Ryan, thanks again for sharing your experience. I hope that you have many fun (and fast) runs ahead of you.

When I was running marathons, I always had a range of goals in my head. The first one was always - don't get injured. The second was - finish the race. Attaining a desired time was only ever the third goal. (And I often put in some ridiculously fast times for a fourth or fifth goal.) Somehow I've always managed the second goal. And only a handful of times did I not get the first goal. So there was always some sense of achievement even if I didn't run "well". Having fun was probably a goal I should have placed very high up in this hierarchy.

Also, your calves cramping up reminding me of how my brother incurred the same, on that same Boston course, in the only marathon we ran together. https://medium.com/runners-life/a-run-too-short-75c3dafb3d3e

And one last note. Most of my running years were spent in hilly San Francisco. I qualified for Boston several times, but only ran it twice, once as a bandit. Neither time did it feel like a hard course - I wasn't even sure where "Heartbreak Hill" was! Albeit I was running at a slower pace than you and many other competitors were.