Morning Runs Along the Charles

First of all, that's not me in that picture. It might look like me a little bit, but it's actually my friend Aileen. I met Aileen as a result of randomly sitting next to her friend on a flight from LA to Boston. The friend realized that Aileen and I had something in common: we had both lost a parent to lung cancer. When I first moved to Boston, Aileen and I had drinks and talked about doing stuff together, lung cancer advocacy stuff. Maybe one day we will.

But, I haven't seen Aileen since then, about 9 months ago. This is the weird story of why I have her picture: A few minutes ago, I was looking online for a picture of the Charles River to illustrate this blog entry about my morning runs around the Charles. During my search, I found this one of Aileen! Apparently, she ran the Boston Marathon for Dana Farber back in 2006 and the Globe did a story about charity runners.. including her! This is the Globe's photo (hope they don't sue me.) Small world.

So, this is sort of what it looks like when I run in the mornings. Except I run in the opposite direction, from Cambridge to Boston and back. Now, this winter, I wasn't able to run around the river as often as I wanted to because of the weather and had to run on the treadmill (ugh), but on decent days (like this morning!) I do either a 4 or 6 mile run around the river, depending on whether I run across the Longfellow Bridge (aka, the Salt and Pepper Bridge) or the Mass Ave Bridge. (Aileen is on the Mass. Ave Bridge, btw.)

I had wanted to show you a picture that included the Ellison Building at Mass General, because that was one of the reasons I wanted to talk about these morning runs. When I do the 4 mile loop (Salt and Pepper Bridge loop), I have a clear view of Ellison as I run across the bridge. Once across, I run by Mass General, the "Jail" hotel, aka the Liberty Hotel, and the Cox Radiation Center, where my mother had both full brain radiation and radiation to the tumor on her lung. I literally run right past the same entrance that we used, and that she and her friends (and my friends) entered as they took her for her visits.

At first, it was sort of weird to know that I will always have a clear view of that building, actually a clear view of her room, the one from which we could see those incredible views in the previous post. But now, it's actually comforting. I'll admit, it was not comforting to have to pass the cemetery where she's buried every time I left her house in Lawrence to get on the highway. I couldn't have done that for the rest of my life. But the hospital offers hope, and also by the time I get there, I'm on a total endorphin high and everything is great in the world!

When I left LA, one of the things I knew I'd miss most, along with my friends, was the Silver Lake Reservoir. I'd so gotten used to great runs around the man-made lake in the middle of the city... a 4.2 loop that included a perfect warm up and cool down walk with those skyscraper hills on Marathon Street.

Now, I have the Charles River. Like hundreds of other Boston runners every day (maybe thousands?), I run around the river, using the bridges as markers of how far I'm willing to go (or how much time I have)

Today I only had time for the Salt and Pepper Bridge, a little over 4 miles, which is fine because tomorrow we do 14.7. I'm definitely on a "pink cloud" with my training right now. Loving it and only wishing I could wake up earlier so I could do a little bit more.

Maybe next week.
Til next time -
Love,
Julia