This post is about the logistical issues involved in planning your Boston Marathon trip (at least, from the view of a first-timer from the opposite coast!). To read my Boston Marathon Race Report, click here.
Somehow it didn't occur to me until I was registered & in a training group that like any other race, Boston has "streakers" -- people who run the thing every year. It had kind of always struck me as a bucket list kind of thing, or at most an 'every-few-years-when-I'm-feeling-spendy' type of thing. But no; there were people in the Facebook group with 10, 15, 20, or more Boston Marathons under their belt, many of them even consecutive!
Of course, most of those people live within easy driving distance of Boston, where your participation costs are mostly the registration fee and a night or two of lodging. (And if you have friends or family in the area, perhaps not even lodging.) I know there are even West Coast folks or those from other far-flung areas of the country who still run Boston regularly, and I admire the commitment, but WOW, that's a significant logistical & financial commitment.
When I first signed up, I had a lot of logistical questions--when to travel, where to stay, food options, the expo, transportation issues, etc. While there was a lot of information out there on the internet, it wasn't always easy to find answers to specific questions I was wondering about. So I figured I'd do a post on my experience & hopefully add just a little more info to the pile & maybe someone out there will get a question of theirs answered just a little bit sooner.
Flying from SFO to Boston
Being on the West Coast, of course, traveling to Boston was going to take the better part of a day. Our flight left SF at 11:30am Friday morning (4/13) and arrived in Boston at about 7:40pm, so at least we were able to get to our hotel at a reasonable hour via a short Lyft ride.
As far as the timing goes, I personally can't imagine arriving any later than this if it's your first time & you don't want to feel rushed, not to mention the jet lag issues. Sure, it's nice that you don't have to get up at 4am or anything for the race because of the late start times, but still. My coach's recommendation for adjusting to the time change as efficiently as possible was to get up at 9am on Saturday (so 6am Pacific time), then 8am on Sunday, & 7am on race morning. (I was in Wave 3; if you're in Wave 1 or 2 you'll probably need to get up at 6 or 6:30 to make your bus & start time.)
Re: flying coast to coast, you could not pay me enough to take a connecting flight unless there was no other option. Direct or bust. The day is long enough and it's already going to be late when you arrive, so just do yourself a solid & pay for the direct flight.
I use Hopper to watch flights for me & tell me when I should buy a certain flight--it sends little updates like "Here's what the flight is right now, you should wait since flights are expected to drop another $xx," or "Current flights are $xx. This is a great price so you should book now," or "This isn't a great price, but you'll likely pay more if you wait."
I didn't completely obey its advice to keep waiting because I was worried that flights might not obey the usual pricing rules on Boston weekend & bought one-way tickets on Jan. 11 for $283 each. I felt a little bad when I saw the prices continue to drop for another couple of months, but not that bad since I had to be on the east coast the next week anyway for a conference so work was paying for my flight. The last time I flew into Boston I paid $750 for a round trip ticket, so I sort of thought $283 was a better price than it actually ended up being. For what it's worth, the lowest one-way prices I saw for direct flights at reasonable times were in the $220ish range.
Re: airlines, I love flying Jet Blue into Boston from SF. They have lots of great flights & times & more leg room in economy than any other airline (and I should know, because I fly A LOT and on a lot of different airlines).
We stayed in Boston until Tuesday afternoon, which I felt like was the right amount of time. I can't imagine trying to get home the same day unless you absolutely had to. I was too much of a mess, and there was too much going on, and people told me that the train stations and the airport were absolute madhouses & you'd need to plan to get to the airport like three hours before your flight. No thank you. If you have the flexibility & can swing it, do yourself a solid & stay an extra night. So all in all, four nights for us, which, as a first timer from the opposite coast, is as tight as I think I would have wanted to do it. (In the future, I could see coming in on Saturday, but I don't know if I could handle the rush & jet lag of coming in on Sunday).
If you stay in a hotel, I also recommend asking ahead of time for a late checkout. There was just no way I was going to be out of bed & packed & functional by 11am the day after the race, so I was glad we had this option.
Where to stay
There are a lot of opinions about this on the internet, as I discovered, but this one is mine, and there are a few caveats to it.
As with non-direct flights, you could not pay me enough to run this race and not stay close to the finish. I considered it, briefly, but then decided, "Eh, you've never done it before, you don't know how you'll feel, play it safe this first time." So we ended up staying at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown on Tremont Street, right by Boston Commons where the buses load. Sure enough, I was very happy to be able to walk less than a mile to a shower after the race & that I didn't have to now sit in a car or on commuter rail for an hour. To me, it's just not worth it.
