Beantown

First of all, I've come up with a rationalization or excuse for my last run. I had run a hard speedwork episode the day before, and even though it was only 4 repeats, I think it had more of an effect on me than I realized. I'm guessing this because my quads were pretty sore Friday afternoon. (Of course it's probably a little deconditioning as well, but this makes me feel a little better.)

Anyway, on the weekend I made a short trip into Boston. If any of you can remember the first time I was there, I had mentioned that I missed running on the Charles. So I did it this time.


10 miles along the Charles River.

I wasn't sure exactly of where I was going so I ended up running the same route a few times, and I went up and down this ridiculous ramp more than a few times. But all in all, it was pretty cool. Kind of a foggy morning, but there were enough runners out there to make me feel part of something.


Very picturesque


Slightly further along path


Museum of Science. (I ran out of path just about here.)


On the Cambridge side


That ramp thingy and a nice picture of Harvard Bridge

Finally, it was very cool to see a lot of the street names that I've heard before. There was one particular street name that I hear mentioned a lot on Phedippidations. I had to stop and take picture.


Boylston Street. Pretty close to the Boston Marathon Finish Line.

Although I don't foresee ever qualifying for Boston, I do plan to run it sometime, perhaps as early as next year. I'll have to do it through charity, but I think it would be really cool to have run New York and Boston. Now if only they had a charity option for the Olympics....

Struggling

Went out again this morning, and I'm really struggling. I meant to run more but I could barely make it for 5 miles. I had to take a break halfway. And they weren't even that fast, about 9 minute miles.



Still not sure if it's he heat or deconditioning. (I also need new shoes.) Either way, I've got to get out there more often.

At least I'm doing better than this tree blocking my running path this morning:



We had a major storm a few nights ago, and there were trees down all over. Considering how old this tree looked, it's kind of sad. But I guess that's just nature...

In good news, I think it's supposed to cool down a touch, into a nice weekend. (Although there may be some isolated thunderstorms.) Currently, it's "partly cloudy and 79". I'll take it!

Hot Hot Hot!

It's been way too hot here!

After my uplifting last post, I started slowing down. I ran 5.5 miles on that Wednesday, followed by another race on the weekend. It was only a 4 miler and I wanted to turn it into a long run. Unfortunately, I had issues getting out of the house in the morning, and I didn't have time for much of a run. I ran a little less than 5 before the race, followed by the 4 mile race.

It was hot! I had a hard time even doing the slow mile before the race. I was keeping track of the time, and I knew I was tight for getting back to the start line on time.

This was the first race I'd be running since they started the corral system. When I picked up my bib I saw it was blue. It was only when I passed the start area before the race, that I realized that this was the first corral. I'm an elite! (Ha!) I guess because the race was capped at 3,000 runners I ended up in that first corral. As it turned out I got to the start area 5 minutes before the race, and the guy didn't let me into that corral anyway. Truth is I was wiped anyway and I didn't care, but that was the first of the several volunteers who yealled at me that day. Sheesh!

I ended up starting in the middle somewhere. AS you can see I started really slow, and was therefore able to run negative splits.
8:34
8:13
7:59
7:32
My final time was 32:15 for an 8:03 pace, about a minute off my best. Because of the heat though, I was happy enough with this result.




Pretty painful progression through the race!

The following week I didn't run the entire week until the weekend. I'd like to blame it on the heat, but I don't really remember when it got so hot. I was supposed to run a race at 5:30am on Wednesday. It was supposed to rain, but I laid out my stuff and got up at 4:30 anyway. When I looked out it was dark and wet, and I didn't really need the race. So I went back to bed.

I also remember getting up early on Sunday to run before it got too hot. I was up at about 6:45 and when I checked the temperature it was already 80 degrees. And heating up fast. I'm embarrassed to say, but I chickened out. Again. I did end up running a tempo run on the treadmill later, but even that was tough. In retrospect I could have been deconditioned, but I'd like to think it was the heat in the gym. I only peaked at 7.0 mph but I was totally drenched from the effort.

Today, I went back to the track. I've been fooling around with making a training schedule for the marathon, and it has me looking at the FIRST book again. My last 5K PR was so far ahead of where I was before, that I wasn't sure which paces to use as my training goals. In the end I chose the group based on a 22:00 5K - as compared to 23:00, which I used at the end of the last training cycle.

I decided to run 4 x 800m intervals today, mostly because of my time constraints. According to the book, my pace for the 800's should have been 3:16. I kind of remembered running 3:28's in the past, but I didn't look it up. (I was wrong.)

In any case, these are how my splits went for today's 800's:
3:07 (hey, this is going to be easy)
3:17 (whoops, not that easy)
3:22 (glad i'm only doing 4 of these)
3:25 (maybe if i start slower i can finish faster. guess not.)

So as you can see, I need a little more work in the speed department. Then again, have I mentioned that it's been really hot here? It was in the 80's and that's got to count for something!

This weekend I'm traveling, but I hope to get a run in on Monday. The following weekend I'm supposed to volunteer at a NYRR race, but I'm on call. I tried to sort this out in advance, but the help I got from the NYRR was suboptimal. (They took too long to respond.) I'm going to try and make the volunteering job, but if I can't, it's going to be a real pain to make up. We'll see...