7.Thomas Grilk — Direct/Cross

THOMAS GRILK: My name is Thomas Grilk, G-R-I-L-K.

THOMAS GRILK: Good morning, sir.

THOMAS GRILK: I work at the Boston Athletic Association.

THOMAS GRILK: I'm the executive director.

THOMAS GRILK: The Boston Athletic Association is an organization that was formed in 1887 to promote health and fitness. It has existed over that period of time to the present day with that as its principal aim.

THOMAS GRILK: My affiliation is briefer, yes. I became a member of the Boston Athletic Association in 1987. I had been affiliated previously as -- I had first run the Boston Marathon three times: in 1976, '77 and '78. In 1979 I became the finish line announcer at the marathon, which was my first actual connection with the event and the organization. In 1987 I became a member of the BAA; in 1990, a member of its board of governors; in 1995, a vice president of the BAA; and then in 2003, I became the president of the BAA, and held that role until 2011, when I became the executive director.

THOMAS GRILK: The executive director is the person who is in charge of day-to-day activities, is the senior executive officer for the conduct of the business of the BAA.

THOMAS GRILK: The BAA operates in three principal areas: Number one, best known, is the conduct of running events, racing events; most notably, the Boston Marathon every year. In addition to that, large, mass-participation races involving thousands of runners at three other distance: five kilometers, ten kilometers and a half marathon. The second principal area of activity is community service aimed, to a great deal, at kids, fitness activities and competitive activities for school-aged children: cross-country events in the fall, relay events in the springtime, around the time of the marathon, and training courses that support those. The third area is the development of high-performance athletes, high-performance runners now. In the beginning of the BAA, it was an organization that looked to many sports but focused on track and field. When the Olympic Games were revived in Athens in 1896, it was the Boston Athletic Association that sent a majority of the U.S. team. So the development of high-performance track-and-field athletes has been a part of the BAA for a long time. And we have revived that rather recently, hiring one of the world's preeminent distance coaches to reinvigorate that part of what we do. So those are the three areas in which we operate.

THOMAS GRILK: The Boston Marathon was first conducted in 1897. In 1896, when BAA athletes went to Athens for the revival of the Olympic Games, one of the events that was contested there was a marathon: a run from the Plains of Athens -- Plains of Marathon into Athens. And BAA members brought that idea back with them, and in 1897 organized the first Boston Marathon. And it has been conducted annually ever since.

THOMAS GRILK: The course is largely unchanged since 1897. It's a little bit longer now because the marathon distance was standardized in the 1920s at 26 mile, 385 yards, the distance we know today. It first started in Ashland, Mass., and followed the route that it follows today. When the course had to be lengthened to meet the standard distance for a marathon, that moved the start out to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which is where it starts today.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, as I say, the course itself hasn't changed really very much, but the size of the race, I suppose, is the most notable change. It has grown from 15 runners in 1897 to tens of thousands each year now. If we go back to around the year 2000, it had grown to about 17,000 runners, and over the ensuing decade grew to 27,000. And for a number of years, from 2010 to 2013, it was about 27,000 runners. So it is a much larger event than it once was.

THOMAS GRILK: The marathon has a different significance, I'm sure, for a great many different people. For runners, it is the only marathon outside of the Olympic Games and the world championships for which one needs to qualify in order to run, for the most part. For in excess of 80 percent of the field, it is necessary for somebody to have run another marathon somewhere else, and done it in a time standard that is set for their age and gender. So it's an aspiration for a great many people. And the qualifying standards are difficult, so it's a challenge for someone to do, and it is seen as quite an accomplishment by people who do it. The significance is different for others. There are people who come out every year to work on the race, to volunteer. There are between 8500 and 10,000 people, depending on field size, who come out and volunteer each year. And many of them come back year after year. There's a great commitment to it there. For people who live along the route, it is a day to come out and have one of the first days of spring when one can get outdoors and perhaps cheer for an event and for some athletes that are going by their door.