It was not cheap. In fact probably the first thing you'll learn when you start planning your Boston Marathon trip is that if you want to be anywhere even remotely near the finish, the cost of a hotel for the few nights you're there might well be the same or more than your monthly rent. In my initial searches (which began the week after the 2017 Boston Marathon, when most hotels started opening reservations for 2018), I never found anything for less than $350/night, and that was for shitty hotels before taxes.
The other thing to think carefully about is how you'll get to the bus loading or start if you're staying relatively far from Boston. Public transit to Boston Commons (where the buses load) is an option if you plan ahead. Getting someone to drive you into Boston is not impossible, but again, you'll need to plan ahead for all the various road closures & the fact that a bunch of other people will probably be trying to do this too.
I do know some people who got dropped off at the start in Hopkinton; just, if you do this, know that you can only get so close so you'll still have to walk a good ways to the Athlete's Village, & remember that there's no gear drop there, so have a plan for what you're doing when you finish. (Because you never know, the weather could be HORRID!)
I knew I wanted to stay near the finish & I was willing to pay a little more for it (but not stupid rates like the $500-600 a night places). At this point I considered three different options.
- a) AirBnB or VRBO. They'll still be relatively expensive, but since rentals tend to be cheaper than hotels in general, you could probably save some money if you went this route. I heard from a lot of people who did & were quite happy. Hell, some people even just went the "rent a room" or "rent a couch" option and saved a TON of money, so if that works for you, look into it!
b) Points. Traveling so much for work can suck sometimes but one upside is that I have a lot of hotel rewards points & I came very very close to using them on this trip. And that would have been a perfectly fine idea! Free hotel? Yes please. So consider it, especially if you have time to plan ahead and take advantage of some sweet credit card bonus rewards. (I banked a free 100,000 Marriott points just by getting their credit card & spending I think $4,000 in the first three months, which, again, with all my work travel, was not difficult.)
c) Marathon Tours & Travels. If you want to stay in a hotel and you can't or don't want to use points, this is my top recommendation. Get on their email list and social medias & be ready when they open their reservations in May. You can book a hotel at a significantly cheaper rate, and (at least when I did it), it's free to cancel other than a $20 admin fee until the end of the calendar year.
Look what just arrived in my inbox...
I couldn't believe the rate we got for the Courtyard Marriott Downtown through them ($299/night) considering it was a nice hotel within walking distance of public transit, tons of restaurants, the bus loading zone, & the finish line. In the end, the MTT rate was good enough that I decided to save my points for something else and use this opportunity to bank a whole shit-ton more points. With my Marriott status & also paying for the hotel with my Marriott credit card, it was a pretty sweet haul.
Local transit
Do not repeat DO NOT rent a car in Boston. I kept seeing people talking about doing this in my Facebook group and so many of us who have been to Boston before for any reason were constantly trying to talk people out of it.
The traffic is horrid. It will be worse on marathon weekend. Roads will be closed all over the place & there is nowhere to park that won't cost you an arm and a leg. There is ABUNDANT public transit via the T & commuter rail, and if the T doesn't go where you want to go, just take a Lyft or a cab. I guarantee you will save yourself so much money & sanity.
Some people were recommending the 7-day Charlie pass for the T if you're going to be there more than a couple of days and plan to use the T a lot. It's probably not a bad deal given that a one-way ride is around $3 and a 7-day Charlie is like $21-22. We ended up not using it enough for it to be worth it but I can easily see how someone could.
~*~Eating~*~
If I have one hard & fast rule about traveling to cities for major events, it's making dinner reservations in advance.
I will always do this. Don't tell me to relax. Don't tell me it won't be that busy & there are plenty of restaurants. No.
Part of this is because I am a food snob. Sorry but I don't want to eat at the Applebee's or whatever other garbage food is technically available. I want real food and a real wine list with things that don't come from a grocery store.
Part of it is because I have a very specific routine about when I like to eat and god help the human that gets in my way at the pre-decided Hour of Eating. Hangry is a thing. The struggle is real. I am not waiting.
Part of it is because I'm a planner and really, really, really dislike flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to food. I need to know where I am eating so I can creepily stalk the menu online the day before. Asking me to confront some stranger-menu and make a decision on the fly about my dinner is a big ask.
