FOUL-WEATHER FANS FOR A SOGGY MARATHON

Not fog ... RAIN!

It pours all day Monday -- not unusual for spring.  Unfortunately, though, it's the Boston Marathon.  About six years ago, it was over 90 degrees on the day of the Marathon as we were having a hot spell.  Monday, though, no such luck.

It's rainy, it's windy, and it's raw.  In other words, those warm weather runners are in for a shock.

I watch most of the Boston Marathon on television, and I can feel the cold seeping through the screen.  People are trying not to be overdressed for the long haul, but they are consequently under-dressed for the minutes (and, in some cases, hours) before their start times.  The wheel-based competitors are going to be soaked to the bone from the rain coming down and the street water coming up from their wheels before they even leave Hopkinton.

With bursts of white breath clogging the starting line, the competitors leave in wave after wave after wave, some wearing heavy gear, some wearing plastic ponchos or bags, and some wearing the same skimpy gear they'd wear to run in the heat of the summer.  I half-expect them all to look like Frosty the Snowman when they're done.

Look carefully - you'll see the lines of rain falling.

I stop watching the coverage a few hours in after the top in each major field finishes.  I guess I'm just a fair-weather Marathon fan.  I look outside.  Nope; it's still raining like someone turned on a giant, sky-sized fire hose.  Fair weather, indeed.  This year we are all officially foul-weather fans, as well.

Congratulations to all the competitors, the runners, the stragglers.  I've walked two twenty-five mile walks in my lifetime, and I'll never do it again.  Run it?  My raincoat and I will be happy to wave as you go by.