the hobbyjogger chronicles

That's a wrap, 2011 stylee

2011-12-31T15:16:00.001-05:00

I just got back from my final run of 2011 and it's time to stick a fork in this puppy. It was a 2.5-mile shuffle with my 14-year-old daughter, Allie, who complained the whole way. I didn't force her to go in any way, mind you, she's just a 14-year-old girl and that's pretty much what they do. She was tired and whatnot since earlier I took her along for an hour plus long walk in the woods with Joe Joe the Idiot Circus Dog but hey.

Just before said 2.5-mile shuffle, I did 7 mile warm-up on one of my familiar loops while wearing my brand new, just out of the box, wicked obnoxiously orange Asics Sky Speeds. Holy crap they're orange.

Orange

All in all I'll call it a good year of running. It was low in overall mileage, low in racing, but high in fun and I finished the year healthy and mentally in a good way with running. According to RunningAhead.com I ran 2,498.5 miles for the year. Yeah...if I had known that before I sat down to write this you can bet I would have found a way to squeeze another mile and a half out of today to make the utterly meaningless milestone of 2,500 miles (Despite all pretenses of nonchalanceI am an obsessive-compulsive whackjob after all.) Still, that's a lot more than I would have guessed. A lot of that must have been loaded into the first half of the year though since I haven't had a 200 mile month since September.

I only ran 4 races: 3 5k's and a half marathon. (Wow, really?) But there was that whole Tour de Vermont thing, which was pretty awesome. Somehow I squeaked out a 17:23 5k back in the early summer when apparently I was actually training a bit, then a 1:22 half marathon in October after the slide toward not giving a crap was well underway. I'll take it, all things considered.

I will make an honest effort to race more in 2012 and I'll try to write more as well. Originally this blog basically just served as a place for me to put race reports which makes 2011 a complete fail as I don't believe I even wrote about any of the races I ran this year (all 4 of them). The plan is to get back to capturing my races here (this is mostly for myself but if others like to read them that is always nice as well) but I also want to throw out a lot of other thoughts I have about running and the rest of life and how it all fits together. I can't make any promises but that is the plan.

Happy New Year and happy trails. Keep on rolling.

Promise me you'll always be a runner

2011-12-23T08:21:00.000-05:00

I know that the two or three of you who follow this space will be very relieved to see my first post in several months. Sorry, I have been busy.

Personally, professionally and in almost every other way, 2011 has been a very good year for me and I feel extremely blessed. One of the side effects of this is that I logged, by a fairly good margin, my lowest mileage total in over four years and ran way fewer races than I had expected--less than a handful really. That fact, which at one time would have caused immeasurable angst, does not faze me one bit.

I am pretty sure I wrote once that back before I really became a runner I always "stubbornly, and for no obvious reason, considered myself a runner, always owned a pair of running shoes and knew where they were in the back of my closet, just in case." That was at least twenty-five thousand miles ago. I guess you could say I am over having to ever reassure myself or anybody of the basic truth: I run because I am a runner.

My slide deeper toward hobbyjoggerhood and away from taking any competitive running goals very seriously also coincided with our little running crew, the RTC (Reading Track Club, so creative!) becoming firmly established. The core group (Mark, Chris, Dan and I) and our part time shower-uppers, (Mike, Marc, Patrick, Joe, et al.) have made Thirsty Thursday workouts followed by beers at Grumpy's into a genuine institution. We couldn't stop Thirsty Thursday now if we tried. The Sunday long runs with the group have become more regular as well. During the year plus of Showing Up nearly every Thursday evening and a lot of Sunday mornings, our little crew has experienced the full gamut that life has to offer: deaths, births, injury, illness, work stress, family drama, natural disasters and more. We took all of these things on shoulder-to-shoulder, sometimes at a conversational pace and sometimes, well, not so much. We ran in the pitch dark and cold with sleet and snow pelting our faces, and in the life sucking humidity of mid summer. We climbed mountains (literally) and descended valleys. We raced some, ran lots and had a lot of laughs. We had a few blue bird days--like last night running in shorts under a starry sky the week of Christmas--but we also had a lot of days and nights where we just had to put our heads down, lean into the icy wind or sweltering heat and grind it out for no better reason that to feel alive and earn our beers.

I ran some number of miles with two of my daughters and my dog (not all at the same time, that's crazy talk) as well. I haven't had so many regular running buddies since high school track.

When I think back to some of my favorite accomplishments in the sport of running--running a 2:49 marathon for the first time probably being the highlight in terms of goals achieved and all that went into it--I am happy and proud, no matter how meaningless they are in the grand scheme. I still think often about the feeling I had at Mile 23 of the 2008 Baystate Marathon--feeling the over-arching pain start to cover me heavier and heavier like a shroud. The fear and dread hanging just above me but not yet touching me, knowing knowing that I would make it because I had earned it and drawing enough strength from that truth to actually carry it off. And then the feeling of actually doing it--running out the rest of what was in me, executing the perfect effort. Seeing those red numbers on the clock as I hurtled toward the finish. Hearing my family out of my left ear. The sights, the sounds of the stadium that day. The color of the sky. The smell of the chicken soup. I think about these things all the time--I let them wash over me and carry me through the hard days of life. Those things are mine forever.

I also cannot ignore how hard it was to get there, how many things had to go right, and how much sacrifice it took. And I honestly cannot say whether I will ever want to do it again. If not I will be totally okay with it. The single-minded determination it takes to really accomplish an aggressive goal in the sport of running is awesome and I will always admire the kindred spirits out there piling on the miles and workouts, often at the expense of a lot else that they hold dear. They know what I know and then some.

But I have also come to appreciate more fully everything else that running does to enrich my life and I have decided to enjoy those other things more. I plan to race more in 2012 than I did in 2011 and to care less. I plan to run as much (or as little) as I feel like, which most likely will still be "a lot."

Amby Burfoot once wrote: "A starting line is the best, most exciting place I can imagine. When I stand on one, I feel fully alive--scared, yes, but also energized, focused, and prepared for the big challenge ahead."

I like starting lines.

Onward.

Tour de Vermont, Part 6

2011-09-16T00:31:00.000-04:00

This is the last of a 6 part series. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 or Part 5.

On Monday morning we woke up to a glorious day in Burlington, Vermont. We walked down the hill from our hotel and got crepes at a place called Skinny Pancake (I know, right?) right on the lake front. It was easily the least masculine thing we did the entire 4 days but none of us cared. The crepes were awesome. We read that Amy Winehouse had died.

After packing up and checking out of the hotel we headed up to Colchester to run the Colchester Causeway, a 4.5-mile former railroad causeway that runs out into the middle of the lake, almost all the way to South Hero. We parked the cars at a really nice park with lots of athletic fields and headed out. Evan decided to run with us part of the way. The weather was cool and cloudy with some light mist coming down--a welcome reward after all of the heat we had endured.

We followed the causeway through some neighborhoods and then swampy areas before reaching the shore of the lake. Once out on the lake, the path became rutted and washed out in places, but still very runnable. After a mile and a half or so, around the time we figured Evan would turn around, we reached a bridge with a warning sign saying the path was closed from there. This was where Dan had run to the day before and Evan and Kyle had ridden their bikes.

(Taken the day before, when it was sunny out.)

Obviously we ignored the sign, ducked under the chain and kept running. I was in the lead at this point and for whatever reason, I was feeling in the zone. Maybe it was the cool weather or the fact that the mileage was starting to soak in, but I was in a groove and just really enjoying picking my way along the rough footing with the lake on both sides and the mist hitting me in the face. Every now and then I'd look over my shoulder to see the other guys rolling along single file behind me, keeping enough space to find their own path through the rutted, rocky trail.

There were several really bad washouts and holes but we made it all the way to the end, to the site of a former railroad bridge and the end of land. We stood out there on a concrete platform looking at the lake for a while, watching a couple of sailboats navigate the small channel between us and the continuation of the causeway on the other side. We could just make out Mt. Mansfield to the east through the mist and fog and it was hard not to think about all we had done over the past 3+ days.

Eventually we turned around and headed back. This time I was in the back following the guys back in toward land. Chris was leading us over most of the causeway, rolling along at a really good clip. We were easily running low 7's over the rough terrain--I took off my shirt take advantage of the free shower that was falling. Somewhere toward the end of the causeway we all bunched up and then I found myself out in front with Mark. For some reason we just started gradually dialing up the pace--my legs inexplicably felt awesome. At one point, with under a mile to go, I noticed we were hammering. The last mile was in about 6 minutes and I had no idea why but didn't question it.

We hung around the parking lot for a bit, eating cookies and laughing about stupid shit. Evan had run 9 miles with us. It was starting to set in that the trip was almost over. Chris declared himself done, explaining that it was really a 3-day trip (noon Friday to noon Monday) and he'd run 75 miles in 3 days. He had a point, a pretty impressive one. But I had it in my head that I wanted to get in 20 per day, and by that I was thinking calendar day. Dan still had it in his head he could hit a hundred miles for the trip. So we pressed on.

The plan was to head toward Middlebury but jump out of the cars with 7 or so miles to go and run to the Otter Creek Brewery and our final stop (Dan would jump out with 9 miles to go.) We headed down Route 7 south past working farms with amazing views of the lake and the Adirondacks. As we approached the drop-off point, of course we had lost Mark. Chris, looking in the rearview mirror declared, "He is the worst follower!"

I jumped out of the truck and started tying my shoes. A minute later, Mark pulled up and jumped out and at that point he told us the reason we'd lost him was he had stopped to let Dan out 2 miles back. Made sense. Mark and I crossed the highway and started running south. At that point it was all we knew--run more.

Route 7 kind of sucked just because of the constant passing traffic and the relentless rolling hills. And the 75 miles we'd already run. I do a lot of running with Mark and Dan and although both of them are much faster than me, I wouldn't call either of them half steppers--the annoying people who always need to run a half step in front of you. Mark and I have run thousands of miles together and he never has a problem chilling out and running at a pace that's comfortable for me.

