Ok, I'm sorry I've neglected you blog readers like an plant that hasn't been watered for weeks. But here goes.
On Thursday night, I went on my first "Crossroads" run. Every thursday, a decent size group of marathon trainers will meet up at the corner of mass ave and beacon st in downtown boston; at an irish bar called Crossroads. Yes, unfortunately the name of the run is not very original. Anyway, we get on the T and take the D line out to Woodland, the second to last stop. It's a little over 9 miles to the finish line from here and from where the T drops you off you basically complete the final 9 miles of the marathon course. The last 9 miles also happen to be where the Boston Marathon course stops it's descent and begins a grueling series of a hills that culminates in one large incline known as "heartbreak hill". It is the most difficult finish to any marathon and is one of the major reasons Boston is regarded as one of the most difficult marathons to complete.
Getting back to the run though, I needed to get some hill workouts in and decided I would go this past Thursday. Of course Thursday happened to be the coldest day of the year and the temperature was somewhere around 0 degrees not including wind chill by the time we got out to the starting point. And there I am on the T wearing shorts, a long sleeve running shirt, a light running jacket, running gloves, and a face mask (I was the only one in shorts; go figure). Needless there an increased impetus to make it back into Boston in as short a time as possible.
Hills are like a fine wine; you do not chug it down like a busch light that we all enjoyed in our college years. Yes, hills are like a fine wine in that you must approach it carefully and understand that there are many layers that must be appreciated. The only difference is that if you chug the wine you've just wasted some expensive stuff; if you rush the hills you've wasted precious energy and are going to crash quickly. And after 16 miles of running, if you go rushing into the first hill on the Boston Marathon course you are not going to be running many more of those hills let alone make it to Heartbreak Hill. Hills require practice because you must be able to guage how much of your energy you can use and sustain given the extra work it takes to get up the hills.
Anyway, back to me being cold in the freezing weather and the idiot in shorts. All of the other "cool runners" in their tights and Garmin GPS watches (which I admit are cool) were commenting on my shorts, but the talking changed at the end of the run. I was careful during the hill staying behind some of the faster runners and in the first few miles got scared because I was losing feeling in my fingers. But I warmed up and so did my running; after hitting Heartbreak Hill which peaks at Boston College, I picked up my pace a bit and wound up blowing past all but one guy. I ran the 9+ miles in 66 minutes, which is about a 7:15/mile pace. This is an impressive split for typically, but considering these are the dreaded hills of the Boston Marathon this goes down as quite possibly my best run ever.
The girls who were commenting on my shorts and saying how they qualified for the Marathon were complimenting me on my running; it was nice to not be that slow idiot in the shorts and just remain the fast idiot in the shorts. Anyway, I figured I'd share the happy run with you all.
Anyway, as always please think about donating to my fundraising effort for Dana Farber by following the link below. Your generosity is gladly appreciated:
http://www.runDFMC.org/ryanmeehan2009
Tomorrow will come a discussion of hyponatremia, a danger for marathon runners, which will be part of a larger discussion of drinking and eating during exercise. Night all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment