All in Boston
More than 23,000 of the men and women lined up in Hopkinton for the start of the 2019 Boston Marathon will be there having run under an age-specific time threshold in another marathon, which shows just how unremarkable qualifying for the Boston Marathon really is. And yet, if you ask any of the 500,000 Americans who will run a marathon this year (and many of the million-plus marathoners in other countries), qualifying for Boston - a ‘BQ’ - can be a bit of an obsession.
One early afternoon in December, the Blue Line platform at State Street held a couple dozen adults, a few of us obviously awaiting a train to the airport based on the luggage we dragged. The other platform, across two sets of tracks, was desolate except for one man, positioned at the end of the platform where the front of his train would stop. It was surprisingly quiet - so quiet that the sound of a suitcase rolling along the platform reverberated through the concrete station. The quiet was suddenly punctuated by the automatic voice announcing when the next train would arrive.