Permit me to indulge in excessive joy. On Monday my daughter Lindsey ran and finished the Boston Marathon. Woot.

It was, as they say in Boston, “wicked hot.” 87 degrees, which is about 25 degrees hotter than marathoners like it. So hot that the Marathon allowed people to defer their cherished credentials, to run in 2013 instead; 4,000 took the offer.  So hot that 2,000 people started but didn’t finish. Including both of last year’s winners, men’s and women’s: they started and dropped out before the famous Heartbreak Hill.

She researched. She blogged about the course, her research, and the data on the last hot marathon, 2004. She prepared. And she nailed it. Her first Boston Marathon (only her second marathon ever), and she finished smack in the middle of the pack.

“They say you’re supposed to do it as just a 20 mile run, followed by a 10k race” (10k= the last 6.2 miles), she says. Yeah, except the “10k race” part (at mile 20) starts at Heartbreak Hill. See that big bump on the right side of this elevation map? Yeah, that’s an 88′ climb (27m), like running up a nine story building… after your 20 mile run:

In the Boston Globe an experienced runner said usually when you get to the top of Heartbreak Hill you’re greeted with a cool breeze to carry you to the finish, but this day “The breeze was hot, the water was hot, everything was hot.”

Mind you, it wasn’t a joy; that night she said “I’m never running that course again.” But later I ran into an experienced marathoner at an ice cream place, who apologized for how bad it was that day. Lindsey said that made her feel better :-), and after a good night’s sleep when she read how bad the day was, she realized it was an accomplishment.

Yeah it is.

At a time like this a daddy’s mind goes back to those years of cross country at Salem High, waiting by the course for her to emerge from the woods, yelling “Go Lindsey! You can do it!”

Yeah, you can. You rock.

Today would have been my dad’s 90th birthday: he was born March 27, 1922. Here’s a picture in his later years.

Dad died in 2005. He lived a full life, for better or worse, from aircraft mechanic in World War II to microfilm salesman to vice president of a division at 3M. He loved his hobbies, puttering in garage or basement – when I was a kid he had classic and antique cars, but dagnabbit he got rid of them before I got my license. (I wonder why?) Then it was boats – he’d learned to sail on Long Island Sound, and taught us on the Chesapeake near Mount Vernon, then on Minnesota lakes, a houseboat on the St. Croix, and then sailing and rowing in Maryland, off the Cheseapeake near Annapolis.

I miss him.

In my college years, and after, I was the ever-rebellious anti-establishment type; he was the ever-positive Dale Carnegie “positive thinking” salesman. Sometimes when I railed against something, he’d ask: “What do you want? What change are you looking for?” (He strongly favored non-noisy / non-polluting forms of boating, but instead of attacking, he promoted his positive alternative: the “Société Nauticale de Propulsion Humaine,” with its faux French title and fake Latin motto on the button at left.)

I’d roll my adolescent eyes, but today his words live in the back of my mind, and sometimes come out of my mouth.

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