A look into the long New England winters preparing for Patriots’ Day.

’m having a hard time breathing on this run through the cemetery. It’s the middle

of a blizzard that has already produced a foot of snow. Each stride I attempt is

swallowed up to my knee by the white ground. Cold forests outline this place surrounded by an endless stone wall encapsulating the limited space to explore. With each breath I take, snow blows into my mouth. My face is most likely a piercing, reddish pink. The frost is bitter but welcome. We suffer for you, Boston.

Every winter in New England, runners training for the Boston Marathon jump at the first chance to go out and battle the elements; the first snow is taken apart, ripped to shreds, with a feeling of satisfaction lingering afterward. After a few winters of running, the feel of bliss will falter. Your excitement will ebb. The second run in the aftermath of the storm is worse; waist-high snowbanks crowd the sidewalks, and we must take to the streets, dodging cars at night. Some wouldn’t have it any other way; others are aggravated. Then comes the third run in snow. Then the fourth. The snow will eventually give way to slush and to pavement again before another snow befalls us. With each trudge through this white mess, our spirit is hammered out of us. Resentment creeps in as you become either calloused or comfortable in your shelter, tempered or annoyed. We do this because of you, Boston.

The snowfall is less intense now as I move along with caution. I transverse long uphill paths, finally reaching a high point, a ridge. I look out from atop a rock on a cliff side and see Boston. Faint as the dimmest star in the sky, the Prudential Building is there. It’s waiting. I take off down a hill and see a car abruptly stopped in the road in the cemetery, abandoned. I keep moving along and notice a stationary cop car to my right. I smile at this, a big beaming hello to someone else out in this storm.

“Hey, guys!” I say.

“Seriously?” the cop replies from his seat, his window down.

“Yeah,” I say as I head up another hill.

I noticed a slight humorous inflection in his voice. Perhaps a jogger himself, he is wondering why I am outside on this day of all days. Or maybe he thinks I’m trying to be tough, or crazy, or stupid. It doesn’t matter because I’m here for one reason: Boston.

Twenty-three minutes have gone by, an eternity on these merciless hills with this footing. “Impossible to walk in this muck, no footing at all,” I utter as I come down a hill, a reference to the late Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I hit a semiplowed stretch and pick it up for a fast 200. I’ll do a few of these before I move on. Clear pavement is a rare gift right now.

With every stride I take, I imagine gaunt, booming beasts rolling along the hills of Newton, sometime when the sun is away. The taste of longing for freedom is bitter as we sweep along, the feelings and dreams that inspired this run unbeknown to us, this saunter into the unknown. It’s a mass of humanity, a sea of ambition and dreams. I see the last hill and fly up it, relentless in my approach. I crest the hill and continue passing runners toward Boston.

A large snowdrift stops my imagination; it’s hard to move in its density. I shift my thoughts again to the lights of Boston on the horizon, the silhouette of my foe,

Photo by FitzFoto/NERunner