But he wanted to be done. And I didn't blame him. And the fucker half-stepped me for 7 goddam miles of US Route 7 that day.

At about halfway down to Middlebury Mark openly declared his done-ness. He said, "You know what I'm done with the hills and I'm done with the scenery and I'm done with the whole thing." He spoke for both of us. At one point we had to turn off of Route 7 onto Exchange Street for the last 3/4 mile. I was expecting Exchange Street to be a bustling city like street with shops and restaurants but it was just this industrial wasteland of warehouses and factories. I was so bummed.

At about the point when I was about to give up hope, pull off the road and lay down in a ditch, we saw a red, white and blue "Open" flag up ahead. The Otter Creek Brewery, at last. We rolled into the parking lot and found Chris, Evan and Kyle tailgating at the back of the lot. A quick change of clothes, a shower under a bottle of spring water,, a dry t-shirt and some crackers and I was good as new.

10 minutes or so later Dan showed up, bonking hard, and declared, "I'm done. As in done, done."

Fruits of our labor.

There was some debate at Otter Creek about going to Long Trail on the way home but Chris and I were both thinking the same thing: we were on borrowed time. It really was the end of the road.

We took a bunch of pictures like the tourists we were and did our handshakes and high fives and then hit the road--time to get back to reality.

Look, big tanks of beer!

Dan and the Brothers Hudson jumped in Mark's car and Chris and I hopped in his truck. We figured we'd see each other at the Wendy's in West Lebanon, NH, but we all knew the trip was basically over. It had been awesome in ways none of us could really describe.

I can honestly say that when Mark and I shuffled into the parking lot at Otter Creek on fumes, I knew for sure that I would never do something like that again. And yet, as Chris and I drove through Middlebury and up and over the mountain, it dawned on me that of course I would...in a heartbeat. And the best part was I could tell Chris would too.

Over the ride home we sort of transitioned back to our normal selves. We talked about our kids and wives and all of our first world problems. We got ready to re-enter society. Eventually we hit the Boston area at rush hour and the everyday traffic and scenery looked totally familiar, yet utterly foreign.

We pulled into my driveway and I unloaded my gear. It was all over.

*****

It's been almost 2 months since the end of the trip and I'm just now getting around to writing the final chapter of this story. I have struggled trying to think of a way to sum it up that would make sense to someone who wasn't there. The fact is it won't, so it's not worth trying.

What was the point? The point was there was no point. There was no cause we were benefiting, no hidden meaning, no greater good. This was about paying homage to The Run, and nothing else. It was about guys being guys, about friends you can count on, about experiencing the world by being in it, not looking at it through the window of a car going 75 mph. This run was worthwhile for the same reason a hot shower feels so much better after a long run in sideways snow, why a cold shower feels so much better after a 15-mile Breakheart run in August, why the beers always taste better after a Thirsty Thursday workout. We didn't have a death wish, we had a life wish. It was about experiencing through doing, not watching.

It was about runners running.

Tour de Vermont, Part 5

2011-08-28T17:12:00.011-04:00

Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

After the Mount Mansfield and Underhill State Park adventure, we needed lunch and then the plan was to head into Burlington and do some more running from there. Having given up on the idea of literally running point to point across Vermont due to the logistics, we decided to make our 3rd night in Burlington so that we could enjoy the town and sample the local brews without having to worry about getting in a car and drive home from there. On our way into Burlington we stopped in Essex Junction an the On Tap Bar.

We pulled into find a bizarre fundraiser car wash type deal going on in the parking lot but the place had a big deck with outdoor seating and lots of beer on tap. We got a big table out on the deck with a decent, if a bit overly talkative waiter. I think we ordered one of everything on the menu. The food and beers went down easy. About the only downside was the kiddie band that was playing inside (with speakers pumping the music outside.) It's hard to describe so I'll just say you had to be there. It was hard to listen to.

Kyle and his trusty steed, Sputnik

With some food and beer in us we headed into Burlington. On the way we called ahead and Chris got us a couple of rooms at a full service Hilton a couple blocks from the water with amazing views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. We checked in, took our first real showers in a couple of days and relaxed for a few hours before heading out for our 2nd run of the day. After the Mansfield debacle, we only needed about 6 miles for a 20 mile day and Chris was determined to not run one step farther than that. We ran along a really nice bike path, the Island Line Trail, right along Lake Champlain, past beaches and nice neighborhoods. The sun was starting to go down and the views across the lake were amazing. Meanwhile the sherpas headed out for a bike ride on the same path. After a few days of screwing around with the bike that he'd bought from "the Russian" in Portsmouth, Kyle finally took it to a good bike shop in Stowe and got the beast road ready. "Sputnik" was ready to roll.

As we jogged along the bike path my legs were feeling like cement and I was happy that Chris seemed just as sluggish as I was and in no rush. We let Mark and Dan pull away, figuring they were going to end up going longer anyway. At about 3 miles out, Chris and I turned around and headed back toward downtown Burlington. Running was not fun at that point and the days and miles (and the mountain) were definitely setting in.

Chris and I got back downtown, got a soft serve ice cream and walked up the hill to the hotel. While Chris went to the truck in the parking garage to grab some beers from the cooler, I took my 2nd shower in just a few hours then put on some clean clothes and took a cat nap on one of the beds. Wow that felt good. Chris and I were just chilling in the room watching some tv when Mark knocked on the door, all showered and ready to go get some dinner. Dan was still out running and the sherpas were still on their bike ride so the three of us headed out for a little walk through downtown Burlington to find some grub. I had been to Burlington a few times before but for some reason never in the summer. It's really a beautiful city and has a great energy. The weather was just about perfect and as we shuffled through town on cement legs with our flip flops dragging there was plenty of good people watching to be had.

We were all looking for some waterfront dining so at the recommendation of the concierge, we headed to Breakwater Cafe, right next to the ferry terminal. We let Kyle and Evan know where we were--nobody had heard from Dan yet. All of us it seems were in the mood for our first non-beer drinks of the trip: I got a couple of margaritas and we ate below average pub food waterfront as the sun set behind the mountains on the other side of the lake. There was definitely a sense of accomplishment at having gotten over the mountain, and just generally having run 60-something miles in 3 days. We were all really tired, but feeling good. Eventually Dan showed up to Breakwater just before the kitchen closed and ordered some food. The bastard had run18 miles or something (for a 30+ mile day), halfway out the Colchester bike way into the lake and back. After dark, Breakwater cleared out pretty fast and they started to shut down. It was just as well as we needed to sample some of the local breweries, of which there are plenty in Burlington.

Unfortunately, it was a Sunday night and several of the breweries we wanted to visit were closed. Fortunately it was Burlington and there were plenty more to chose from. We headed a few blocks to American Flatbread, brewers of Zero Gravity beers. Somewhere on the way, we lost Chris and Mark--they were worn out and needed to crash. So Dan, Evan, Kyle and I walked into Flatbread and ordered a few beers. I started with a Black Cat Porter. The beer was good, the restaurant was pretty cool inside, but it was a weird vibe--almost like we had crashed a private party. Being Sunday night it seemed like the only people in the place were the staff and friends of the staff. It was fine, just odd and after a couple beers we moved on.

Our next stop was Vermont Pub and Brewery, Vermont's oldest craft brewery. This place had a bit of a gritty, no-frills feel to it and we sat outside on wrought iron furniture. Other than Evan, who decided to experiment with some kind of beer/fruit smoothie hybrid, all of us liked our beers and the place was quiet with only a few other tables occupied. It was a perfect night. I was really, really tired but happy with how things had gone so far. We kind of figured that the next day would basically be a victory lap with no mountains to climb and no huge distances to cover so there wasn't a lot to be stressed over.

After a couple of beers, we headed down the hill back to our hotel and crashed. For reasons we still can't explain, Dan decided to sleep on the floor but I have to tell you the bed at the Hilton was top notch after two nights on the ground and 64 miles in three days.

To be continued...

Tour de Vermont, Part 4

2011-08-20T00:48:00.005-04:00

Click here to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

When we woke up on Sunday and made our coffee and breakfast, we had a vague idea that day 3 was going to be the toughest day. When you endeavor to run across the state of Vermont, you have to at some point get over "the spine." So why not do it at it's highest point, we figured, and run over the summit of Mount Mansfield.

We said goodbye to our home for two nights, the Lake Elmore campground, and headed back down the road to Stowe and Pickwicks, where we had finished the day before. Chris was extra quiet as he drove down Route 100--every now and then I think I caught him taking peeks at the mountain up ahead and to our right. Chris had, by far, done the least running of the four of us. Mark and Dan are the young bucks of our group--they are both in their early 30's, they ran cross country together at D3 Allegheny College, and have marathon PRs of 2:28 and 2:31. I have a not-too-shabby-for-an-old-guy 2:49 to my name and have run 3000 miles a year for the past 3 years. Chris had only really started getting back into running with any seriousness this time last summer and has jogged a few half marathons with his wife, so he had reason to be concerned. Not too many people can run the Stowe Toll Road to the summit of Mount Mansfield. Let alone doing it after running 43 miles in the 2 days before then doing a 7 mile "warmup" just getting to the mountain. Mark, Dan and I tried to play it cool because we didn't want to make Chris overly nervous about it--the fact is we all had total confidence he'd make it after seeing what a workhorse he'd been the first two days--but I know I was a little nervous and I'm sure Mark and Dan were too in their own way.

The starting point was Pickwicks on the Stow Mountain Road, about 7 miles from the start of the Toll Road. It was actually a really good idea to start here and get some nice, gentle miles in before the sufferfest of the Toll Road.

