For 103 years the hale and hardy and inexplicably optimistic have gathered in little Hopkinton, Mass., at noon on Patriots' Day to run the 26.2 miles to downtown Boston. Heartbreak Hill is actually the last of four hills three quarters of the way through the journey. That climb completed, runners still have six miles to travel before they reach the office towers of the city, where the hale and the hardy will become the lame and the halt --- and victors, all of them.