Flashes of Panic

My Boston story is already online. With a six-hour time difference to Monaco, I was rushing to file so I wouldn’t keep my editor up too late.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, at least for most people who weren’t Deena Kastor. (And even she didn’t have as rough a time as Uta Pippig did in ‘96.) I ran out past Coolidge Corner and back after I saw my bikers off to Hopkinton, and despite being drenched by the rain I had this feeling that it was all going to be OK, that Kastor was going to dominate the women’s race, that everyone should be watching because this was going to be one of those races that we all talk about for decades.

Well, we’ll probably be talking about the weather, but the races were nothing but slow. A (who is partly responsible for the lack of editorial changes between my article and what ran, since she did a sanity check before I sent it in) observed that maybe my pre-marathon hunches aren’t to be trusted.

And I wasn’t the journalist who started asking Grigoryeva a question in Russian, then trailed off and switched to English. No, I know my limitations. I wonder if she’ll have more successes, or if she’ll become just another marathoner from Cheboksary. Why don’t the Russian men run so well? Surely they’re allowed to live in Cheboksary as well?

Now Playing: Can’t Make a Sound from Figure 8 by Elliott Smith

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