THOMAS GRILK: It falls on Patriots' Day, which is -- which falls on the third Monday in April each year. It is a Massachusetts holiday, so schools are out and many people are off work. So it's a day when people have the opportunity to come out and watch if they wish.

THOMAS GRILK: It was -- the Boston Marathon, officially the BAA Boston Marathon, was originally known by the name America's Marathon. And I think -- although I wasn't there for it, I expect that it was chosen to coincide with Patriots' Day, in part, because that was the day that honored the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The notion of American freedom and let's find another way to celebrate that day, and that's when the marathon was selected for that date.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, it is among the largest and it is also one that attracts some of the finest competitors in the world. So it is a combination of being an elite race with professional runners competing for prize money, as well as a mass-participation race for a great many people, for those who are able to qualify. And there are very few such races around the world that have that combination of size and high-performance participation.

THOMAS GRILK: The number of elite runners is rather small. So each year for the men's and women's open division, the people who are competing for prize money, there are 15 to 20 in each of those categories who might have some chance, not necessarily of winning but of winning some money. Maybe 30 would have an opportunity to win money. There's a wheelchair competition as well, and there is a slightly smaller number of elite athletes competing for money there. About 80 percent of the field, a little more than that, is made up of people who have come in through open registration, which is to say that they have run another marathon in the past, and within the preceding 18 months or so, that meets the qualifying time for their age and gender. About half of the rest of the field is made up of charity runners who are running either in the charity program operated by the BAA or that operated by our principal sponsor, John Hancock. Other runners who are in that additional percentage come from running clubs here, from cities and towns along the way, international runners coming through tour groups. In general, many of the people who are instrumental in allowing the marathon to go forward by providing that assistance, it seems fair that they should have some opportunity to designate some of the people who will run.

THOMAS GRILK: It is just over 26 miles, or just over 42 kilometers. Hopkinton resides about 490 feet above sea level, so people start on the course at a relatively high point and run down a steep hill and then run through -- from Hopkinton through Ashland into Framingham. In Hopkinton, there's a considerable crowd of spectators at the very start. As the race then moves beyond Hopkinton, it is a more -- the course is a more -- has a more rural character to it. So the number of spectators is not as great going through the first part of Hopkinton after the start and then through Ashland. It moves then into Framingham and Natick where it is a more suburban set of communities. There are more spectators along the road. It goes from Natick into Wellesley. In Wellesley the number of spectators rises considerably, most famously, perhaps, as the runners pass through Wellesley College where the students come out in great numbers to encourage runners, then through Wellesley Center where a great number of people come out to watch. It then -- the course then passes past what we think of here as Route 128, I-95, and gets into a series of hills. There are four major hills that the runners have to cross in the city of Newton, most famously Heartbreak Hill which leads up to Boston College. The number of spectators is, if anything, greater as the runners come through Newton and as they get to Heartbreak Hill, which is at about 21 miles coming up to the buildings at Boston College. The crowds are very, very dense. The race then goes down from that hill through Brookline, where the crowds are very thick, and finally comes through Kenmore Square in Boston, onto Commonwealth Avenue, right onto Hereford Street, left onto Boylston Street, which is where the finish is. The crowds in Boston are very dense, and the number of people and the noise that they make at the finish is considerable, both because there are a lot of people there and because they are now in an urban setting with large buildings around them.

THOMAS GRILK: The spectators who are there reflect the diversity of their communities through which the race passes. For much of the first part of the race, probably the first 20 miles or so, the spectators in the main are people who live there, people in those towns. They are people, in many cases, who have been coming for many years. Their parents may have been out as spectators at the race; their grandparents may have been out there. As the race gets more toward Boston College, then the student participation in spectating goes way up. And as the race then goes down into Brookline and into Boston, there are more -- many local people are there, but also visitors from other places. Marathoners come from many states -- from all states and many countries. They bring family members with them. There are a lot of people who are students here or people who are working in Boston who will come out to watch the race. So there is a diversity to the spectators that, as I say, reflects where the race is being run.

