Today I ran after shooting at America's Test Kitchen. Being hesitant to run on the city streets, (mostly because I don't know where I'm going), I headed over to the reservoir that I've seen driving in so many times on route 9. I've run there a few times now and, to be honest, don't really enjoy it that much. It's just shy of a mile around which is good, but its packed stone dust, and isn't anywhere near level any more.
As a result there are tons of dips and rises and it gets pretty hard on the calves and ankles.
After 3 loops, I decided to get off of the path and onto the road. I had done 2.7, and my plan was to do about 5. (I AM supposed to be tapering after all!) Anyway, off onto the road I went with no real direction.
After going down a hilly road in a VERY nice neigborhood (one house I saw had to be at least a 3 or 4 million dollar mansion with a security checkpoint under construction), I ended up at another reservoir that I hadn't known about. This one had a paved path! After asking a couple of other runners I found out that this loop was 1.5 miles which would put me just over my planned distance of 5 miles once I got back to the car, so I went for it.
I'm pretty sure this new reservoir was actually Jamaica Pond. It was actually quite nice to run around. It has a lot more traffic that the first reservoir which I have discovered is Brookline Reservoir. I'm sure as the weather continues to get better, there will be more and more people, but for now it's pretty cool.
In the future, I'm just going to leave my car at ATK and head straight over to Jamaica Pond instead.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Jamaica Pond links up with another pond and path so the loop might extend past 2 miles. I'll have to scout it out on a future run.
After finishing the loop, I tried to improvise and find my way back to the car without following the same route I took away from it. This proved a bit difficult and I got lost for a little bit. No biggie though. My 5.5 mile run turned into a 7 miler which was just fine by me.
Side note, this run put me over 180 miles for the month which I think is a first. It also put me over 500 miles for the year so far!
19 days till Boston.....
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Last Long Run!
Saturday March 26th 2011 - Hopkinton to Heartbreak Hill
Today's run was the "Peak" distance run for my marathon training. The plan was to do 22-23 miles on the Marathon course with the RFTM crew. For this one, I convinced both Dan Davin and Dave Soligon to come run with us. We decided to meet the crew in Hopkinton instead of going all the way to Newton and then back to Hopkinton in the van.
Every year, the BAA sponsors a charity group training run 3 weeks before the marathon. Not all of the charity groups take part, but the ones that do (and that's most of them) bus or van their runners out to Hopkinton and everyone runs the course as far as they want to back towards the city. There are lots of water stops supported by both the BAA and the individual charity groups. There were even some VERY welcome port-o-potties in the town common in Hopkinton. Most runners do about 21 miles which puts them at the top of Heartbreak Hill in Newton.
After getting a ride from Dave's girlfriend Karen to the start line, a few quick pictures with the group and a pit stop to the green plastic box, we were off.
I knew from the first quarter mile that I was going to be paying the bill for this week's heavy mileage, particularly thursday night's 9 mile tempo run. I didn't have any real specific problems. No foot or hip pain. No "bathroom" issues . No nutrition or hydration issues. I just never felt GOOD. It never felt effortless or even enjoyable like it has in past long runs (including a 21 miler two weeks ago.)
So without a lot of excitement or stories to recall later, I just tried to keep my chin up and grind this one out. I decided early on that I wasn't going to do the goal distance of 22-23 miles, but that there was no way I wasn't going to at least make it to the top of Heartbreak Hill.
Just under 3 hours and 20.5 miles later I crested Heartbreak. Another easy .6 miles down the hill put me at my all time distance PR of 21.1 miles. Then I stopped. I knew I didn't have any more "good energy" left in me and continuing wasn't going to get me any gains. I felt a tiny bit defeated for not getting my goal distance, but then I reminded myself that I had just run over 21 miles!
I think I'm ready for Boston.
Admittedly, my first knee-jerk reaction to not being able to do the 23 miles was that I was in trouble for the Marathon. After all, this was my last chance at an over-distance training run. From here on out, the taper begins and I wont be doing more than 15 miles again before the race.
After changing into dry clothes, getting a coffee, and having a chance to think about it though, I realized that this run and the marathon were completely different. I had run my longest and hardest week ever leading up to today. I was, quite frankly, beat up coming into today. Less than a half a tank of gas at best. For the marathon, I will have been tapering and resting for nearly 3 weeks, and will have the freshest legs I've had all winter. Also, the marathon will be, well, the BOSTON MARATHON! Even as beat up and exhausted as I was today, I think I could have finished if there were a million cheering spectators on the course, not to mention all of the adrenaline that comes with them!
