26.2 miles is not all that far, but for me there was some allure in riding the path of the Boston Marathon.

from what I could tell, there were two ways to do this:

1) join one of a few groups starting from Boston and riding the marathon back and forth — 52 miles. The mileage itself didn’t scare me off too much, but the thought of riding to Hopkinton after seeing the elevation profile seemed a bit tough for me. I asked around to see when these folks would be halfway so I could join them for the way home only,but no response.

2) join the “midnight marathon ride” in which folks take a train to Southborough in the wee hours and ride the marathon one way home. of course the disadvantages of this include that it is DARK and that the trail isn’t blocked off yet.

if I had this to do over, I would have had someone drop me off on the outskirts of Hopkinton with my bike around 7:30 or 8 and just ride the by-then-blocked-off trail one way to Boston. But I had promised to take my kids to Springfield late MOnday morning, so that would ruin our plans.

instead I did the midnight ride. this involved driving to downtown Boston, leaving my car on Beacon hill, and hopping over to South STation just in time to join what must’ve been 70 other people with bikes in taking over the last train to Worcester. Here are just a few of the bikes piled into the train.

During the hour-long train ride it became painfully obvious that I was by far oldest person on this trip. Although the notice was posted on BostonBiker.org, it was chiefly a Facebook announcement that rounded up college students (BU Bikes was the organizer), so I felt pretty much out of place. That said, everyone was friendly and no one said anything openly disparaging (at least within earshot!).

Since the train went to Southborough and not Hopkinton it was necessary to ride a fewmiles over there. This sounded easy enough, but no one told me that there was a 200-foot climb including a 8% grade. Not much for most people, but for me that was pretty tough. About five people got off and walked up the hill, and I came close to joining them.

Around 1am everyone had gathered at the starting line of the marathon, and we were off.

If it looks like a bunch of people riding in all directions it’s because it took a few minutes to establish which way was east on route 135. This is also when my age and grey hair became a distinct advantage: I was one of the few people who had ever actually been to the suburbs and knew how the roads linked up. So I was routinely telling people “135 becomes 16, just follow it” and the like.

There weren’t many cars, though I would still prefer doing this in the daytime with the route blocked off. By 3am we had arrived in Copley Square. I certainly didn’t keep up with the top 10-15 riders, some of whom had run the marathon the previous year, but I think I ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The only navigation booboo was staying on Comm Ave the whole way instead of taking the detour to Beacon. Adds about 3/10ths of a mile and a few hills, so I say I still did the marathon. Here’s my bike at the finish line:

The best part for me was the sense that I dont’ need to stick to the rail trails, that I can handle routes will rolling hills (though not the steep climbs, at least not with my 8-gear IGH).  I thought I’d be more exhausted but thankfully not … and it was 33 miles with all of the extra riding. I’m scheduled to do the 50-mile trip on the Cape Cod RAil Trail this weekend but am somehow looking forward to it less since it is so flat. we’ll see…