THOMAS GRILK: They express a great deal of enthusiasm for the runners in the race. For those who are running -- it's been a long time since I have, but even going back that far, I remember how inspiring it is to have people cheering for you as you are running. It is exciting. It is exhilarating. For the spectators, it is -- it's a chance to come outdoors in the springtime. It's a chance for them to cheer a little bit. And they come out and, when necessary, take care of runners. So if, for example, we have, as we did in 2012, a very warm day, in addition to the hydration stations that we have along the way on the course -- and there are hydration stations every mile along the way -- in addition to that, people who live along the course will bring out water and ice and orange juice and fruit, and little children will have orange peels that they give to runners. And it leads to a very heightened degree of interaction between the spectators and the runners.

THOMAS GRILK: Each year the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau does an analysis, an estimate of the economic impact of the marathon, and publishes that. In 2012 the number that they published was approximately $137 million; for 2013 it was a bit more than that. I think $142 million.

THOMAS GRILK: It's difficult to -- well, the connection at the Visitors Bureau has a formula they use. I don't know precisely what it is, but they look at the number of runners and decide how many people will be there; they look at media people who come in, those who are attracted to cover the race, and they have a formula that they use to come up with their economic impact study. It's difficult for us to be able to say exactly how many spectators there are along the way. There is no way to count them. The estimate we have used is that in a year when the weather is favorable and a lot of people come out, there are perhaps half a million people who line the course.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, certainly all 50 states in the United States are represented in the marathon field. About 20 to -- there are at least 40 percent who are from outside Massachusetts and New England. All states are represented. And there are runners from many countries. About 18 percent of the field is international. So the rest are domestic from various places around the U.S.

THOMAS GRILK: For us at the Boston Athletic Association, the amount that we spend in order to put on the race in sort of a normal year, going back to 2012 or 2013, is in the $7 million range; however, there are contributions that come from others that go beyond that. So that, for example, another of our sponsors, Adidas, provides jackets to all the volunteers, provides shirts to all of the athletes who are competing; Poland Spring provides water; Gatorade provides hydration beverages of theirs. Others provide other things. John Hancock provides assistance in various ways. So I know what we spend. I don't have a number for everything that goes into it, but it is a number more millions of dollars.

THOMAS GRILK: We do. We have a principal sponsor, which is John Hancock Financial Services here in Boston. That is a relationship that is now 30 years old. The second largest sponsor is Adidas. That's a 27-year relationship. And there are a number of other significant sponsors with whom we work.

THOMAS GRILK: There are. The most formal relationships with the charities are conducted by the BAA and by John Hancock. We each have a charity program in the BAA program. We have about 30 charities in any given year with whom we work. They receive approximately 15- to 1600 entries that they can distribute to people whom they select to raise money for that charity. John Hancock has a charity program involving approximately a thousand runners. They have more charities in that program. They have more than a hundred charities with whom they work, and the charities are able to select whomever they want. They generally require a fund-raising minimum, generally, over recent years, in the realm of four to five million dollars. Then at the end, after the race is over, the charities all report back. And in the realm of 2012-2013, the amount raised in the aggregate would be approximately $20 million from those two programs.

THOMAS GRILK: The entries that are provided to the charities waive the qualifying requirement, although there are some runners who have met the qualifying requirement who choose to run via the charity programs.