We ran along the Stow Quiet Path, a rambling multi-use path along the river that winds its way up the valley toward Stow ski resort. The weather had finally broken and it was crisp, beautiful morning as we jogged along the shaded path with views of horse farms, the river and the mountains. There were lots of people out running, walking and biking along the path and nearly all of them were perfectly happy and friendly. Every now and then The Mountain would peek out at us from between the trees. It looked gentle enough from a distance.

Only at the very end did our run up to the Toll Road get hilly--the last mile was steeply uphill, just to get us in the mood. Eventually we made it to the start of the Toll Road, Mark and Dan went on ahead and I waited for Chris who had fallen back just a bit on the last hill. Damn the thing was steep. The start of it looked like it went up a wall.

The Toll Road is 4.5 miles long and has an average grade of over 10%. The only thing I've ever run that beats that is Mt. Washington. Chris and I talked a bit at the bottom by the toll booth and agreed that we were each gong to have to take this thing at our own pace and we'd just meet at the top. I headed out up the first face and just got into it. After only a few hundred yards the road went into the woods and was mostly shaded, thankfully, for most of the way up. It was still cool but going up such a steep grade at any pace at all just generates a ton of heat and almost immediately sweat was just dripping off my forehead, off my nose and chin and just soaking my shirt. I had a water bottle in my hand but that was it. Every once in a while, I'd hear a car coming from behind or from up ahead and a carload of tourists would rumble slowly by and look at me like I had nine heads, but mostly I was alone with my thoughts. My only goal was to run the whole thing, no matter how slowly. I stopped once to look at the view on a particularly awesome overlook, but otherwise I just kept my head down and ground my way up that mountain. When the trees started getting really small and the switchbacks closer together, I knew I was almost there. I passed a couple of lower parking areas where I thought I was done but finally reached the summit. The view was worth it.

At the top, Mark and Dan were nowhere in sight. I stood on a rock pile over the parking lot for a while looking down into the valley, waiting for Chris. After 10 minutes or so, I asked the girl who was sitting there by the warming hut if she had seen 2 runners go by. She said that Mark and Dan had headed down the long trail about a mile to the gondola top station where there was a snack bar. After a few more minutes I started walking back down around the bend to wait for Chris. After just a couple of minutes, he came around the bend looking pretty rough but happy to have made it.

I let Chris catch his breath and take in the view for a minute before I suggested we head down the trail toward Mark and Dan. It seemed like a good idea but pretty quickly both of us started bonking--we had all been so focused on running the mountain that we'd totally forgotten to do the math as in a 7 mile warmup plus a 4.5 mile run straight up a big mountain is probably about the outer limits of our glycogen supplies. Oops. So as Chris and I were scrambling along the top of the spine on the Long Trail, a rocky rooted hiking path that runs the length of Vermont, we were both in the midst of a fairly hard sugar crash and our water bottles were empty. And of course we were in nothing but running shorts, t-shirts and lightweight trainers--not exactly mountaineering gear.

Eventually we found Mark and Dan on their way back. Dan proclaimed, "We bought out the store!" and started emptying his pack of M&M's, crackers, cokes, water and lots of other goodness. I like to say that Dan saved our lives up there with Peanut M&Ms and Coca-Cola. Well, temporarily at least. We still had to get down the other side.

Our savior, me and Chris on top of Vermont.

The way down was interesting. There was no turning back as Kyle and Evan were supposed to meet us at Underhill State Park at the eastern foot of the mountain, having driven around via Smugglers Notch. The only way for us to get there was to take a steep, rocky hiking trail called "Halfway House Trail." It was roughtly 3.5 miles from the summit to the parking area at Underhill where we were supposed to meet the sherpas and just about all of it was super steep downhill, the first part ridiculously so. The only people we saw on the trail were wearing some pretty serious hiking gear and had big packs and all kids of equipment. We had running shoes.

I had a really hard time with the downhill trail--I probably rolled my ankle 7 times. All the guys left me in the dust as I picked my way down the mountain until we finally reached what was basically a fire road that careened down the rest of the way to the parking area.

Once the trail turned into basically a dirt road, I just let my legs go and flew down the road out of control. Again Mark and Dan were up ahead and Chris and I were together. As we rolled into the parking area I still didn't see Evan or Kyle until I was almost past them. I stopped short and blurted out, "Hey what's up, I just ran here from Stowe." We immediately started laughing at how absurd that sounded. But it was true.

Continued...

Tour de Vermont, Part 3

2011-08-19T23:48:00.005-04:00

This is the 3rd part of a series. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2.

On Saturday morning we headed out the the Green River Reservoir which was roughly back in the direction of where we had left off the day before. The plan was just to run from there back through Morrisville to Lake Elmore campground. This was a really pleasant run after the suffering and hills of the previous day. The last 4 miles were basically up hill and it was already getting hot again at 10am when we were finishing, but it was manageable. Mark and Dan ran ahead and Chris and I ran together for those last 4 uphill miles. There was a big farm on the left side of the road and a guy on a ladder painting his barn. He looked at us and said, "Nice day for a run, boys." It was, at that point. We had 12 miles in the books and it wasn't brutally hot out yet.

We got back to the campground, took a swim in the lake and then moved campsites before heading into Morrisville for some lunch and beers. We hit up the Rock Art brewery but they didn't have pub, just a tasting room, so we went to a restaurant called The Bees Knees which served Rock Art brews. We ate everything on the menu and had about three beers each. Life was good. After lunch we went and hung out in a river while Mark went flyfishing and Evan went spearfishing. Our plan was to hang out until later in the day when it would be cooler. Hah.

It all worked out great until we headed back into town and got ready to set off for our second run of the day around 4pm. Yeah it was like a hundred degrees out. Whoops. We "only" had 11 miles to go down into Stowe but unfortunately it was almost entirely in the sun. We left from Rock Art brewery and headed south toward Stowe via Randolf Road. It was an absolutely beautiful route with farms and views of the mountains including Mansfield in the distance. But it was so hot we were all suffering almost immediately. At one point Evan, he and Kyle having driven the cars down to Pickwicks in Stowe, rode back to meet us and give us some much needed water before continuing on his bike ride back toward Morrisville. We thought we would see him again soon but not so much. We wound up running the last 7 miles or so sans water. I'll admit I got the most cranky of anyone on that particular leg, even swearing at some horses at one point and arguing adamantly that a horse was actually a donkey. Long story.

We made it to Stowe in one piece, barely. We met at Pickwicks then went and cooled off in the river before heading to the Shed brewery for some decent food and good beer to finish off a long hot day on the road. We had 23 miles in the books (44 in 2 days) and the The Mountain awaited.

Continued...

Tour de Vermont, Part 2

2011-08-19T23:23:00.004-04:00

Continued from part 1.

We had run 17 miles in the blazing sun and we were in the middle of effing nowhere. We had done a lot of talking, laughing, praying and suffering already and we were only partway through day 1. With some actual running under our belts we were able to tackle the fact that logistically, we really hadn't thought this thing through all that well. It was, in fact, going to be impossible to literally run across Vermont. On the plus side, my hangover was gone.

But most importantly we needed some lunch. After sucking down some water we made a plan: we needed to find a place to eat lunch, visit Hill Farmstead Brewery, and find a place to camp for the night. The we could worry about our "afternoon" run.

We headed down into the town of Greensborough with Chris and me in Chris' truck and the Hudson brothers and Dan in Marks car. Apparently the only thing in Greensborough is a gas station/grocery store where they pump gas in a crosswalk at a busy intersection and they have a deli counter but they don't make sandwiches to order. We bought the place out of pre-packaged sandwiches and ate on the town green at a picnic table. Actually there were only 5 pre-made sandwiches and 6 of us but Kyle (good sherpa) improvised and bought some groceries, including a cucumber, and making his own gourmet creation.

Come inside or we'll call the cops.

After getting some food in our bellies and checking out the local beach and/or freakshow, we made our way to Hill Farmstead Brewery. This place was quite literally in some guy's barn on the family farm on a hilltop in Northeast Vermont. The brewer is clearly an artist, if not the best salesman. Later that night, Kyle did a dead on impression droning, "It's named after my grandfather. It's an American Pale Ale. Just drink it." The beer was well worth it, though, and if you ever somehow find yourself in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, definitely stop in. All 6 of us did a tasting of the 7 beers they had available and also bought some beer to take home. I bought two 750's of a Grissette named "Clara" since, well, that's my baby's name. It was excellent, as were just about all of the beers we tried there. The ambiance was non-existent as we were literally sampling beer in a garage and they didn't even open the doors so we could get some air until it started to get downright uncomfortable in there but the beer was legit.

With food and some beer in our stomachs it was time to figure out where we were going to stay that night. It was a lot harder to figure that out then we had figured. We had a campsite reserved in at Lake Elmore for the 2nd night, but there was NOTHING between where we were and there. After some debate, we decided to head over toe Lake Elmore and see if we could get in there for Friday night as well since we had already given up on connecting the dots across the state. Mark took a wrong turn and then blew a tire on a dirt road a mile from the campground so while the Hudson pit crew changed the rubber, Chris and I went to try and talk our way into the sold out campground. The girl at the ranger's shack was originally from Georgetown, MA. Jackpot.

After the quick tire change and then setting up camp, Mark went to the grocery store from some food to grill then we headed out for a run to get ourselves over 20 for the day while the sherpas headed out for a bike ride to try and earn their beers. Chris and I went about 4 miles for a 21 mile day, Mark and Dan went a little longer. We all took a swim in the lake then settled in for some food and some beers. It's amazing what you can accomplish when there are no women involved. Other than the fact that we'd run 21+ miles in 95 degree heat, it was just like a guy's camping trip at that point.

Time to kick back and relax with some beers and some laughs. Tomorrow would be another day with more miles, more heat and more hills.

Continued...

Tour de Vermont, Part 1

2011-08-02T23:14:00.004-04:00

Mark, Captain Dan, Chris and Me...before Mt. Mansfield

This adventure is not the sort of thing I can explain and have it make any sense, to be honest, so I'll just go ahead and tell the story.

For the past year or so, a group of us have been meeting at the RMHS track every Thursday night for a workout, and then heading to Grumpy Doyle's for a few beers. We call this the "Thirsty Thursday" workout. The core group of 4, who showed up just about every Thursday even during the darkest, coldest nights of winter, were: Mark, Dan, Chris and me.

None of us are really sure how it happened but at the bar over a few beers after one of those cold, dark workouts in the snow, we came up with the idea to do a pub run of sorts across the state of Vermont. I think we were probably drinking Long Trail when this discussion happened or maybe one of us brought up that Vermont has the highest concentration of brew pubs per capita in the US. Either way, over the course of a couple of Thirsty Thursdays, the plan was born and it quickly gained enough steam that none of us could stop it. It took a few tries to find a weekend that worked for all of our families, but we eventually settled on July 22nd-25th and each of us put it on our respective Family Calendars meaning that the wives had signed off and it was law.

I'm fairly certain that several of our wives only agreed because they never actually thought we would go through with it and, to be fair, it sounded so half-baked and pointless that I can't say I blamed them. But for reasons I can't really articulate, none of us ever wavered even for a minute. It was as if--similar to the weekly emails that fly around on Wednesday evenings and Thursday mornings looking for a roll call for Thirsty Thursday--once you said you were in, you were in. As the day got closer one of us would sometimes say to the others, "So this is gonna happen, huh?" and the rest of us would just sort of nod. I can remember during one momentary crisis of faith trying to reassure Chris, who has done the least amount of running of all of us and was beginning to worry about the mileage.

I said, "Think of it like this: we're gonna wake up in the morning, get some coffee eat some breakfast and then go for a 90 minute to 2 hour jog. Then we're gonna jump in a river, get some lunch and a couple beers and hang out for a while. Then we're gonna go for another 90 minute or 2 hour jog. Then we'll get some dinner and some more beers. And that's it! That's all you have to do for the whole day is run twenty miles or so. No wiping asses, no screaming kids, no chores, no email, no customers to deal with, no wives. Nothing."

"I can do that," he said.

There was a fair amount of planning that went into this thing but when the day finally arrived we still basically only had the roughest outline of a plan. Chris pulled into my driveway at 6:20am, I grabbed my backpack (which I'd packed at 3am after getting home from the FORR road race that three of us help organize), sleeping bag and camping pad by the kitchen door and jumped in his truck. We headed to the Starbucks on Walkers Brook to meet up with Mark, Dan and Mark's brother Evan, who would serve as one of our two "sherpas." Our other sherpa would be Mark's other brother, Kyle, whom we would pick up in Hooksett, NH on the way up. When Chris and I met Evan is when we found out that the Sherpas were bringing bikes...details.

Dan and The Map

On the ride up I drank two 32 oz. bottles of Gatorade and a medium Dunkin Donuts coffee. And I was still a bit dehydrated from all the beers I drank after running around in 97 degree weather organizing a road race. I got a little nauseous at one point but I kept that to myself so as not to ruin the vibe. We were all pretty psyched that it was finally here, this thing was really going to happen. Our next stop was at a Target in Hooksett to pick up Kyle and already Dan was breaking out the map. After months of planning we still hadn't exactly figured out a route, or places to stay for 2 of the 3 nights....details.

We'll have a sixer of this one.

We made a couple of other random stops in search of a bike pump and a sleeping bag (details) but eventually we made our way to the Trout River Brewery in Lyndonville, VT, otherwise known as Point A. It was 11am and roughly as hot as the surface of the sun but none of us even cared, we were just excited to get going. After some more consulting of The Map and planning a meeting place with Evan and Kyle we bought a six pack of Trout River Red, drank a ceremonial first beer in the parking lot and got the show underway. It was actually happening.

It didn't take us long to reach the edge of Lyndonville and then we were out on an open road running past farms with absolutely no shade at all. If we hadn't been so excited to be underway we would have been a little worried about how hot it was. I had never been to this part of Vermont. It was beautiful. The first leg was fairly easy, just rolling along toward Wheelock in farm country. After 7 miles we came upon Evan and Kyle who had found a good place to set up a water stop for us. It was right by a river so we decided to take a swim to cool off and let Mark try to catch the Brook Trout that we had all just spooked by jumping in the water.

They call it fishing, not catching.

We probably rested for a half our by the river, enjoying the water before putting our shoes back on and heading back out. During the rest, Evan had gone around the bend on his bike and came back to report that the road we were heading to was ridiculously uphill. He seemed overly excited about this, actually.

Stupidly, I was looking forward to some uphill--after all we'd come to the Green Mountain State.

Lambs for the slaughter.

We started running, turned a corner and crossed a bridge and there we saw Vertical Mile Road. It's actually a misnomer--it's at least three miles long. Some locals came by in a car just as we were posing for a picture in front of the road sign like a bunch of flatlander tourists. "You guys gonna run Vertical Mile? Good luck with that! Hahaha!"

The first mile of Vertical Mile Road wasn't all that bad, really. It was steep, over 10% I'd guess, but it was over relatively quickly. The problem was that was just the beginning. Vertical Mile road when on for another couple of miles with a couple of long uphill sections and then went dowhill only briefly before connecting with Stannard Mountain Road. And that is where we started to make deals with God.

The laughing and chatter had mostly died out once we were a good hour into that 2nd leg after the stop by the river. And this was starting to get genuinely hard now. We covered 10 miles of mountain dirt roads with names like Minister Hill Road, Wheelock Mountain Road and Stannard Mountain Road. When all the road names have either Hill or Mountain, you know somethings up. And we got a lot of strange looks from the locals who must have been wondering what in God's name the four shirtless Massholes were doing running in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the heat of the day. I'm pretty sure we wondered ourselves a few times. There was a lot of dehydration, staggering, swearing, getting chased by dogs, nearly getting run off the road by dump trucks, dunking our heads in creeks by the side of the road, eating dust, deer flies, cresting hills only to see that the hill kept on going and a lot of other stuff I can't even remember. But eventually we caught up to Evan and Kyle parked at what sure as hell seemed like a good spot to stop for a bit and go find a brewery. It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon of day 1.

Continued...

Summer time, and the livin's easy

2011-06-29T12:19:00.000-04:00

Or so it goes. Competitive desires always wax and wane but I have to say it's been awfully hard to focus or care about any real running goals lately. For the first time a couple of years work is going GREAT and I'm busier than hell. My kids are at ages where they seem to be going in all directions all the time, and it's getting harder to stay motivated to train specifically for some arbitrary goal like a sub-17 minute 5k which, even if I were to accomplish it, would leave me 4 minutes away from being remotely relevant in the world of competitive distance running. Doing so would not make my kids love me any more or make me any more money or give me any extra vacation time, or magically make my lawn look any better. And mostly I just don't care that much, despite the fact that I managed a 17:23 5k in a local yokel race a couple of weeks ago off of maybe a month of decent training and a couple of okay workouts, indicating it's still well within striking distance.

I still enjoy running for all of its many benefits--Thirsty Thursday workouts with my running buddies, Chris, Mark and Dan, where we do a workout then go for beers, are still the highlight of most of my weeks. And I still enjoy periodically throwing on a pair of racing flats, pinning a number on, and diving headlong into the pain tunnel for a whirl. Just lately it's seemed a bit ridiculous to worry about any kind of "training schedule" in the midst of all I have going on in life.

This summer will be busy. We're taking a family camping trip to Acadia next week, there's the FORR 5k that still has a pretty big to-do list for July 21st, and then the Thirsty Thursday crew and I are planning a 4-day beer run across Vermont starting the next day. Later in August we take a family vacation to the cape. (Come to think of it, do I have enough vacation time to cover all of that? Huh...I should maybe look into that.)

Anyway, as we've seen before the trick with this sport is to never get so far gone that you can't come all the way back. I think I'm doing that. We shall see.

Random thoughts and a call to action

2011-04-22T15:46:00.003-04:00

The fastest marathon in the history of the world happened in my backyard on Monday and I was at Disney World on a family vacation. It was a fun vacation in a really expensive, exhausting and sometimes frustrating sort of way, but not at all relaxing. And the only time I broke into running dork mode was on Monday as I walked around Animal Kingdom hitting refresh on my phone every 30 seconds watching the updates on the marathon. When Desiree Davila took the lead with 400m to go and then I didn't get another update for two full minutes I almost went into cardiac arrest. And for a good half hour I thought the mens finish times were a typo.

I didn't run a step on vacation...well not a step in training anyway. There was the time I ran back to the car from the monorail station to get the stroller, and the time I had to run to the bathroom, and...well, you get the idea. I took my running gear and had all the good intentions but walking around and standing in lines all day in the hot sun just crushed my energy and after about the third day of no running I decided to stop even planning to run and just take the week "off."

Last night I showed up for Thirsty Thursday and still decided to attempt the 5000m time trial Mark and Dan were doing--I made it to about 2 miles before I realized I was having trouble even turning 90 second quarters, my legs were junk, and just stopped. It was a good wakeup call. Running is such a sport of routine and repetition, at least for me. I can't step onto a track after a week of no running (not to mention lots of standing, eating, drinking and general badness) and expect to do anything.

So here we are. Disney is over and the Trans Vermont Beer Run is July 22nd. Which means if I can't run sub 17 for 5k before about mid-July, it's probably not going to happen until the fall. That gives me about three months. I'm not sure it's possible in that timeframe but I should have a pretty good idea in a week or two once I shake off the rust from Disney and get some miles under my legs. It should be fun.

Tick...tick...tick...

2011-04-06T19:38:00.001-04:00

It's April 6th and I have yet to race in 2011. In fact if you don't count that silly jingle bell jog or whatever the hell it was when I ran an 18 minute 5k wearing a Santa hat, bells pinned to my shirt and my daughters knee-high red field hockey socks, I haven't raced since October 17.

