(All photos by Jason Williams @afrosoul4eva)
Going into the Virtual Boston Marathon window, it was unclear what the energy would be for the event. However, once the first accounts came in on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, it was clear: the raw emotion, the brutal physicality, the community support, & the great love would all appear in abundance in a virtual version of the Boston Marathon. All week runners streamed the course (even though they were advised not to by the B.A.A), they set up starting and finish lines in their neighborhoods all over the country, & they enlisted friends and family for support - all for Boston.
It turns out a Virtual Boston Marathon had some advantages: you can feel all of the emotion of your finish moment (you aren't herded like cattle out of the way), friends ran together for fun, unfettered by race (or actual) authorities, and at Heartbreak we drove our hot new rig wherever we damn well wanted; flags flying, "Shipping Up To Boston" blasting, hollering and honking at every runner we saw.
Congratulations to all of the Virtual Boston finishers. It was a weird and new Boston, a different Boston, but there was no doubt at all that it was still Boston.