THOMAS GRILK: During marathon weekend there are events in two categories: First, athletic. On either Saturday or Sunday -- in 2013 it was on Sunday -- we conduct a five-kilometer road race that starts -- in those days started and finished at the Boston Marathon finish line with, in that year, about 7,500 participants. That's followed on that day by a series of urban mile races: one-mile races around city streets with six categories. One actually is one kilometer rather than a mile. There's a one-kilometer race for middle-school boys and one for middle-school girls; and then there's a one-mile race for high-school boys and for high-school girls; and then a one-mile race for professional male and female competitors. They run around city blocks, coming past the finish line and the grandstand a couple of times. And then in the afternoon on Saturday of marathon weekend we have what's called the "Relay Challenge" which is a series of relay races along Boylston Street right by Copley Square in the Back Bay, with teams comprised of kids from Boston schools, schools from towns along the marathon course and a few other towns. And the kids who compete in those races are kids who have been -- have gone through a training program to get ready for it. Those are the athletic events. There are then a series of other events, more on the social side of things, some welcoming events. There is an event at which we make presentations of numbers to returning champions, known as the "Champions' Breakfast"; there is, through the course of the weekend, what is referred to as the "Expo," which is perhaps most easily seen as a kind of trade show, usually at the John Hynes Convention Center, at the Prudential, at which people in the running and fitness industry have booths at which they exhibit products and where people can buy things. For people who have come to run in the race, they have to go to the Expo to pick up their race number. They receive a postcard which they then bring to the Expo; they go through our registration area. They receive their number, they receive the T-shirt that Boston Marathon contestants receive, then go through the Expo. It is a very large and heavily attended event. After the marathon is over, there is an award ceremony recognizing the winners, both those who have won prize money and people through five-year increments of age category, male and female. I left out something in the beginning. The night before the marathon, on Sunday evening, there is a pasta dinner for all runners who choose to go that's conducted at Boston City Hall and Government Center. A couple of years ago about 8,000 people attended that event. Following the race, following the award ceremony, there is then a post-race party that is conducted. It has, in recent years, been up at the House of Blues and Fenway Park.

THOMAS GRILK: There are a great many people who come to Boston for the marathon. People who are, for example, publishers in the running industry, who have magazines; equipment manufacturers come. And for many of them, they will host social events for the people whom they would like to reach. So there are a great many social events that go on through the course of the weekend that are independent from the BAA.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, the most notable one on the same day as the marathon is a Red Sox game that is traditionally played in the morning on Patriots' Day as opposed to the normal game times. And it has been common for many years for a lot of people to leave the Red Sox game and then walk down into Kenmore Square to watch the marathon go by.

THOMAS GRILK: A substantial amount. There are approximately a thousand media credentials issued, but that's total people. There are 80 organizations that are registered. Some are print; some are TV of all kinds, domestic and international. There are 20 international outlets that come and receive credentials and cover the race. It is covered on television in Boston by our broadcast partner here. It is then carried nationally by a separate carrier with whom we contract. The BAA contracts with a firm to produce the video production, the TV show, as it were. And that is conveyed locally by one station, nationally by a national network. And then there are -- it's also live-streamed over the Internet. And there are individual broadcasting companies in different countries, 20 or so, that carry the race in those nations.

THOMAS GRILK: I haven't looked at that in recent times. I'm not an expert in ratings. It's a pretty large number, but the fact that it's on a Monday diminishes that to some extent. It's not a holiday anywhere else.

THOMAS GRILK: Perhaps you can guide me a little bit further.

THOMAS GRILK: Oh, I see. Well, there is a host hotel for us that is right in Copley Square, the Copley Plaza Hotel. That's the place where the BAA conducts most of our press events and a couple of large social events; one that I failed to mention before, on Saturday evening, a large reception that was known for many years as the Mayor's Reception. It is that organization with whom we have a direct relationship, but all of the surrounding hotels and restaurants benefit from all of the runners that are there. We have never had a need to enter into relationships with those hotels or restaurants, to sort of help them out, because people seek them out quite a lot. We do provide entrance to the race with something referred to as a "runner's passport," which shows them as entrants to the marathon and provides them discounts at some restaurants where they might go.