This has to change.

But not this weekend since it's dance recital week here in my household. And not next weekend since I'll be at Disney (SHIT!) I just had a little panic attack but I'm okay now.

Edited later to add: I just signed up for the Red Hook 5k on May 29th. I feel better already. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a race or two before then but at least, worst case scenario, I have a line in the sand.

The dumb stuff runners stress over

2011-03-07T20:39:00.001-05:00

Make no mistake; the benefits of being a runner far outweigh the drawbacks a majority of the time. But there are times I wish I could turn off my neurotic runner’s brain and function like a normal human being, if just for a little while, in order take care of some normal person business. Like, say, during business trips.

I am in Denver (well, Westminster, Colorado to be exact) for a couple of days for a fairly important full-day briefing with one of my largest accounts. I have my contact center specialist with me from Boston, the Account Manager from our channel partner with several of her executives and engineers, key executives from my customer who’ve traveled from Boston and Dallas, and a whole lineup of really smart (not to mention expensive) subject matter experts from my company’s Denver labs lined up to deliver a kick-ass briefing that could position us to do great things with this customer over the next 6 to 18 months. And I’m stressing over what this week will do to my mileage now that I’ve actually managed to string together a few weeks of something resembling training for the first time since before Baystate, last October.

The last time I was in Westminster I stayed at the same hotel—the Westin. It’s a nice place with good facilities and a really nice running trail outside. But that was for a company event and the hotel was overrun by Type “A” nut-jobs like me, and so when I got up bright and early to run on the treadmill the fitness center was packed. I remember running back up to my room, putting on what scant outdoor running gear I had with me and heading out on the trail in single digit temps. This time, betting that without the same concentration of Type “A” nutjobs I’ll be able to get on a treadmill, and knowing the forecast is for snow and it will be pitch dark and probably snowy out on that trail at the hour I would have to run in order to get to the office early enough, I didn’t even bring outdoor running gear—just shorts and t-shirts. I was trying to outsmart myself, see, so I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything really dumb since I am here to do a job and whatever running I get in is just a bonus. And now I’m freaking out over it.

What if I can’t get on a treadmill tomorrow morning? Will there be time between the briefing and dinner? Maybe I should try and bang out some miles tonight just in case…I wonder what time the fitness center opens and closes? What if it’s under construction or flooded or out of order or there’s a power outage or something weird? OMG! I want to punch myself in the face, seriously.

But then that’s the thing about being a work-a-day hobbyjogger--you have to force yourself to keep your priorities in order. Because at the end of the day my boss, my customers, my mortgage company, my kids’ dance school, my oil heat dealer, the United States Department of the Treasury, and a whole host of other people couldn’t give a rat’s ass if I ever break 17 minutes for a 5k road race.

That will be just for me.

Patches of Tartan

2011-03-07T20:34:00.002-05:00

The moment I woke up, I knew that yesterday’s little jaunt through Lynnfield and North Reading with Mark and Dan had been a little bit of an effort. There was that good, solid, whole body fatigue—the kind you know is doing the good work. I had to drag myself out of bed and get ready to run but there was never a doubt I’d get up and go. Since I would be traveling all day, it was either then or never.

It was still raining but not hard enough to shake the house, as it had been in the night when I woke up soaked in my own sweat with memory of whatever work-related dream that had caused my panic attack sitting just beyond the consciousness barrier where I couldn’t quite get to it. I would be leaving on flight to Denver for a big customer briefing in a few hours so I’m sure it had something to do with that customer, whatever it was.

Down in the kitchen I checked my phone to see the outside temp—55 and raining with winds from the southwest at 12, gusting to 30mph. Shorts weather. I put on my heaviest, clunkiest trainers for a slow jog in the rain.

Walking down my hill, the snow banks were noticeably smaller than yesterday and I even saw some bare patches of earth here and there. Spring is not far off and we will be able to finally close the books on this ridiculous winter. But damn it’s ugly out—the retreating gray snow banks reveal a whole winter’s worth of trash and sand and branches and muck.

After about two and a half miles, as I was loping past Birch Meadow Park and the YMCA noticing an awful lot of melting had happened on the open spaces of the fields, it appeared—a vague image the kind you’re not sure is real at first but you get closer it becomes real. Buds on the trees, flowers blooming and robins pulling worms out of the ground will all be nice signs of spring and I look forward to seeing them in due time. But for now, that beautiful red surface of the RMHS track was a sight for sore eyes.

One end of the track and infield is still snow covered but it won’t be for long. Sometime soon—possibly even this coming Thursday evening—the track will be open for business. And lane one will once again be for runners.

Later, as I was sitting in Terminal E at Logan Airport doing some work while waiting for my flight, my friend Marc—one of the founding members of the Reading Track Club and a Thirsty Thursday protagonist—sent out an email with the subject “Could it be spring?” including a picture of the track that he’d grabbed from his phone on his way to work. I’m not the only one.

Circles in the dark

2011-03-05T10:28:00.004-05:00

The Thirsty Thursday crew (such as it was) took a field trip this week to Ipswich River Park in North Reading. We had heard rumors that the paths around the athletic fields were plowed all winter and I think all of us are getting a bit weary of dodging traffic.

It was a small crew this week, just Mark, Chris and me. I got up there about 6:15 to get in a couple of warmup miles before 6:30. When I pulled in there was only one care in the entire parking lot, a truck belonging to a guy who was throwing a plastic football around the parking lot for his German Shepard. Low and behold the paths were totally clear of snow and ice.

I jogged down the quarter mile path through the woods to the athletic fields. There was one light near the tennis courts where the half mile loop meets the little path to the parking lot but otherwise the entire park was dark. I could see some street lights on the road behind the houses that abutted the other side of the park, but they were basically just landmarks in the distance.

It took a few warmup laps all the way around to feel confident that there really was no ice or holes or anything because for the most part you could not see the surface of the path at all, just the outline of it framed by the snowbanks. After a bout 3 laps, I saw a shape jogging toward me and could tell it was Mark from his gait. We looped the fields a couple of more times before Chris jogged up.

For simplicity's sake we kept it easy and just tried to do something with some turnover. Four times half mile with a half mile easy seemed like the right level of commitment for a workout in the pitch dark in early March when it was 17 degrees out. It was kind of surreal to be running fast in the dark like that without being able to see what you were running on.

When we jogged back to the parking lot later our three cars were the only ones. We caravaned over to Grumpy's for some good beers, good food and some planning of the Trans Vermont Beer Run in July, when it will be just a tad warmer.

Tuesday workout

2011-03-01T08:43:00.003-05:00

I have been trying to establish a rhythm of doing hard-ish workouts on Tuesday and Thursday, then do a weekend longish run. Thursday is Thirsty Thursday workout with the boys and is intended to be on the track but high school track has been snowed in for three months and we've either been doing hills or just an easy run with some pickups at the end, although a few of those were done in the snow so we just jogged around trying not to get killed. For the past few weeks I've been trying to get into the pattern of going 10 miles or so with some kind of long intervals or a tempo run on Tuesdays.

I'm dragging myself kicking and screaming back to some semblance of running fitness, basically. March 1st is actually a pretty big wakeup call as the rough plan in my head calls for about 280+ miles in March so that in April I can start actually putting down some good workouts aimed at racing the 5k in May and June.

That being the plan, last night I hit the rack early in order to get out early enough to do 10 miles and be back in time to drive Allie to school for Wind Ensemble at 7am. I got up at 5:11 and turned off the alarm before it could go off, got dressed, put in the contacts (the worst thing about being a morning runner) and sneaked down the creaky wooden stairs. A check of the weather showed it was a little warmer than anticipated, about 30 degrees, but windy enough to rattle the windows throughout the old house.

I was out the door just after 5:30 and got my first big blast of icy wind in the face as I made my way down the walk and out the driveway. It was dark but the sky was already showing a little light on the horizon as we are over the hump of winter now. I tried to warm up easy but it's tough when it's that cold--I always end up running a little faster than I want during warm up.

In my head I had one of my staple workouts--I probably do this one every 3 weeks or so when I'm into my base building. It's a really simple formula: 3 miles or so of easy warm up, then 3 times 8 minutes on and 3 minutes off, where "on" is threshold pace or so and "off" is an easy jog. I never really know how fast I'm going on this one. You can really make it as hard or as easy as you want but invariably I wind up making it a tough workout. 8 minutes doesn't seem like much but it can be pretty long when you've started out a bit on the fast side, especially in the early morning when it's cold out side and your nose is running and all that.

The route I was running is about a 10 mile "lollipop" loop that goes out 3 miles, does a 4 mile loop on the north side of town, then retraces the same 3 miles back to home. I started the 8 on / 3 off business right about the 3 mile marker and it took me all the way around the 4 mile loop and a bit more to finish, so by the time I was done with the workout part of the run, I was just over 2 miles from home. I jogged pretty leisurely for a while, my recovery slowed a little bit by having to go up the longest hill on the whole route, until I was about a mile from home and hit a flat stretch. There I threw in 4 x 20 second strides nearly all out, with about a minute or so of easy jogging in between. That took me almost all the way home and I just had a few hundred yards to jog to the bottom of my hill. The nice thing about those on/off runs out on the roads is time flies--a seventy minute run was over before I knew it and I even had time to start the car and let it warm up for a few minutes before driving Allie over to the middle school.

Onward.

Simple, really

2011-02-28T18:12:00.003-05:00

The whole point, then, is to fit this relentless forward motion that always winds up in the same place it started into a life worth having. This is very difficult to pull off in reality. It can be a fine line between heaven and too much of a good thing when it's the same time upstairs AND it's cold outside. A lot of it is just piling on.

However when we do pull it off there comes that time when we are able, if only for a few fleeting moments, to understand all of the riddles of the universe and communicate, collectively and individually, with all of God's creatures. Yeah it's pretty sweet.