20 days till Boston......
Today's run was the "Peak" distance run for my marathon training. The plan was to do 22-23 miles on the Marathon course with the RFTM crew. For this one, I convinced both Dan Davin and Dave Soligon to come run with us. We decided to meet the crew in Hopkinton instead of going all the way to Newton and then back to Hopkinton in the van.
Every year, the BAA sponsors a charity group training run 3 weeks before the marathon. Not all of the charity groups take part, but the ones that do (and that's most of them) bus or van their runners out to Hopkinton and everyone runs the course as far as they want to back towards the city. There are lots of water stops supported by both the BAA and the individual charity groups. There were even some VERY welcome port-o-potties in the town common in Hopkinton. Most runners do about 21 miles which puts them at the top of Heartbreak Hill in Newton.
After getting a ride from Dave's girlfriend Karen to the start line, a few quick pictures with the group and a pit stop to the green plastic box, we were off.
I knew from the first quarter mile that I was going to be paying the bill for this week's heavy mileage, particularly thursday night's 9 mile tempo run. I didn't have any real specific problems. No foot or hip pain. No "bathroom" issues . No nutrition or hydration issues. I just never felt GOOD. It never felt effortless or even enjoyable like it has in past long runs (including a 21 miler two weeks ago.)
So without a lot of excitement or stories to recall later, I just tried to keep my chin up and grind this one out. I decided early on that I wasn't going to do the goal distance of 22-23 miles, but that there was no way I wasn't going to at least make it to the top of Heartbreak Hill.
Just under 3 hours and 20.5 miles later I crested Heartbreak. Another easy .6 miles down the hill put me at my all time distance PR of 21.1 miles. Then I stopped. I knew I didn't have any more "good energy" left in me and continuing wasn't going to get me any gains. I felt a tiny bit defeated for not getting my goal distance, but then I reminded myself that I had just run over 21 miles!
I think I'm ready for Boston.
Admittedly, my first knee-jerk reaction to not being able to do the 23 miles was that I was in trouble for the Marathon. After all, this was my last chance at an over-distance training run. From here on out, the taper begins and I wont be doing more than 15 miles again before the race.
After changing into dry clothes, getting a coffee, and having a chance to think about it though, I realized that this run and the marathon were completely different. I had run my longest and hardest week ever leading up to today. I was, quite frankly, beat up coming into today. Less than a half a tank of gas at best. For the marathon, I will have been tapering and resting for nearly 3 weeks, and will have the freshest legs I've had all winter. Also, the marathon will be, well, the BOSTON MARATHON! Even as beat up and exhausted as I was today, I think I could have finished if there were a million cheering spectators on the course, not to mention all of the adrenaline that comes with them!
20 days till Boston......
"I should have been doing this all along."
Thursday March 24th - Tempo run from Woodland Station to Crossroads Pub in Boston.
Against my better judgement, I decided to join the RFTM crew on the weekly tempo run tonight.
I say against my better judgement because I've already had a high mileage week (28 miles including the New Bedford Half Marathon on Sunday), and still need to do my longest scheduled training run of 21-23 miles on Saturday. The marathon training is quickly coming to an end though, and I haven't made it to a single Thursday night run, so I decided to suck it up and go for it.
After a lot of internal hemming and hawing about whether to park in the city and take the train out to the start, or drive out to the start and then depend on a ride back to the car afterwards, i decided on the later.
Definitely a mistake. More on that later.
I knew I was in trouble when after only the first couple of minutes of running, it was just me, Chrissy Horan and Brian Casey. Everyone else was dropped back already.
I should say here that my mindset going into this run was to pick someone who is about my pace on the long runs and try to stick with them for the tempo run. The problem though, is that these two have been doing the tempo runs all winter long, and this was my first one!
Anyway, as expected, I really suffered through the first few miles as Chrissy dragged me and Brian up Heartbreak. Surprisingly though I really caught a groove after the hill and managed to keep up for the duration of the run. About 5 miles in, Chrissy started doing intervals. I thought that would be the last I saw of her but it turns out that my even tempo sort of balanced out with her up and down tempo, so we pretty much stayed together until the end.
