Yesterday was one of those rare days when you just roll out of bed and get excited knowing that it's going to be a great day to play frisbee on the Green or take a nice run.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton also decided to take a nice run in the Boston Marathon.
Working together, Pelton and his wife, who also ran, managed to keep a steady, but comfortable pace from start to finish. They crossed the finish line side-by-side in just over four hours.
The race conditions were perfect50 degrees, sunny and dry. It was everything any marathoner could ever ask for, and then some.
Dressed in his favorite Dartmouth t-shirt, Pelton took to the Boston streets shortly before noon and took his place nearly a mile back from the actual starting line.
But when the starting gun sounded, Pelton could barely move, let alone run.
"It was just so crowded at the start," he explained. "For the first three-quarters of a mile, the only thing we could do was walk." Caught within a swarm of more than 40,000 runners, Pelton ended up crossing the starting line 20 minutes into the race.
"I thought that the packs would thin out after five or six miles, but it was not until the latter half of the race that we could even try setting our own pace. For a good part of the race, I just had to go with the flow," Pelton said.
But despite the crowds and congestion along the 26.2 mile course, Pelton said the whole experience was "absolutely wonderful."
"It's really an easy course. A lot of it is downhill, and that notorious 'Heartbreak Hill' really isn't so bad," Pelton said.
But then again, that is easy for Pelton to say. He is one of those seasoned runners who spent all winter training on the steep backroads of the Granite State.
As he approached the foreboding rollercoaster section of the course, Pelton was just starting to pick up his stride. "It was right around the 18-mile mark that I began to feel my best," he said.
The 20-mile mark is home to three back-to-back hills and leads to a daunting 600 yard vertical incline which many just call "the hill."
But once that is over, it is all downhill.
With less than five miles to go in the race, "you begin to get excited for the finish," Pelton said. "At that point, the crowds really start to motivate and inspire the runners."
It was not until these last few miles that Pelton began to feel his fatigue. "With two miles to go, I felt like I really had to dig down deep and push myself. At that point, my legs were starting to tighten up, but at the same time, I wanted so much to just finish the race," he said.
When the race was finally over, it was definitely a relief for Pelton. "My first thought as I crossed that line was that I was glad it was over," he said. "But my second thought was that I'd really like to do that again."