Most of the time, though, we just cling to the memory of those moments--we know (or at least strongly suspect) that we once knew everything there was to know even though we cannot for the life of us remember any of it right now. We remember what it felt like to know, or at least we think we do. Probably we make these things up after the fact for the sole purpose of giving ourselves something to feel nostalgic over so that we will keep on going out there looking for that moment of total clarity that may never have existed in the first place.

And then one day the sun shines warm on our faces and the air feels fresh in our lungs and we are strong, awake and alive, and we don't need any reason or memory of better times because this right now is its own motivation and even if we could we wouldn't want to remember any other time or place or thing. It's a simple world. At least we think so.

Slopping along

2011-02-27T14:02:00.003-05:00

The weather hasn't totally sucked for a few weeks, the days are getting slightly longer and brighter and the snowbanks have retreated to just normal sized so that you can actually see to get out of your driveway. So it was a bit of a buzz kill when I awoke to see a fresh blanket of plowable snow on the ground. Mark had texted me last night, "snow in the am, run in the pm?" and even though I didn't really think the snow would be sticking (wrong) I agreed so the plan was to meet at noon at the high school.

I had to pick up the girls from indoor lacrosse before heading out an so with little time to spare, I took the shortest route over to the high school, which put me there at about 1.75 miles. It was still snowing. For the first time in months I took my Garmin because I knew with the snow we'd be wandering all over the place looking to stay off busy roads and the thing started chirping at me with the low battery signal almost immediately. Sweet.

As I was running across the field house parking lot I saw a runner in a yellow top come out from behind a snowbank and start jogging up the road away from me. I yelled, "Hudson!" and Mark turned around. About a minute later, Dan jogged up. We headed up toward the northern end of town, winding through neighborhoods and back roads, trying not to get killed by snowplows. The roads were a mix of wet pavement, slush and snowpack and my legs were soaked within the first 2 miles of the run.

I had jogged over to the high school at 8 pace but as soon as Dan and Mark were involved the pace immediately dropped to low 7's and while that's still in the easy range for me, it's definitely the high end of easy and with wet shoes and cold legs any kind of hills put me into a little difficulty. To boot, I was wearing my heaviest trainers, which were even heavier now, and Mark and Dan were both in racing flats. So while I was originally thinking 15, as I got into the run and got colder, wetter and more weary, just getting to 13 to make 60 for the week was starting to look pretty good.

After looping around on the northeast part of town for a while we made our way back toward the high school and I was getting close to 10 miles in at that point. Mark and Dan were going to do some up tempo loops around the high school campus but I was ready to head home so I left those guys and wound my way over toward the west side and home, taking a few turns to make sure I got in at least 13. As I was going up Hillcrest, just around the corner from my house, I heard the watch beep for 13 miles and so when I reached the top of the hill I stopped and walked down the little slope to my house. Even though it was squawking low battery a mile into the run, the little old Garmin held out the whole way and so now I have this nice, pretty map of the run.

I got in and went straight to a warm shower--do not pass go, do not log your miles, do not eat or drink anything, just get under some hot water.

That's three 60 mile weeks in a row and it's starting to come around. Hopefully I'll get the urge to race soon but as of now I'm not feeling like it would be worthwhile. I'm leaning toward not running New Bedford at this point as I don't think it would do much for my self confidence but there's still a few weeks to decide so we'll see.

A different kind of winter racing

2011-02-26T13:23:00.006-05:00

When I was a kid--maybe 10 or so, I don't really remember--my Dad went away to Alaska for a month and a half for work. He and a group of his colleagues from the Air Force geophysics lab at Hanscom traveled up to some place north of Fairbanks to launch rockets in the winter time. I remember he got all kinds of awesome winter gear like a huge down parka and pants, a big furry hat, some Sorrel boots, big mittens and all kinds of other stuff because they were going to be working outside at night.

While he was up there he and his buddies entered and won an outhouse race. They built a working outhouse from scratch, put skis on it and rigged it up so a couple guys could pull using ropes and harnesses, a couple guys could push from behind and one guy could sit in the outhouse (I think that was a requirement) and then they raced the thing some distance over snow-covered trails and roads, FTW.

I never forgot the name of it because in addition to a trophy with a guy panning for gold on top they got t-shirts. That yellow Chatanika Days Outhouse Race t-shirt later became mine. When I got older I wore it as a running shirt, eventually cutting the sleeves of to show off the guns. It stayed in my rotation for a long time until it was so full of holes that it just faded away and went to t-shirt heaven the way a good t-shirt does.

The Chatanika outhouse race totally exists to this day. For some reason while out on a run just now I thought of that outhouse race and so when I got home I Googled it (how awesome is the internet?) and what do you know, I found this video from the 2007 race. I love the cheesy soundtrack that gives it a sort of early Warren Miller ski movie quality. Enjoy.

If I can dig up a photo of me in that t-shirt, I'll post it here later.

This is when you know

2011-02-25T18:11:00.003-05:00

I was talking to Mark, Dan and Chris (the RTC crew) last night as we were getting ready to go for a run about how on Tuesday I put up a random goose egg. I had been feeling run down for a couple of days so when the alarm went off at 5:30 I turned it off and went back to bed thinking I'd try to squeeze in a few miles at lunch or that night. Then of course I had a crazy day with work and by the time I got home and got the little ones to bed bed it was 8:30pm and, well, you know.

So there I was with a zero on a day that was supposed to be a big mileage day trying to do the math to get to 60 miles for the week because I was just starting to feel like a runner again.

There's a time and a place for arbitrary mileage goals and right now is the time and this is the place. So I'll get it done.

Today I had a pretty busy day at work, ran 7.5 miles and never left the house. Miracles of modern science. It's supposed to be a nice weekend and I might try to get in a good long run on Sunday...I'll probably need the miles for 60 anyway.

Four hundred words a day

2011-02-24T23:39:00.002-05:00

It's not like I'm going to count words but I've decided I'm going to try actually updating this space every day for a while. Why 400? I have no idea. When I was in 9th grade my English teacher had us write 500 word "themes" every night for a week or so and I found that a challenging exercise. 400 is less than 500 so it should be easier.

Today I ran twice and later went to two different bars to spend time with two different groups of friends.

The first run was a short little shakeout this morning: four and a half miles of easy jogging as the sun came up. It was cold. I went a little later than normal because I was only going for such a short run and as I was coming back up Woburn St. almost home I was passing the commuters walking to the train. They looked cold but hopeful--we're on the other side of winter now--it's all down hill from here.

The second run was Thirsty Thursday with the boys. Tonight we had Mark, Dan, Chris and me. We ran a 6-ish mile loop out to the Wood End School and then did some pickups back and forth on Birch Meadow Drive with a half or three quarter mile cool down. We all ran together on the wood end loop then sort of did our own thing on the pickups. 9 miles or so in total.

It being Thirsty Thursday we headed to Grumpy's afterward, but it being Mark's birthday the wives joined us...well all the wives but mine since Gina and the girls are up in York visiting my sister. Still, a good time was had by all, even me, the 7th wheel.

After Grumpy's I headed up the road to the Moon to hang out with some old friends. Jon and Kim were in town from Philly and were hanging out in the Cougar Den with a bunch of friends. It was fun to see old friends and realize we're all dealing with the same things, really. It's kind of odd to go bar hopping in Reading by walking from one place to the next. It was snowing when I came out and walked down the block back to my car.

I'd be no good at bachelorhood, really--I miss the girls already. It's too quiet around here.

At least January is over, right?

2011-02-03T10:09:00.008-05:00

This morning, as I am fortunate to do often when I don't have to leave early for meetings, I walked my 8-year-old daughter to school. We slogged through the mush up our hill to Prospect Street and down Oak instead of our normal route, down the hill and over Summer Ave. That's because Summer Ave is basically impassable to pedestrians right now.

It occurred to me as I watched this cute little bespectacled girl in her pink hat and snow boots weave between the stationary parade of SUVs and minivans stopped on Oak Street and scramble over snowbanks bigger than her with her giant backpack slung over both shoulders that we've talked enough about the weather this winter. At a certain point, you just have to get on with it.

In January I saved a lot of money on dry cleaning because it seems every meeting was cancelled. I spent more time on my crappy old treadmill in the basement than I'd want to in a whole year, but I had a crappy old treadmill in the basement. I've spent hour upon back breaking hour shoveling snow that will eventually melt anyway, but hey it's cross training (or something.)

I'm fortunate to have a job that I can do from anywhere, a 10MB Internet connection right to my home, a laptop and an IP VPN phone. Best yet I somehow managed to run 241 miles in January (which might not sound like much but is my biggest month since last September) and only took 1 day off from running in the last 45. Tonight's Thirsty Thursday workout might feature crampons and an ice ax but it will go on, and the post-workout beers with the boys will taste good. Spring will come, and there will be races--and I plan to be ready.

I think I even see the sun peeking through the icy gray sky. See? Things are looking up.

It's 2011. Holy shit.

2011-01-07T21:57:00.005-05:00

So I guess I should write one of those 2010 wrap up threads (since I have no idea what else to do with this blog anymore.)

I ran a total of 14 races in 2010:
7 x 5k
1 x 5 mi
3 x 10k
1 x 13.1 mi (1st OA)
1 x 25k
1 x 26.2 mi

My best races of the year were: 17:08 for 5k, 1:19:12 for 13.1 mi (and my only win) and 2:49:56 for 26.2 mi.

I ran 3,040 miles. I don't know the exact number but I'm sure a higher percentage of it was with other people than in any year out of at least the last 6. That makes 3 years in a row over 3,000 miles, the only 3 years of my life at that level.

I ran no PR's and 2 PW's but I came close enough to PR's at 5k and marathon to say that I'm on the right track.

All in all it was my best year of racing since 2004.

This year I plan to race more and race faster. I guess that means I should get crackin' with something resembling training.

