beyond the 15K point, if not past 20K. Of course, the conditions are far from conducive to marathoning, with temps in the low 50s, winds gusting to 50 mph, and sideways rain.

*Already an update: Boomer has passed the 15K point in 1:42:10, maintaining 10-11 minute miles.

*Update two: While far from real time, Boomer has been sighted passing the 30K checkpoint in 3:50. He is on pace for about 5:25, and we can only hope the weather has broke so he can at least dry out while he's running.

*Boomer is nearing the end. Given the lag in time, he may be done. The last checkpoint he passed was the 40K point, in 5:24. Given that pace, he should be getting awfully close to the finish line.

Here is a late addition, and a horrible oversight. George Schweitzer, endurance athlete extraordinaire, also raced in Boston, today. In addition to finishing the race, he tore it up. He finished in 2:50:17 with an average pace of 6:30/mile. Not bad given the wind and the rain. I don't know if that's a marathon PR for George, but I believe it is his first time running Boston. That was good enough for 366 overall, 280 in his division. Congratulations to him on a fine race!

Boomer accomplished a lot simply being invited to run this race. Keep checking back to see how he is doing.