Foggy and Green 7 miler

COVID-19, “The Rona Era”

It’s St, Patrick’s Day. I figure I should run and wear green this morning. I had a plan for this morning. I’m going to park my car by MIT and run along the Charles and through the city of Boston. My friend Beverly works at MIT and she is always struggling to find parking. My plan was to park and when she came to work, I would give her my spot.

To make all of this happen I had to really get up, not lollygag around but really get up. 5 a.m. I was stretching, finding my clothes, doing some more stretching before I left. 5:35a.m. I was on memorial drive by MIT and I had a hard time finding parking. I thought it would be easy. Clearly I was wrong. After a loop around memorial I find parking by the Hayden Library. Maybe after my run, there might be more parking available. I wasn’t going to spend my running time circling to find parking.

41 degrees out and it was foggy. I could barely see the Charles River. It was a cool and eerie sight to see the fog, the lights of the city, and hear the rowers in the calm water. I was smart enough to bring my headlight because it was dark.

I started to run across Mass Ave bridge. Once in Boston, I made a left onto beacon Street. This was the same route for Boston’s 10k for women. It was still foggy and quiet.

When I ran to the public gardens, I saw a group of older men running this morning. I made note of that. Throughout my run today I saw groups of runners running. Not just a couple of people but 15-20 deep of people running. Not sure if they were doing a St. Patrick’s Day run or if this is the normal run over on this side of town.

I wanted to see if the ducks were wearing St. Patty’s day outfits. They were not. They were wearing scarfs in the colors of Ukrainian flag. I wasn’t going to argue with that. At this point, I was two miles in.

I ran through the Boston Commons and stayed on Boylston Street. I made a choice to run to the finish line of the Boston Marathon route. The Lenox hotel which is a block from the Finish line had blue and yellow lights on top of their hotel.

I kept going. I saw green lights in trees and green lights that were in bars that shined on the street.

I decided to run on the Esplanade for a bit before crossing back over the bridge to MIT. The fog was so thick that I could slightly see the rowers in the water. I did a loop around, then headed back towards the bridge.

It was around 7a.m. and more runners, walkers, bikers were coming out.

I felt good the entire time running. I could have run 8 miles but I stopped at 7. My knees felt good and I felt strong and steady. It was hauntingly lovely this morning to be out running in the city.