I got in 55 miles or so last week and have a couple weeks now with no days off going. I've been meeting Mark, Dan, Marc and Chris for "Thirsty Thursday" workouts and a Mark and Dan for some Sunday long runs and that is helping get back into a regular cadence. Just need to get a couple decent months of mileage under my belt so I can start to focus on some serious 5k workouts for spring.

Unless my daughter's gymnastics meet gets in the way I might make a go at the Great Stew Chase 15k in February...that's probably my next race. Onward.

Fat, drunk and stupid

2010-11-22T08:06:00.006-05:00

It may, as Dean Wormer so eloquently put it, be no way to go through life (son) but it's a decent way to go through the holidays. Just don't drive.

Now I'm so used to hitting the post-Baystate/pre-holiday wall that I just plan on it and just figure whatever jiggly jogging I can manage until Christmas will keep me from getting so far gone that I can't come back to where I was and then some. In the spirit of the season, this past Saturday I participated in the first ever Reading Pub Run. This was easily one of the dumbest days of my post-collegiate life but, wow, it was fun.

And the best part is nobody got hit by a car (though there were a couple of close calls) or arrested. Success! Next year, we'll have 50 guys by accident as the legend of this stupidity spreads throughout the suburbs, but the Original 11 will always have Saturday, November 20, 2010 to remember. They can never take that away from us.

Not only did I spend the afternoon jogging from bar to bar and getting progressively less able to run in a straight line, but afterward I jogged home, showered and then my wife and I got on a party bus into Boston. Yikes. Waking up the next morning was sort of like college, except in addition to a massive hangover I also realized I had four kids and a huge mortgage payment. Oh, and Marc C's license and ATM card (no idea how.)

After shuffling gingerly about the house most of Sunday, doing some housework and making some meatballs and sauce, I finally put on my running gear and went out for some running, distance and time TBD. All in all it was a pleasant late-fall run: cool and crisp with the smell of wood fires in the air. At one point as I was running up Charles Street something caught my eye to my left and I turned my head to see a tall guy in a kilt, high boots, a leather jacket and smoking a cigar put a travel mug of something on the roof of his car as he shoved his hands in his jacket pocket for his keys. I wonder where he was going? I got in about 9 miles, my 2nd longest run since Baystate.

This week will feature some more jogging around in a haze and stuffing myself with turkey and trimmings. Happy Holidays!

The fundamentals

2010-11-06T16:15:00.000-04:00

Asking someone when they started running is kind of odd, when you think about it. For most people, the real answer is probably shortly after they mastered walking.

But that's not what most people mean when they ask that question. They want to know when you started to purchase lots of specialized equipment and clothing, to track miles and paces and use all kinds of dorky running lingo in polite company. People who started running as adults with disposable income and big brains want to know the magic formula--the fundamentals--that you learned from all the years that you must have spent working with professional coaches and reading training manuals and following the recipes. They want to know the secret that you must know because you're kind of fast relative to the average finisher at the local yokel 5k. They want to break it down, follow the steps and take the exam. Earn their CRD credential (Certified Running Dorkwad.)

I say read some books if you're into that sort of thing (personally, running books bore me to tears) and patrol the interwebs for the training logs of elites if you want--it's all good and interesting stuff. But if it's the secret you're after, find some real-life, flesh and blood people to run with and run with them a bunch. After about your 50th workout or long run (40th if you're a really quick study) with the same group of experienced runners, the secret begins to come into view.

I suppose I started running, in the way that people mean, when I was 14 years old and I went out for the winter track team as a freshman in high school, putting an end to my hockey career in part due to a December birthday. And so pretty much what I did every day after school all winter and all spring was go running with my buddies. We ran in good weather and bad. We ran in the heat in the cold, in the rain and in the snow and on beautiful, sunny afternoons that took your breath away. We did all the familiar loops with names that had been passed down from generation to generation. We made fun of each other and had snowball fights out on the roads. We did hills up by the water tower and we did drills on the back straightaway. We did loads of 400s at all sorts of paces. We did a hellish workout named "baseball" because it took place on the baseball field and involved lots of accelerations for unknown amounts of time at unknown intervals, in a pack. We tasted copper. We ran in cotton t-shirts and without watches, heart rate monitors, GPS, or iPods. We didn't keep training logs and hadn't even heard of the expression "miles per week." If it rained today, we ran in wet shoes tomorrow.

When the weather was really bad we did workouts in the field house on a flat, tiny track--mondo over concrete--that we were fortunate to have compared to lots of other high schools. We raced our asses off on eleven laps to the mile indoor tracks and at the end of the season, if we were lucky, we got to turn it loose on a nice, banked 200m oval. In the spring we got to move outside and run on the big track and then life was really grand. We knew all the runner girls.

The first time I set foot on a college campus, it was to run a race. The first time I left New England, it was to run a race. The first time I dated a girl from outside my town she was a runner for another high school whom I'd met at a track meet. The first time I drank a beer from a keg it was on a track recruit weekend at Holy Cross my senior year in high school.

And I was absolutely nothing special. A completely ordinary high school track runner.

I might have had a grand total of 5 one-on-one conversations with my coach over 4 years of track. Maybe.

When I started to get back in to running as an adult, it never occurred to me to worry about a lot of the stuff people obsess over. I started running, I found some races, I talked to some runners. Eventually I found some people to do workouts with sometimes. And then I just stuck with it.

The nice thing about running--the thing that brought me back as an adult with a family and a real job--is that the lion's share of the work can be done alone, on nobody else's schedule. The motivated enough hobby jogger can simply make it a habit to get up early every morning and get his workout in before most of his neighbors are awake. Or if he's a night owl he can do it after the kids are in bed. He can get pretty fit, and even be relatively competitive locally, on an average of an hour a day of training--most of it outside the hours when he's beholden to others. But this can become isolating if you let it.

What it takes is running a lot, sure, but also yucking it up with your buddies over a long run. Talking running while running. And talking non-running while running. Commuting to races together, racing hard, and sharing a few beers and a few laughs afterward. Because it feels good to be fit and alive. Because you just ran a race. Because you're runners. And runners run.

Baystate 2010, it was a good season

2010-10-25T09:56:00.008-04:00

Last Sunday was the Baystate Marathon in Lowell. It was, I suppose, my goal race for the 2010 season.

I ran a respectable 2:49:56, my 2nd fastest ever, but I did it the hard way--going through half way on pace for a 2:47:30. As the splits (1:23:45 / 1:26:11) would indicate, it was a very tough second half. In hindsight it's easy to say that if all I was going to do is run 2:49 again, there are easier ways to do it, but all indications were that 2:47-mid was realistic and so it was worth a shot, no regrets.

Marathons are just really, really hard if you race them. There's no way around it. There is a process of eliminating possibilities that goes on where at the start you're just trying to give yourself as good a chance as possible for a great day--you can't accomplish anything in the first half but you can throw a lot of goals away if you're not careful. As you get deeper and deeper into the race, the universe of possible outcomes gets smaller and smaller and the runner's job is to continue to pursue the best possible outcome on the day. Faster is always better. It's a damn hard job.

I was racing my friend Andrew and we started together. We ran shoulder to shoulder for the first half and then, just past the halfway mark, he took off up the road. I was already starting to feel the effects of the slightly too fast first half--my right hamstring was beginning to tighten badly, and I knew that if I went with Andrew there would be a huge blow up on the horizon. I had a feeling Andrew was committing race suicide himself at that point, but you never know. Maybe he was having a breakthrough day. All I knew is I had to run my race. He opened up about an 80 meter gap on me by about the 17 mile marker but by the time we reached the Tyngsboro Bridge for the 2nd time (around 18 miles) the gap was not increasing and it may have been shrinking. I reeled Andrew in over the next 3 miles or so and eventually passed him between 20 and 21--it's a bit hazy exactly where.

Andrew and I exchanged some encouraging words and then I moved by and within a couple of minutes I didn't hear his footsteps anymore and the reality of what was ahead of me started to sink in. The race with Andrew was basically over, the goal of 2:47 was out the window, a PR was starting to look really unlikely, so what was left to fight for? The best possible outcome. It's vague and trite, but when you're suffering that bad it's all there is. Maybe I could still get in under 2:50 for only the 2nd time in my life. Maybe not. All I knew was I had enough invested to that point that I was going to leave no doubt. The lowest finish time, the lowest place, the best result I could get, whatever that was--nothing left to think about, go until they wrap you in mylar, I told myself.

The last 3 or 4 miles of the race were some of the most difficult of my racing life and I don't have the energy to recount the details. My pace was slipping, my hamstring was becoming a real problem and there was the nagging feeling that it could all go bad in a second and I might not finish the race. Baystate has a 1 mile to go mark and at that point I looked at my watch and realized I needed to run a 7 minute mile to break 2:50 and I wasn't sure I could do it. But it was worth trying.

When I finally reached the entrance to the stadium and the 26 mile marker I felt like, because I was still actually running, I would at least get the sub 2:50. My friend Jeff was there on the outfield grass in his mylar sheet having just wrapped up a 2:35 PR and gave me some encouragement as I began my kick, such as it was, around the warning track. A figure in a red Whirlaway singlet and black hat came into view and I thought it looked like my friend Dan who had gone for sub 2:30, but how could that be? It was--the marathon is a bitch.

I finished. I never gave in, so there's that. It wasn't a PR, or really anything, but another marathon and yet I was mostly satisfied.

Later, after putting on layers of dry clothes, chatting with other marathoners, eating some of the post-race grub and meeting up with my wife and girls for some well needed hugs, I shuffled over to Beerworks and met friends for a few beers and grub on the patio. My friend and training partner, Mark, was the only one there before me. We swore off marathons together, again.