I was surprised and disappointed when I look down at my garmin and saw that my pace for the 9 mile run was 7:58 per mile. Don't get me wrong, it's always great to see a "7" in front of my pace, but I felt like I worked a lot harder than that! Just a few days before I had run the New Bedford Half with a pace of 7:53, and this run was much harder on me than that was! The x-factor, of course, was Heartbreak Hill. There were certainly no hills of this caliber in New Bedford.
I definitely came away from this run feeling good, but also feeling that it would have paid huge dividends for me to be coming to this run every week. Alas, I have a little boy at home, a wife who works nights, and a limited babysitting budget.
The run finished with a very cool discovery.
I knew that my RFTM team members had been finishing their Thursday night tempo runs at Crossroads, but I assumed that it was just them grabbing a beer and heading home to their ice baths. You can imagine my surprise when as I sat on the stoop stretching out, at least a dozen runners I didn't recognize also finished runs and headed into the pub. It turns out that on the upstairs of Crossroads is basically taken over by runners on Thursday nights! To go along with the pitchers of Harpoon IPA, the staff puts out pitchers of ice water and, get this, FREE PIZZA! I must say, it was pretty awesome to not have to feel bad about being all sweaty and stinky because everyone else in the bar was too! Not only that, but when does it ever happen that you go into a bar and have something in common with everyone else in the place?!? Plus, did I mention free pizza?
I'll definitely be trying to make more of these. I'm told it's a year round phenomenon. (though it's probably at it's busiest now with the marathon being so close.)
Against my better judgement, I decided to join the RFTM crew on the weekly tempo run tonight.
I say against my better judgement because I've already had a high mileage week (28 miles including the New Bedford Half Marathon on Sunday), and still need to do my longest scheduled training run of 21-23 miles on Saturday. The marathon training is quickly coming to an end though, and I haven't made it to a single Thursday night run, so I decided to suck it up and go for it.
After a lot of internal hemming and hawing about whether to park in the city and take the train out to the start, or drive out to the start and then depend on a ride back to the car afterwards, i decided on the later.
Definitely a mistake. More on that later.
I knew I was in trouble when after only the first couple of minutes of running, it was just me, Chrissy Horan and Brian Casey. Everyone else was dropped back already.
I should say here that my mindset going into this run was to pick someone who is about my pace on the long runs and try to stick with them for the tempo run. The problem though, is that these two have been doing the tempo runs all winter long, and this was my first one!
Anyway, as expected, I really suffered through the first few miles as Chrissy dragged me and Brian up Heartbreak. Surprisingly though I really caught a groove after the hill and managed to keep up for the duration of the run. About 5 miles in, Chrissy started doing intervals. I thought that would be the last I saw of her but it turns out that my even tempo sort of balanced out with her up and down tempo, so we pretty much stayed together until the end.
I was surprised and disappointed when I look down at my garmin and saw that my pace for the 9 mile run was 7:58 per mile. Don't get me wrong, it's always great to see a "7" in front of my pace, but I felt like I worked a lot harder than that! Just a few days before I had run the New Bedford Half with a pace of 7:53, and this run was much harder on me than that was! The x-factor, of course, was Heartbreak Hill. There were certainly no hills of this caliber in New Bedford.
I definitely came away from this run feeling good, but also feeling that it would have paid huge dividends for me to be coming to this run every week. Alas, I have a little boy at home, a wife who works nights, and a limited babysitting budget.
The run finished with a very cool discovery.
I knew that my RFTM team members had been finishing their Thursday night tempo runs at Crossroads, but I assumed that it was just them grabbing a beer and heading home to their ice baths. You can imagine my surprise when as I sat on the stoop stretching out, at least a dozen runners I didn't recognize also finished runs and headed into the pub. It turns out that on the upstairs of Crossroads is basically taken over by runners on Thursday nights! To go along with the pitchers of Harpoon IPA, the staff puts out pitchers of ice water and, get this, FREE PIZZA! I must say, it was pretty awesome to not have to feel bad about being all sweaty and stinky because everyone else in the bar was too! Not only that, but when does it ever happen that you go into a bar and have something in common with everyone else in the place?!? Plus, did I mention free pizza?
I'll definitely be trying to make more of these. I'm told it's a year round phenomenon. (though it's probably at it's busiest now with the marathon being so close.)
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