Day 2

Marathon Day! It was a unique feeling to wake up, take some coffee to the front porch of the Queen Anne mansion, and find the normally-busy street in front of us completely quiet and empty. It had been barricaded from traffic, hours before even the leaders would arrive to mile 24.6.

I love marathons: definitely not running them, but watching them. The spirit, optimism, and energy of thousands of runners winding through a city, with thousands more supporters cheering them on, is a feeling you can’t many other ways. I’ve long fashioned myself as one of the World’s Greatest Marathon Spectators (though definitely not as a vocal extroverted generalist, my special power is the ability to find and support/photograph specific friends at multiple points on the course). But in the many years since my last spectating, I discovered that technology has made my special power obsolete! Now you no longer need to run calculations to extrapolate position from a mere 3-5 timing mats along the course; any jamoke can simply bring up the race app on their phone and see the dot of any runner they want, moving along the course in real-time!

After our “big effort”, we returned to a room for a bit to recuperate, and then Rett walked over to see Megan at Mile 14 in Daffin Park, while I rode to check out the far-flung eastern edges of the course. I got my emotional-fix from homeowners who had set up their own displays/aid-stations, from the Savannah State Marching Band playing “I’m Every Woman” (at the Every Woman’s Marathon) standing in their bleachers while the runners did a lap around the track, and finally at Mile 18, the furthest-out part of the course, from Megan fighting through pain and exhaustion at a point longer than she had ever run before.

When I ran my one marathon in 2009, I remember debating whether it was worth it to bring my phone strapped to my arm just so that I could listen to music (smartphone armband cases were still a relatively-rare thing!) In 2024, the app allows you to send messages to runners, and I saw a lot of them reading and responding to them on the course! And calling, FaceTiming, probably checking Instagram, and who knows what else! So technology has changed marathon spectating not just from the spectator’s perspective, but from the runners’ perspective as well; on-the-scene supporters might not be as needed as they once were, now that virtual support can reach the runners through their devices!

Still, I think Megan valued our on-the-scene, entirely-practical support at Mile 24, when we walked down from our AirBNB with a big glass of cold water and a couple of bottles to spray her down with. Overall the upper-60s temperature in Savannah could have been a lot worse, but after 7 hours out on the course and well into the heat of the afternoon, the later runners were definitely fighting through tougher conditions than the leaders had. So it was kind of surprising that there weren’t any aid stations in the final miles (other people asking for water made us feel bad we hadn’t brought more).

We left Megan to go ahead and reach her epic goal, and back in our AirBNB, used that new technology to track her last miles. We were probably more-attached to the idea of her completing before the 7h45m official cutoff time than she was, and when we left her, the pace of her last few miles indicated she would likely not make it. But then, whether it was our water delivery, or just her own strength and spirit, her dot on the map began moving faster than it had done for hours, to the point where in that last 0.2 miles she was moving faster than she had in the first 0.2 miles! We were literally cheering in our room when the clock on the app stopped: 7:44:03! Congratulations Megan, and thanks for giving us an excuse to follow a marathon!

Day 3

We had actually seen a decent part of Savannah when arriving into the city two days ago, and when watching the marathon, but today we did our own marathon, walking to the waterfront and back, and zig-zagging through nearly all 22 of the city’s famous tree-shaded squares.

We didn’t walk quite 26 miles, but it we had dragged a thread behind us, our winding path could have woven a fabric covering a significant chunk of Savannah’s downtown. Unlike Charleston’s downtown, there are more “new” buildings interspersed with this 17th-century buildings, and it felt a good bit more-touristy as well (though maybe that was just due to walking on Sunday rather than a weekday in Charleston). For those reasons, I disagree with Rett in the Savannah-vs.-Charleston battle, but they’re both unique, beguiling cities that I’m glad I got to explore more deeply.