Part of this is because my absolute least favorite activity in the universe is starving to death & walking from restaurant to restaurant trying to find a good-sounding place with less than an hour wait. So you do you, but I am making reservations for EVERYTHING, especially on a weekend when there will be 30,000+ extra people in town. I want to know what I'm eating and when and I don't want to have to fight a billion other people for it.
We had four dinners in Boston & spent them at Davio's, Row 34, Da Vinci, & State Street Provisions. We also had tasty brunch/lunches at Cafe 26, The Thinking Cup, & (again) State Street Provisions. Would go back to any of them!
I started stalking Boston restaurants in January & decided which ones were my top choices. After doing some research to find out when each started taking reservations, I set reminders on my calendar so that I could get them as soon as availability opened up. This was super easy for everywhere except Row 34, where even just minutes after reservations for 4/14 opened, the best dinner time available was 6pm. Luckily, I was able to call & talk to a person, & they changed our reservation to 7pm which I appreciated.
Far from the most spectacular Italian food I've ever had but you can't beat their commitment to entertaining runners.
Whole fish at Row 34!
Morning-after brunch at The Thinking Cup. The eclaires were to die for! (Also not shown: A delicious sausage-and-egg breakfast sandwich.)
Carb loading Sunday morning at State Street Provisions. :)
(I mean I know carb loading isn't *really* a thing, but I will never not gorge on pancakes the morning before a marathon.)
~*~Pre-Race Activities~*~
The Expo
I remember some people going absolutely ape shit in past blog posts about the glories of the expo, but this was not my experience. It was pretty much just a race expo like any other. Big, but not massive. (For anyone who has run CIM, I found it to be very similar in size & tone.) You don't need to plan to be there for hours and hours. I found it really funny that there were signs outside pointing half the bib numbers one direction & half the other direction but they all just wrapped back around to the same staircase down to the expo.
This year it was at the Seaport World Trade Center, which I guess is a change from recent years. People told me to try to go as early as possible because it gets crowded the longer you wait. Because of this I wanted to go Saturday morning but we didn't end up making it until maybe around 5:30. (It closed at 7.) By then there were plenty of people but I wouldn't have said it was "crowded," especially.
I waited in a 20 minute line to take this picture, and that's WAY shorter than it was when we first arrived. I wouldn't have minded so much except it was about 35F and windy & we were both starving & about to miss a dinner reservation. So, y'know; plan ahead & be prepared. (Also, check your shirt for a wayward tag before you start walking around taking pictures in it! XP)
I'd say we were there about an hour. I got my bib first (it has to be you, with an ID and your signed bib pickup card; no one else can get it for you) without having to wait at all, & similarly walked right up to the table for my shirt. I visited a few other booths for swag they'd emailed me about (a cool luggage tag at the Boston 2 Big Sur table; a BQ Qualifier tech hat from the CIM booth; a free poncho from the MTT table since I made my hotel reservation through them) & then took a swing through the merch store to see if there was anything I wanted.
But that was really all I felt like I needed to see, since I didn't need socks or sunglasses or shoes or to sign up for anymore marathons. Also, handily, Row 34 was walking distance from the expo, so woohoo! Saved some transit money!
The Finish Line
If it's your first time to the Boston Marathon, then obviously you have to go to the finish line & take a bunch of cheesy pictures, duh. We initially tried to do this on Saturday but that turned out to be a no-go because there were still BAA 5K & kids' race events going on, & they had the whole finish line area barricaded off.
Luckily, we heard from Katie & Layla that it was open for visitors on Sunday morning, so we went down right after brunch to take some goofy shots. I was afraid it would be stupid crowded but that turned out not to be the case at all. Sure, there were a lot of people there, but most folks were very considerate and polite about getting their picture or two and then moving out of the way to let someone else go. It was really extremely civilized. :)
Me in all these pictures: {strips out of coat & hat} {dumps nine bags of crap on the ground}
"OK quick take it before I freeze to death HURRRRRYYYYY" {grabs crap & bundles up again}
It was so cold, you guys. So cold.
There was also a cool mural painted on a side street building wall a couple blocks from the finish. I saw it on instagram and was not missing a chance to go do the trendy cool thing for once in my life.
Adidas RunBase & any other running store near the finish line
OMG stay away. STAY. AWAY! It's an effing madhouse & anything they have there that you want, you can buy on the internet, probably for cheaper a few weeks after the race.
So, yeah--those are my Boston Marathon first-timer travel tips! Let me know if you have any other questions or if there are obvious categories of planning I missed.
Next I'm planning to do a post of race-day logistics specifically, as this was something that I had a lot of questions about going in.
No comments:
Post a Comment