THOMAS GRILK: There is a very substantial amount of work to be done in order to provide for the needs of all the runners as well as making everything as accessible as we can for spectators and for media. If one starts at the beginning, with a race starting out in Hopkinton, and most people being somewhere else, we need to get them all out there. So we have a very extensive bussing program that takes place beginning early on Monday morning, sometimes as early as six o'clock, with people reporting to the Boston Common and being bussed out to Hopkinton in waves. They get out there and they need a place to wait for the race to start, so we work with the town officials in Hopkinton to provide what's referred to as an athletes' village out there, where athletes can await the beginning of the race. There are announcements; there are refreshments for them if they need them. And they are then -- because there are so many of them and because the course is really the same as it was in 1897 -- it hasn't gotten any wider -- they have to come in waves. In 2013 there were three waves of 9,000 each. And so the first wave will be brought out to the finish area, and they will go off; 20 minutes later another wave will come out, and they will go off; 20 minutes later another wave will come out and they will go off. So the first major logistical challenge is just making sure they're all there, bussing as much as 80 percent of them out there, and then getting them off to an orderly start. Going down the course, the next two most important areas are hydration and health. For someone running 26 miles, 42 kilometers, they need hydration along the way. We have hydration stations with either water -- with water and Gatorade virtually every mile along the course, all the way to the finish. And in order to meet possible health needs, there are first-aid medical tents nearly every mile along the way. The hydration stations are busy right from the beginning all the way along the course. The first-aid and medical tents are less busy in the early stages of the race. It is a very fit field of runners. Virtually all of them have met a qualifying standard. But as they get further down the course, medical interactions become a little bit greater, and so the first-aid medical tents are larger. As one gets all the way down through the course to the finish area, now you have some thousands of runners who are done and they stop, and their needs need to be met there. When they cross the finish line, they receive more hydration; they receive something to eat; they receive their finisher's medal, which is very important to them; they receive a heat-retention cape, a blanket to keep them warm. And if they need medical attention, there are really two medical tents that are available for them. The first is a very large one, referred to as Medical Tent A, which is located at Dartmouth Street in the Back Bay right in front of the Boston Public Library. It's a very large white tent, quite noticeable by anyone, with space for about 200 cots inside. There is also a second medical tent down the road, a little bit further in the Back Bay, which is a little less than half the size of that for overflow and for runners who may cross the finish line and feel all right and receive their refreshments, but as they get a little further down, suddenly get a little shaky. And that can happen. So they would go to Medical Tent B. There is also a large area down in that part of the Back Bay where people can be reunited with their families, what's referred to as the family meeting area. And so there are letters on lightposts and sign posts so that people whose last name begins with R can meet their family in that locale. The last bit of business, kind of a large item, is that in 2010, '11, '12, 13, runners could take out to the start with them a personal bag that -- we would issue them a bag that they could use to put personal belongings in and then be able to reclaim them at the finish. And those bags would be put on busses, those busses would be driven back into Boston while the competition was going on, and when the runners finish, they cross the line, received hydration, food, heat-retention cape, whatever they wanted, they would then come to a place where these busses were and they could, with their race number, receive the correspondingly numbered bag with their personal effects in there. At that point, once they had all of that, went off to meet their family, then they're on their own.

THOMAS GRILK: We partner closely with public safety officials at all levels, and it is they who provide for security matters. A rather simple way to think about it might be that our attention is focused on what happens inside the curbstones, for the runners, and public safety officials are more looking to the outside. There is a very high level of coordination that goes on among those public safety officials in the months leading up to the marathon every year. It is coordinated to a considerable degree through the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, which has its headquarters in Framingham, Massachusetts. And there are meetings out in Framingham, at their headquarters, at which both public safety and police, fire, emergency management, emergency medical people get together along with various state agencies and federal agencies to plan for the race that year and to address any security issues that they think need to be addressed.

THOMAS GRILK: 2013 began as any marathon had for a number of years with runners going down to the Common to get on busses to go out to Hopkinton. It was a good weather day. The year before, in 2012, we had had very high heat and had to take extra measures in order to provide, particularly for hydration, for runners. So when the race was beginning to form in 2013, it was good news for everybody that it was a good weather day. A good day to run and a good day to watch.

