GETTING WINTER-BATTERED ROADS READY FOR BOSTON MARATHON
THE BOSTON MARATHON
Right around that fourth snowstorm, with temperatures holding steady below freezing and snow piles showing no sign of receding, officials from Hopkinton to Newton admit, they felt a bit uneasy about being ready for the start of this year’s Boston Marathon.
A couple of weeks ago, when the sidewalks along routes 135 and 16 still had snowbanks, Wellesley Department of Public Works director Mike Pakstis said he was really starting to feel the pressure.
“There was definitely some concern about whether we’d be able to get things cleaned up, get the roads ready, the lines painted,” he said.
But with the 119th installment of the event two weeks away and temperatures rising, the mood among local officials is decidedly more upbeat.
“The race will go on as it always does. It might be muddy, but it’s been muddy before,” said Jay Guelfi, parks and recreation director in Hopkinton, who is in charge of the town common right at the race’s starting line.
Robert DeRubeis, Newton’s commissioner of parks and recreation, said Thursday that his crews have even seen signs that the thousands of daffodils that bloom along Commonwealth Avenue may be starting to peek up.
“It simply happens that whenever there is some measure of challenge, no matter what it is, people rally to overcome it, they just do,” said Tom Grilk, executive director of the Boston Athletic Association, which oversees the Patriots Day tradition.
Grilk said that back in February — when the feeling was “Is this ever going to stop, are the locusts coming next?” — his concern was never whether the race would go on, but rather about the burden that was being placed on those responsible for getting the course ready.
“The care and intensity that goes into preparing the course is the same every year, but some years require a different level of preparation,” he said.
This is one of those years.
The record amount of snow, and the lingering cold temperatures preventing it from melting, condensed the time that local crews had to inspect the course, fill potholes and repair any other potential hazards, clean sand and debris off the road, and trim any low-hanging tree branches.
Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray took part in a 20-mile training session along the route last weekend with hundreds of other runners, and said he was amazed at how little snow remained.
“As I ran, I also paid close attention to the condition of the course itself, and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t in as bad a condition as I had initially speculated,” he said. “I’m confident that all the necessary patch work and street sweeping will get done as it always is.”
McGillivray said this year’s race on April 20 will have a few nonweather-related “tweaks,” such as music. Public address systems at each of the water stations along the 26.2-mile route from Hopkinton to Boston will be playing songs taken from the personal playlists of McGillivray and others who work at the BAA.
“It’s not going to be a rock and roll concert, but it’ll be upbeat and it should be fun,” he said.
In Hopkinton, where the 30,000 runners who received numbers for this year’s race, spectators, vendors, and media will congregate for the start, the concern has been not only whether the streets would be ready, but whether the downtown common and nearby school fields used as the “athletes’ village” would be snow-free.
To speed the melting process on the grassy areas where the athletes gather before the race, Hopkinton and BAA officials enlisted the help of Sports Turf Specialties Inc. of Wrentham.
Two weeks ago the company spread “green sand” on snow-covered fields. The mix of top-dressing sand and green food coloring absorbs sunlight, and the warmth helps to melt the snow, according to Sports Turf “snow manager” Ben Leach.
The BAA paid for the sand and its application, said Al Rogers, director of buildings and grounds for the Hopkinton school district.
Rogers says he’s a bit worried about what damage might occur to the middle and high school fields if it’s particularly muddy on the morning of the race. However, he added, “the BAA has always been very good about making sure the fields are put back in good shape.”
McGillivray said that since local athletes have been training in cold temperatures he’s hoping for a mild Marathon day. He said medical personnel are preparing for the potential of more people visiting the medical tent than usual, because many runners had their training hampered by the winter weather.
The 30,000-person field is smaller than the 36,000 expanded field of last year’s race, according to Grilk, but still bigger than the 27,000 runners that had participated in 2013 and in previous years.
“We haven’t heard of anyone saying they’re not going to start because they haven’t had a chance to train because of the weather,” said Grilk. “That’s not in the nature of the people who run this race.”