Miles to date: 305
Money to date: $5,465
It's been an exciting week with lots of miles logged, but none of that compares to how much I am looking forward to this weekend. I will get to that in a few minutes.
This past weekend I had a friend's bachelor party on Friday night, meaning that Saturday's run was going to be painful. I had the foresight to set my alarm early and force myself to drink somewhere in the vicinity of five gallons of water. After some serious re-hydration and loading up on food I headed out to do a 14 mile run with a few friends.
On a cool, crisp morning we headed from Mass General out along the harborwalk down to Castle Island and back. One of the other runners was doing 18 miles and planned to keep going ahead, despite initially feeling like crap I felt pretty good by the end of the run and decided to put in an extra two miles.
This week the runs went well, if fairly uneventful. I ran four on Monday, ten on Tuesday and four today. Ten miles before work was a bit much, I had to leave the house by 5:30 and I still ended up running late.
The training schedule that Mass General gives it marathon runners actually suggest taking a day off from work the days you have to do these long runs. Even if I had vacation time to spare (which I don't) I can not envision a world in which I would take an entire day off for a run that takes just over an hour and a half.
The reason I am excited about this weekend is that as of Sunday I will officially begin tapering. The long, awful mountain of training is now largely behind me and we begin the countdown towards race day. There is the little matter of the 20 mile run on Saturday, but I'm choosing to focus on the good rather than the bad.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Miles to date: 266
Money to date: $5,350
Take a look at that again, it is not a type, Five Thousand Three Hundred and Fifty Dollars. That is a ton of money. So how did it happen?
March 5th I held my fundraiser at the Vault and it went better than I could ever have possibly hoped for. Thank you to everyone who came out and donated, it is greatly appreciated and with your help I was able to surpass my goal of $5,000. Additionally, thank you to all the companies and individuals who donated items for the raffle and door prizes. I can not express my gratitude to everyone enough.
All the fundraising aside, there has also been some serious logging of miles going on. The day of the fundraiser I ran a rainy 15 miles with a few members of the MGH marathon team. We ran along the marathon route and it was a pleasant run. Since there were so few of us, we spaced out pretty quickly but all the other runners on the course made it enjoyable.
I have been putting off changing over to new running shoes. I get oddly sentimental about putting a pair of shoes down (I'm even talking about them like they're a pet), and I kept avoiding it last week until it was too late, as I did not want to start using them for the long runs. Lesson here, as always, is that I am an idiot.
This past weekend called for 18 miles, my longest run to date. Due to various scheduling conflicts I had to do the run on Sunday and chose to do it as early in the morning as possible which meant I was heading out by my lonesome.
Considering I did the majority of my training for the Cape Cod Marathon by myself, long solo runs do not bother me too much. That being said, 18 miles is a long time to run solo. Meghan was kind enough to meet me at mile 6 with a few refreshments, which was a huge help, but that was one hour in, leaving me with just under two hours remaining.
The run went well, I finished in about 2:50 and did not feel too awful. Don't get me wrong, I felt like crap, but it went away quickly enough. Looking at a bit of a step back week with "only" 14 miles on tap for the weekend.
Keep on keepin' on.
Money to date: $5,350
Take a look at that again, it is not a type, Five Thousand Three Hundred and Fifty Dollars. That is a ton of money. So how did it happen?
March 5th I held my fundraiser at the Vault and it went better than I could ever have possibly hoped for. Thank you to everyone who came out and donated, it is greatly appreciated and with your help I was able to surpass my goal of $5,000. Additionally, thank you to all the companies and individuals who donated items for the raffle and door prizes. I can not express my gratitude to everyone enough.
All the fundraising aside, there has also been some serious logging of miles going on. The day of the fundraiser I ran a rainy 15 miles with a few members of the MGH marathon team. We ran along the marathon route and it was a pleasant run. Since there were so few of us, we spaced out pretty quickly but all the other runners on the course made it enjoyable.
I have been putting off changing over to new running shoes. I get oddly sentimental about putting a pair of shoes down (I'm even talking about them like they're a pet), and I kept avoiding it last week until it was too late, as I did not want to start using them for the long runs. Lesson here, as always, is that I am an idiot.
This past weekend called for 18 miles, my longest run to date. Due to various scheduling conflicts I had to do the run on Sunday and chose to do it as early in the morning as possible which meant I was heading out by my lonesome.
Considering I did the majority of my training for the Cape Cod Marathon by myself, long solo runs do not bother me too much. That being said, 18 miles is a long time to run solo. Meghan was kind enough to meet me at mile 6 with a few refreshments, which was a huge help, but that was one hour in, leaving me with just under two hours remaining.
The run went well, I finished in about 2:50 and did not feel too awful. Don't get me wrong, I felt like crap, but it went away quickly enough. Looking at a bit of a step back week with "only" 14 miles on tap for the weekend.
Keep on keepin' on.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
In the darkness before the dawn...
Miles to Date: 213
Money to Date: $2,480
I am not the biggest Allman Brothers Fan. I appreciate a lot of their music and enjoy their greatest hits album, but that is about the extent of my fan-dom. That being said, they have a song that I absolutely adore. It is a song that they only performed live and never did in the studio and it's called "Soulshine." It is a phenomenal song, go download it. Do it now.
The point of this is that there is a line in the song that I love that goes "Boy, in the darkness before the dawn you got to let your soulshine." That line was going through my head this morning as I trekked through the pre-dawn gloom.
Running in the morning can be a surreal experience, it's so quiet and there are so few people out. Given the time I need to start my runs, especially the long runs, this is very much the case. Due to the darkness when I start my runs I have stopped running with an IPod, so it is just me and my thoughts on the road. It can be great and at times it can be maddening (I spent the better part of a seven mile run with a Miley Cyrus tune stuck on loop).
The next three or four weeks are going to present the biggest challenge of my training. Everything I have done to date has been building towards this few brutal weeks. So I'll be out in the darkness before the dawn, working towards my goal, all I'd ask is that if you are one of the few people on the road that you keep an eye open for me.
Money to Date: $2,480
I am not the biggest Allman Brothers Fan. I appreciate a lot of their music and enjoy their greatest hits album, but that is about the extent of my fan-dom. That being said, they have a song that I absolutely adore. It is a song that they only performed live and never did in the studio and it's called "Soulshine." It is a phenomenal song, go download it. Do it now.
The point of this is that there is a line in the song that I love that goes "Boy, in the darkness before the dawn you got to let your soulshine." That line was going through my head this morning as I trekked through the pre-dawn gloom.
Running in the morning can be a surreal experience, it's so quiet and there are so few people out. Given the time I need to start my runs, especially the long runs, this is very much the case. Due to the darkness when I start my runs I have stopped running with an IPod, so it is just me and my thoughts on the road. It can be great and at times it can be maddening (I spent the better part of a seven mile run with a Miley Cyrus tune stuck on loop).
The next three or four weeks are going to present the biggest challenge of my training. Everything I have done to date has been building towards this few brutal weeks. So I'll be out in the darkness before the dawn, working towards my goal, all I'd ask is that if you are one of the few people on the road that you keep an eye open for me.
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