THOMAS GRILK: That's right. Once the runners got out to Hopkinton, then there is a very tight schedule to the way everything begins. At nine o'clock the athletes to whom we refer as mobility impaired, those for whom mobility is most challenging, began. At 9:17 the wheelchairs go off. Men and women in push wheelchairs. At 9:22 hand cycles would begin. There's a small number of people who compete in hand cycles, a wheelchair but where they don't push the rim of the wheel; they have what look like pedals in their hands that they turn. There's a geared system that moves the chair down the road. At 9:32 the elite women, the women competing for prize money, start so that they can -- the reason for that being so that they can have a competition themselves rather than being in the midst of a large pack of runners, including men. And then at ten o'clock the large race begins. At 10 a.m. the elite men start, the men competing for prize money. And then at the same time, right behind them, is Wave 1 of the overall field, so the first group of 9,000 runners. After they leave, there's a 20-minute period for runners to move from the athletes' village out to the starting line so that Wave 2 can begin at 10:20. And that process repeats itself. Wave 2 leaves; the people in Wave 3 move from the athletes' village out to the starting line, and at 10:40 they began.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, as executive director of the Boston Athletic Association, we, the organization, and I, as its representative, have overall responsibility for the race. We -- there's a gentleman who has been the race director for a number of years who is in charge of the tactical implementation of everything that happens out on the race course, and he is out in Hopkinton at the beginning of the race and then on a lead vehicle in front of it. Having been the finish line announcer for a very long time, I have continued to do that. That leaves me at the finish line. So we have a race director who's out on the course and I at the finish, and with a couple of other people there in case I have to -- in case I'm called away. I would act as finish line announcer, which really for a long time involves talking to people who have come to the finish line quite early, long before any runners are coming in, but to get a good space to watch. And so I would, at the time of the start of the wheelchair division, start talking about 9:15 or so, just to describe for people the scene out in Hopkinton, what it looks like, what it feels like, and then let them know when races began. And then over the course of the morning, over the course of the race, describe to people a little bit of what was happening, who was ahead, who was challenging, just to keep them apprised of what was going on. Over the course of that time, more and more people would begin to fill in the grandstands that are there.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes, you did.

THOMAS GRILK: I did.

THOMAS GRILK: They are.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes, they do.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes.

THOMAS GRILK: It does.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes, they are.

THOMAS GRILK: That is an aerial view of Boylston Street looking down toward the finish line as the runners would approach it. And as one looks, there is what appears to be a blue triangle, and that is just after the finish line. And up above it --

THOMAS GRILK: That's right. Yes, that is just beyond the finish line. The finish line is the yellow line in the road, just prior to that as one looks up the street here.

THOMAS GRILK: It is there, yes. And then up above where one sees what appears to be a white strip is a temporary structure that we refer to as the photo bridge, which is where photo and video journalists are who are taking pictures. It's also where a couple of the media outlets are that are doing a broadcast of the race, both the local broadcast and the organization that does the national broadcast.

THOMAS GRILK: It's taken from the photo bridge looking back up in the other direction, yes.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes, it is.

THOMAS GRILK: With the blue tent is the announcer's platform. So it is there that I sit during the time when announcing the race.

THOMAS GRILK: There are. There are metal structures up there, barricades, and attached to those are flags of many countries representing countries from which runners come to run the race.

THOMAS GRILK: The video screen that appears in the picture is put up each year at the corner of Boylston Street and Exeter Street. It is across the street from where those grandstands are located. So it allows people who are seated in the grandstand to be able to see a video feed of what is happening out on the race course.

THOMAS GRILK: I cannot. It's behind the flags.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, this is -- looking at the same corner, just for reference, at the very top right one can see a little blue patch with the John Hancock logo. That's the large video screen that we saw before. The street is Boylston Street. And this depicts runners coming to the finish there as they cross Exeter Street, which is the cross-street there in front of the grandstand, which one can see on the left there. They have about another half a block to go to the finish line, which is opposite the center of the Boston Public Library.

THOMAS GRILK: This is an aerial view of the marathon finish, again, looking in the direction in which the runners are going. The finish line in yellow is where you have marked it. On the right side of the picture are the really two grandstands. In the lower right-hand corner is the larger grandstand which is most analogous to, perhaps, bleachers one might see at a high school athletic event. The lower grandstand with white chairs is smaller, and that's right on the finish line. And it is right there at which presentations are made of the champions, trophy and metal, and the olive wreath that is given to the champion. As one goes beyond the finish line, it is -- one can see the photo bridge much more clearly here with a white awning over the top.

