Boston Marathon with a Baby 🏃🏼‍♀️

It was Monday April 15th, 2024, otherwise called, “Patriot's Day 🇺🇸” or “Marathon Monday!” Abby had no daycare, but Harvard still had classes. In fact, Harvard was like the only University in the Boston area that still had classes, so shame on Harvard. But I digress. Fortunately, I didn’t have class until 3pm.

So Abby and I decided to embark to Wellesley and the infamous “Scream Tunnel” to see the BOSTON MARATHON! We left around 9 am. The weather was beautiful, in fact it felt like the first nice warm day in Boston this year. The traffic was non-existent, and the views were magnificent! We’ve never visited Wellesley before, so we drove around campus, and it was absolutely picturesque. Thankfully, the event parking at Wellesley was open, which means that you can literally park right next to the scream tunnel. Abby fell asleep on the drive over after about 30 renditions of “Wheels on the Bus”, so it was a peaceful drive. When we arrived, I could hear the screaming the minute I stepped out of the car, in fact, you could see the runners from the top of the parking lot! I was excited to join the fun, so I put Abby in her stroller, thankfully she stayed asleep, and we took the elevator down to go to the Scream Tunnel, which was conveniently located behind the event parking lot.

We arrived when the wheelchair event was occurring, Abby was still asleep, but I scouted us to a perfect spot near the 20 km sign. There were students outside, enough to where you felt a part of the action, but not enough to where it was overwhelming, but Abby and I were next to another family on our right, and two elderly women, Wellesley alumni from the 90s. I had so much fun screaming as the runners passed by, but I did lose my voice after a while. We even got to see the winner of the Men’s Boston Marathon pass us! He was so far ahead of the other runners that it looked like he was the only runner in his group! We were outside for about 2 hours and around 11 ish, we started getting hungry, but unlike Harvard it seemed like there was nowhere to eat around here. Thankfully, I saw a friend from Harvard who told me behind the Scream Tunnel, there were tons of campus run events with a bounce house, free snacks, merch and drinks (don’t worry, it was non-alcoholic)! So we got snacks, and I ended up running into one of my best friends, Alekhya, who gave us a refuge in her dorm, where Abby got to wake up a little more away from the chaos and we got to eat more snacks like berries and bagels! After catching up for a bit, we went back to the Scream Tunnel!

This time around there were alot more people, so we ended up hanging out a bit farther from the runners away from the crowd of college students. After taking pictures, we headed for the Wellesley catered lunch. When we arrived there wasn’t a line. It was free for Wellesley students and $8.00 for non-students (cash only). We snuck in as Wellesley students with one of Alekhya’s friend’s IDs (hehe, I forgot cash lol). So Abby and I got food and sat on the ground and had a fun picnic! Before we knew it the line for lunch was crazy! After we had a picnic, we left for the drive home. Abby was asleep before we even left the town of Wellesley, but the traffic getting back was horrendous with a lot of bumper-to-bumper traffic getting into Boston.

In the end, it was a beautiful day, an incredible experience, and a very fun start of the week!