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| Joe Muldowney |
The Fenway Hotel was about a mile from the finish line, but it may as well have been a thousand miles away. On blistered feet, space blanket covering my body, which was caked with dried sweat, I shuffled back to the hotel, spent and exhausted having completed my first Boston Marathon. The unicorn medal, bearing the number ‘82,’ signifying the number of annual Boston Marathon races, hung from my neck. It was the third Monday of April, 1978.
With sunken eyes, and a salt-covered face, I entered the small lobby, where a pleasant desk clerk smiled at me. She gazed with pity at the decrepit figure who stood before her. I knew that all I needed to do was pick up a key and I could hobble to my room, where a hot shower and a cozy bed awaited me. It was at that moment, out of nowhere, a pair of pliers gripped my right hamstring. In reality it was a cramp. The kind that strikes in the middle of the night. A painful, silent grimace crossed my face, sweat beaded on my forehead, and the concerned clerk implored, “May I help you?” At that moment, the pain was white-hot. I gripped the marble desk top. Before I could reply, however, a middle-aged man, who simply could not grasp the mentality of those who run 26.2-miles for fun, emerged. He glanced at the pained figure on the other side of the counter and drawled in his thick Boston accent, “Not unless yaw name is Gawd!”