THOMAS GRILK: That is Medical Tent A that I described before. So people going through the finish area can go in there if necessary. There are volunteers who are out in the finish area who are able to pick up anyone who needs medical assistance, put them in a wheelchair and take them down to that tent.

THOMAS GRILK: That is where I'm located, yes.

THOMAS GRILK: They are.

THOMAS GRILK: It's a diagram of Boylston Street looking down from above. The yellow finish line is easy to see there. And just to the right of that, a kind of grayish white line, represents where the photo bridge is. The lower portion of the diagram represents the Boston Public Library: to the right, the older portion; to the left, the newer portion.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes.

THOMAS GRILK: They are places that I remember from that time. There have been some changes since 2013, but yes.

THOMAS GRILK: That's right. Exeter Street, the gray vertical line to the left, and Dartmouth Street over to the right, and the Medical Tent A depicted in the lower right-hand corner.

THOMAS GRILK: If one looks down at the finish line, it is on the -- how best to say it, opposite the library. So the library is on the lower portion. So one would go across the street, and the flags go from right around where the finish line is up to just about Exeter Street at the left edge of the picture.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes.

THOMAS GRILK: This is now looking one block further out on the race course, so that now we're between Exeter and Fairfield. So the gray -- I can do this?

THOMAS GRILK: So there is Exeter Street, which is the street we were looking at before; now it's a block further up there. There's Fairfield Street. The finish line is now down that way a half a block.

THOMAS GRILK: I am.

THOMAS GRILK: This goes up now yet further so that now we're up -- here is Hereford Street, which is where -- let's see.

THOMAS GRILK: Yeah, it would be Gloucester. Hereford is yet one further up where the runners come in. So now it's a further block up the race course prior to the finish.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes, on both sides of the street.

THOMAS GRILK: It is as dense here as it gets. There are people that fill the sidewalks. The same is true in some other parts of the course. There are places where people fill all available space, or so it seems. It's true here. If one goes out to the Heartbreak Hill area in Newton, there are very dense, deep crowds there as well.

THOMAS GRILK: The crowds tend not to diminish very much, at least from my observation. There are a lot of people who stay out there, and they continue to cheer loudly. So it would seem that they are out there enjoying cheering for the citizen runners, the non-elites, but the people who have worked so hard to qualify and are now finishing the Boston Marathon.

THOMAS GRILK: That represents the time that's elapsed since a particular wave left the starting line. In years gone by, there was only one time for the marathon. Everyone lined up at the starting line and the gun went off and everyone ran in, and your time for the race was the time at the finish line when you got there. So if you started back in the pack, you were at a disadvantage, but it was important for you to know what the clock was at the finish because that was your official time for the race. As years have gone by, technology has made that clock less important in that regard. Now the race is timed electronically for the vast majority of people who are running. So that they have a chip -- originally they were tied in to people's running shoes, now it appears it's in the back of one's race number. And every time one goes through a five-kilometer checkpoint, time is recorded. The official time for a runner is the time recorded when they cross the finish line, and it's the time that has elapsed and been measured electronically from the time they cross the start to the time they get to the finish. The principal benefit that those clocks provide these days is really more to give spectators a sense for how far along the race is. So at the very beginning of the day when the clocks are first set up, the starting gun is fired and that triggers an electronic pulse that starts the clock -- the official clock out in Hopkinton, but also triggers the clocks at the finish. And it's initially set for the wheelchair competition. So -- and that's the first group to finish. So that spectators can see where that is and they see the official time for the wheelchair competitors because they all start at once. It's a relatively modest number, 50 or so. When the women's elite race starts about 15 minutes after the wheelchair competitors start, then one of the two finish clocks is set to the women's elite start, and it then changes as time goes by. Then at ten o'clock, the men's elite group and the first wave of runners starts, and then the wheelchair clock switches back over to the starting time for the main race. There are scheduled times to shift those times back and forth among waves but it is sort of loosely observed. Once the race is really going on, the officials in the street -- one in particular -- will watch to see whether it now appears that most of Wave 1 has come through. And at that point, one or both clocks will switch to Wave 2. The way that an official can tell is that the waves have different colored bibs, different colored numbers: Wave 1, red; Wave 2, white; Wave 3, blue. And so those clocks would shift. And at a certain point, both clocks will reflect the last wave of runners to have started.

