Then the Fens and Commonwealth, The H Club’s crimson flag9, Two turns and onto Boylston Street: Another finish in the bag. At either end of Mass. Ave. Bridge Will come the postrace bliss: A beer at Tommy’s Eliot Lounge10, College friends at th’Acropolis.11 So celebrate ye all who trod From Green toward Statehouse dome! But there is no joy in Westwood12; For this runner has stayed home.13

*This line rhymes if, like me, you grew up in Boston. Actually, runners are now kept in pens near the high school and are forbidden from entering the town (lest they raise the groundwater table with prerace

preparations). Ignore those proscriptions and get there early enough to enjoy the townsfolk and their festival. 2 Yes, 20 years ago the entire starting field and its liniment filled the (old) Hopkinton

high school gym. Now not only is the field outside, but the gym is no longer the gym of the new mansionized high school. 3 Actually, for most of the past 20 years no member of the Walter Brown family

has appeared on the starting podium. Race sponsors do, though. 4 Starting gun? Now there are two with the blasphemous “second start” half an hour after the first. 5 Well, not the same hour. These years, after a century-old tradition of a noon

start, the race start comes earlier in the morning in order to make automobile traffic happier. 6 With all the malignant changes, there remain these two constants over two decades. 7 Yes, they are still there, though better call them Wellesley women in the era of

Title IX matured. But no longer do you run the gauntlet of these fair maidens; 21st-century traffic control confines them to the campus side of Route 135. 1

8

Uh-oh, not for the leaders anymore. The only 11:00 a.m. start in the major leagues has been moved up to 10:05, but not early enough to let fans watch the game end and then catch the leaders from their 10:00 a.m. start.

9

For the first 109 years the course ran right by the Harvard Club at 374 Commonwealth. But now take a distant glance for the crimson flag before you descend the underpass at Mass. Ave. This lounge at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Commonwealth is no longer. Ditto this landmark Greek restaurant above Harvard Square, where some of ’63 had their last supper on commencement night and until about 1990 celebrated the college Eucharist on Patriots’ Day postrace.

10 11

In 20 years, the author has migrated from the University of California southern campus to Berkeley. 13 After writing this ode for my UCLA law class, I read Leigh Montville’s great tribute to Boston in the then-current Sports Illustrated issue and at the last moment caught a Sunday flight to Boston where Chris Berka picked up my number, and we shared a room at the Sheraton Commander and the race the next day. But since 2007, I have, unfortunately, stayed home. 12