Hi,
      I finally have a few minutes to write you a comprehensive story about my marathon adventures...

      We got to the start around 11am. I think the name of the town was Framingham, but I am not sure. Sergey, another guy, who was also going to run that day, picked up his parents, and then, we went to the place by car. For security purposes, nobody was allowed to park in the downtown, and we had to leave the car on a parking lot a few miles away from the start. From there, we took a five-minute ride in a yellow school bus (I always wanted to see how it looks inside: nothing special).

      There was a huge crowd of participants, fans, policemen, and soldiers (the latter two categories were responsible for providing safety along the way) near the start when we got there. The number of official runners that day was around 20,000! About 10% of those were from MA, another 50% came from other states, and the rest came from all over the world. In order to become an official runner, you had to either (1) run for a charity, which would cost you around $5,000, or (2) be a professional runner. In addition to the crowd of official runners, there was an unknown, but certainly very large, number of so-called "pirates", who did not pay anything, but were going to run the marathon anyway. I was one of those.

      Because the number of people running was so large, it did not make any sense to let everybody start at once. Instead, people were allowed to start according to their numbers, the smaller the number, the better runner you were considered to be, and the earlier you were allowed to start. I did not have a number, and therefore, I was supposed to start immediately after the official runners. Once I noticed a large number of “pirates”, I sneaked into the stream of running people, and thus, entered the race!

      Mile 1.
      First, the road went down, and it was a real pleasure to run. There was a huge number of people along the both sides of the highway, cheering for us, trying to clap our hands, and offering us some water, ice, oranges, etc. Many runners had their names written on their T-shirts, and you could constantly hear words like "Ok, Jack, good job, you're almost there, you’ve almost made it!" Every mile, there were tables with paper cups of water and a popular sports drink, Gaterade. However, first, I did not drink at all, simply because I had never drunk while running before, and because I did not like the idea of carrying tons of water inside my stomach. I was keeping my usual pace, gradually moving forward among the runners. By the end of the 5th mile, I ended up somewhere in the middle of the crowd with numbers.

      Mile 5.
      When I passed the 5-mile mark, I started to feel the heat. By that time, the temperature came up to 29-30C, which made it really difficult to run, especially in the sun. I suddenly realized that I did not have any fluids left, and that my body got really hot. I had to drink, but I did not know how I would feel after drinking. I stopped near one of the tables and drank a little bit, just to get some water inside my mouth, but then, I felt even worse. First, I was still very thirsty. Second, my body suddenly got very heavy, and if I started to think that, perhaps, it was not such a good idea to run the race at all, and that I would probably feel much better standing among the “fans” and crying: “Good job, you’re almost there, there’re only 21 miles left!”

      Mile 10.
     I stopped drinking water and started to drink Gaterade instead. The Gaterade is a slightly sweet drink, which, apart from anything else, contains some ions of Ca, K, and Na. I had tried it at some point before the race, and I did not like it at all. However, once I tried it while running the marathon, I started to appreciate how much it was better then water. It left me neither thirsty nor heavy. I did not drink simple water during the rest of my way, and used it only to wash away salt from my face and my hands.

      Mile 12.
      Mile 12 was interesting for two reasons. First, we passed by Wellesley - a female-only college with lots of somewhat strange and, undoubtedly, very crazy girls. They cried so loudly as we were passing by that I really wished they had not been there in the first place. However, some of their posters really made me laugh. One girl had a huge flyer, saying something like "Kiss me, I am already 21!" I have no idea what kind of "kiss" she had in mind, taking into account that the 21 is the age of sexual consent in some of the states. Second, we were getting closer and closer to the end of the first half of the marathon. Most of the runners already felt really tired. When some smarty from the cheering crowd cried to the guy running next to me something like "You can do it! There is not that much left", the guy answered "Well, maybe you want to finish it for me?"

      Mile 15.
      In general, that was the most difficult part of the race. On one hand, everybody was very tired. On the other hand, there were another 10+ miles ahead. Moreover, the road went up and down all the time, which also took its toll. It was then that I started to get cramps in my legs. They were not too bad, but every time I got one of those, I had to stop, walk for a minute, and run further. I noticed that people around me were so tired that they did not run fast even downhill. Occasionally, I saw medical professionals removing one or another unfortunate runner and getting him or her away from the road. The rest of us, still running, were looking for another shower: as we were passing by private houses, some hosts were showering us with icy cold water, which felt terrible for a few seconds, but provided with a big relief afterwards.

      Mile 20.
      By the 20-mile mark, I got almost completely indifferent to anything around me. I knew that I would probably finish the marathon, but I was not somehow especially excited about it. I was really tired, and all I wanted was to find a shadow or to sneak into a refrigerator. I felt pretty comfortable drinking a lot of Gaterade and eating cold oranges. The water evaporated from my body so fast that I did not stop a single time to go to a bathroom. As we got closer and closer to Boston (I mean the town itself, and not the area), the number of people and cheering around us were increasing substantially. There were a lot of students from different universities: BU, BC, Umass, Harvard, MIT, etc. Two guys from the Russian House, Igor and Dennis, noticed me in the stream of running people, and told me that there were only two miles left to run.

      Mile 26.
      The last mile did not seem to me that difficult. I had cramps in my right leg, but my left worked fine, and I was passing one runner after another. It was not very difficult, taking into account that most of them did not express any enthusiasm at all, even 10 meters before the finish. When I crossed the line, I checked the watch and found out that it took me 4 hours and 22 minutes to finish the race of 26 miles (42 km) with an average speed of 9.65 km per hour. My time was approximately twice as bad as that of the fastest runner, twice world champion from Kenya, who crossed the finish line 2 hours and 7 minutes after the start (2 hours and 5 minutes is the absolute world record). Had not the weather been so hot that day, I think I could do a much better job, but I am still very proud of my result.

      It took two days to start walking normally after the race. Now I feel absolutely fine, and I even ran another 8-mile circle yesterday. I do not think that the idea to run a marathon was particularly healthy, but I am glad I did that, for now I definitely have a lot of things to remember and to tell others if they are not too bored.

      Regards, Vitaly

      P.S. For those who read the list of things I want to do in my life, the next one is to prove that P != NP or the opposite ;)