THOMAS GRILK: It does.

THOMAS GRILK: I do.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes. The one with which I'm most familiar is a store that sells running footwear and apparel, Marathon Sports.

THOMAS GRILK: Again, the one with which I'm most familiar is the Forum restaurant.

THOMAS GRILK: I have.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, for us in a situation like that, our approach is to focus on those people to whom we have the greatest responsibility, to focus on those things that we can control and try not to be too distracted by those that we cannot. And that day we had runners out on the course. We, the BAA, couldn't help with medical attention beyond the assets that were -- beyond the people who were already there in the medical tent doing what they did. So for us as race organizers, we really looked to those people who were outside that area to do what we could to meet their needs. There were some 5,600 runners who were stopped, who were unable to complete the course, some starting at Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay. Everyone was stopped and no one was allowed to go beyond there. So our focus was initially on, what can we do for these people? How do we get them back in? There were some who were, for example, taken to a church at Boston College. So we wanted to get busses out there so we could get them back in and get people back in from other places. Also, it was very important to runners to be able to collect their personal belongings after the race. For many people, they would have phones in there, hotel room keys, things that were important enough to them that they checked them so they could get them immediately after the race. And we wanted to find -- we wanted to try to get that available to them as quickly as we could. Those personal bags were in busses that were on Boylston Street, and that whole area was closed immediately by public safety authorities. So we had conversations with them to see if we couldn't find some way to get some of those belongings out for people. So that's what we could do. And then be as cooperative as we could with public safety and medical authorities to deal with the needs of those who had medical needs.

THOMAS GRILK: Well, the people on the scene for us, our volunteers, our medical staff attended immediately to needs of everybody whom they could, going back to the same principle: Where did they feel an obligation? It was to those runners or anybody who was in the finish area who had been hurt. And they went out to get them, to do what they could, to provide first aid on the scene or get them down to the medical tent. Generally what happened was that volunteers and others see -- official volunteers with volunteer jackets or people who were just there, spectators, would do what they could to get people who had been injured down into the medical area. As those people were brought into the medical tent, those who were most critically injured were taken immediately to ambulances at the other end of the tent; others were attended to, as well as possible, while more ambulances could be obtained, and that was generally being coordinated by Boston EMS, Boston Emergency Medical Services. And those people did a magnificent job. Everyone who entered that tent alive is alive today.

THOMAS GRILK: Yes, it did.

THOMAS GRILK: It did.

THOMAS GRILK: On Patriots' Day. April 20th this year, 2015.

THOMAS GRILK: Last year -- well, for several years, from 2010 through '13, the race had been 27,000. That was the field size. Because there were so many people who were unable to finish in 2013, with the cooperation of the eight cities and towns and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we were allowed, on a one-time basis, to enlarge the field so that we could give everyone who wasn't able to finish before, the opportunity to come and run if they wished to. And of those 5,600 or so people, the better part of 5,000 did. We also wanted to offer the opportunity to run to other people who were profoundly affected by what had happened in 2013, so the field size went up to 36,000 for that year. For this coming April, the field size will go back down, but not all the way to 27,000; it will be 30,000.

THOMAS GRILK: I did not.

THOMAS GRILK: That was the question.

THOMAS GRILK: When I see that and compare it to my experience of walking up and down the street along there quite often, it looks about right to me.

THOMAS GRILK: That's right.

THOMAS GRILK: That's correct.

THOMAS GRILK: I can't tell you particularly that each and every one of them was there.

THOMAS GRILK: I don't know that to --

THOMAS GRILK: I'm sorry. To what do you --

THOMAS GRILK: Oh. I do not know.