It was a good season. From August 1st on, I ran a 17:08 5k (fastest in 6 years), a 1:19 half marathon (fastest in 6 years and 2nd fastest ever) and my second sub-2:50 marathon. And yet, I'm ambivalent. I guess that's how this works--we're never truly satisfied. But it was a good day, mostly. A good, hard day.

The end.

Counting down to go

2010-10-06T10:46:00.003-04:00

I've been remiss in keeping up with this blog lately, which is generally a good thing. It means I'm too busy for navel gazing.

Since my last update I've put together one of the best two months of training and racing I can ever remember as I aim this building tsunami of racing fitness (by my standards) at October 17th and the Baystate Marathon. In general, a marathon is always the end of a racing season for me--I'm not one of those freaks who can run several marathons off of a single block of training and I have neither the interest, nor the budget to do a succession of sub-maximal marathons in the interest of earning a t-shirt or entry into some club or what have you. With the exception of perhaps the 2008 Flying Monkey, which I ran 5 weeks after a PR effort at Baystate, every marathon I've run has been an all-in effort, which means I'm done for the season after that.

This time there is the added finality that a few hours after I finish Baystate and enjoy some food and post-race beers with friends, I will board a plane for Las Vegas and my company's world-wide sales kickoff that runs Sunday to Thursday. I'm not sure I'll even bring running shoes. Okay who am I kidding, yeah I will.

This fact has been quite liberating. In running terms, I'm not at all looking beyond a week from Sunday. That's the end of the earth for me. At some point after Vegas I'll hit the reset button and put some new goals on the calendar and begin the process of starting over, but we'll jump of that bridge when we come to it. I'm living in the now.

Here's what I've done since my last update:

Week of 8/9 -- 74 miles including 2 decent workouts
Week of 8/16 -- 78 miles indcluding Saunders 10k in 36:37 (14th) and a 20+ mile long run
Week of 8/23 -- 80 miles including 1 good track workout and a 20+ miler on the Baystate course with Mark and Dan
Week of 8/30 -- 73 miles with one decent workout and no long run with Cape Ann on Monday
Week of 9/6 -- 82 miles including Cape Ann 25k in 1:37:28 (15th) and Street Faire 5k in 17:18 (2nd) the day after an 18 miler
Week of 9/13 -- 82 miles including 2 decent workouts and a 21.5 mile long run on roads and trails
Week of 9/20 -- 73 miles including 1 decent workout and the Wilmington Half Marathon in 1:19:13 (1st)
Week of 9/27 -- 66 miles including an unplanned day off (sick) and yet a really good 18 miler with 6 miles at sub MP on Sunday.

The only one of those weeks I can find any fault with is last week, where I was dealing with a bad cold and took a day off. Even then Sunday's workout went so well I didn't even worry about the lower mileage. They hay's in the barn.

This weekend I'll get a little greedy and see if I can squeeze a 5k PR out of this cycle before I spend everything I've got left on Baystate. The old 5k / 42k double. It's worth a try--you gotta get while the gettin's good.

Chicken dogs, hawks, and offspring: Summer training and racing full steam ahead for October 17

2010-08-06T10:24:00.012-04:00

Where should I start? Okay, my name is Mike and it's been two months since my last confession.

Several Very Important Things have happened in my world of running since I last posted in this space. I had a run-in with a chicken dog, I've strung together two 300+ mile months in a row and counting (and not just mileage but quality training), along with my cohorts I helped direct a successful 4th annual FORR 5k road race, I was attacked by a hawk, I ran a PW 10k and in the same week brought my masters 5k PR down to 17:08, which is also my fastest 5k since 2004. I convinced my favorite rival to run Baystate so we can go toe-to-toe for 26.2 miles. Oh, and I decided that Baystate will be my last marathon--more about that later.

By chicken dog, I'm referring to one of those "toy" breeds that weigh less than 10 pounds and yaps at you incessantly because it has a doggie version of a Napoleon complex. You know the type I mean. Calling them chicken dogs is a bit of an insult to chickens, since they are much less useful than actual chickens. It's mostly a size thing. Anyway, one chased me half way up Woburn Street in Reading one day as I was jogging home from the track. I kicked at it once just grazing it, it ran away only to come back later and was almost run over by a beige swagger wagon. It was quite a scene. Eventually it got tired of chasing me and, I guess, went home.

The FORR 5k was a mild success. I was a bit worried about having too many runners this year as Memorial Park and the adjacent Harrison St are completely torn up, but we wound up with about the same number as last year (160 ish) and nobody got hurt or arrested. Success! My oldest girls ran it without me this time and had a successful race.

Yeah, for real a hawk swooped down out of the sky and tried to maul me on the top of my head with both sets of talons while I was running one morning on Chestnut St in Lynnfield. Then it flew up into the limb of a big oak tree and looked down mocking me. I had to google "hawk attack" when I got home just to see if that really is something that happens. Apparently it is. I had bruises on my head, but it didn't draw blood. Good thing I was due for a haircut so that my thick mat of hair (that my wife insists is full of gray) protected me. I couldn't have made that up if I tried.

Last week I ran a 10k that was put on by one of my co-workers. I mostly ran it as a workout and as a favor to the guy but I didn't expect it to be THAT bad. The race was out and back on a bike path and featured 5k of downhill, then a hairpin turn and 5k of uphill. And it was 88 degrees and very humid at race time! Yuck. I ran my slowest 10k ever in 37:45, which was still good for 4th overall and 1st old guy.

I guess it was a decent workout though, because I had an excellent 5k just days later. I took the oldest 2 girls up to York and we crashed at my sister's place on Saturday night so we could all run the York Days 5k on Sunday morning. The weather turned out to be perfect. There was a couple days of break in the humidity and this big Canadian air mass (what am I a meteorologist??) came down and cooled us off. It was literally 57 degrees at my sister's when I got up in the morning. I got the girls over to York High School, got us our bibs and chips and left them in the girls' room line while I went out to do a jog. I could tell immediately I was going to pop a good one. And it was still cool, probably still in the 60's by race time. I knew the course profile pretty well and had run a race that uses the same finish, so I was pretty confident. I wound up executing one of the best races I've ever run running (I think) about 5:25 in the last mile, and finished in 17:08, my best 5k since 2004 and 3rd best ever.

The girls ran great and finished with the same time in 29:15.

A fantastic beach day with their sisters and cousins ensued.

In other news, I've decided I don't want to run marathons anymore after Baystate. It's half a quality of life/career decision and half a quality of running decision. I'm planning to go balls out for the rest of the summer and try to improve on my 2:49 PR and then whether I do or I don't, I'm really not willing to do the work it will take to keep improving at that distance. There are too many other things I'd rather focus my energy on. I'll continue to run for sure, and I can probably stay pretty close to PR shape or even improve some of my PRs from 13.1 on down, but the marathon is a different animal and I'm just not up for putting a whole six months of training into one day like that anymore and making all the sacrifices along the way that doing so requires. And I have no interest in slogging through sub-maximal marathons just for fun. Not my bag. At times I'm sure I'll run just as much as current "marathon training" but I won't be dong any 20 milers (unless I feel like it) and I won't be putting a whole season's worth of eggs in one race-day basket anymore after October 17th. Big whoop.

The various reactions to this decision have been interesting. Some people completely get it, some flat out don't believe that I'll stop running marathons and some can't understand why I've spent as much time as I have on them already. But a small group have even become what I can only describe as offended by the notion that perhaps a forty-something hobbyjogger might not want to run eighty or more miles a week at the expense of his career, family and overall quality of life for the sake of improving, by a few seconds, his completely mediocre and utterly unimportant marathon personal best. I'm not judging others for their obsessive pursuit of trivial numbers and in fact I'm admitting that until October 17th, I'm going to be at least as OC as anyone. But I've prioritized marathons to the extent I have because I wanted to. And now I don't want to. It will really be okay.

Rolling, rolling, rolling...

2010-06-15T12:04:00.005-04:00

The last couple of weeks my training has started to come together to where I think I'm back to where I was before I got sick in early May, and possibly a bit stronger as well. The last 5 weeks mileage has been 62, 66, 66, 81, 74 with good workouts.

Last week's 74 miles included the Market Square Day 10k in 36:39. Not a stellar time in the grand scheme but a huge improvement over the putrid 18:07 5k at Redhook just 2 weeks earlier and I made absolutely no concessions for the race--I'd done 2 workouts that week including 16 x 200 on Thursday before a Saturday race.

I was pleased with how I competed despite leaving some time on the course. I honestly think I was so pleased when I went through the 5k split in nearly the same time as Redhook that I relaxed a bit in the uphill 4th mile. I quickly got my head back on straight, though, and finished strong.

The next morning I was feeling good enough to run a 14-mile hilly long run to the Breakheart Reservation with Mark Hudson and Dan Princic. I'm recovering really well right now and just need to keep it rolling. Some work travel and a camping trip will possibly limit my miles a tad this week but nothing to be worried about.

And we roll on...

Laser show. Relax.

2010-06-08T15:18:00.005-04:00

It's summer. We're training. It's what we do. By the by, this still cracks me up...

A day at the brewery

2010-05-31T09:52:00.004-04:00

I spent a lovely morning and early afternoon at the Redhook brewery in Portsmouth on Sunday. The Runners Alley Redhook 5k is always one of my favorites--what's not to like about a fast-ish 5k that finishes at a brewery?--and I was just pleased to be recovered enough from my bronchial and sinus issues of earlier in May to even be able to compete.

My oldest daughter, Allie, and I arrived early so that she could babysit my niece while my sister worked registration, giving me lots of time to rest in the shade and soak in the pre-race hoopla. At about 10am, I met up with Mark Hudson and we jogged the course for a warm-up. After changing shoes and shirt and heading over toward the start for some strides, I bumped into Jim Johnson who mentioned that Bob Wiles and John Mentzer were there. I knew, then, the race would go out fast--as if the downhill start and strong tailwind wouldn't be enough.

I wound up going through that first downhill and tailwind mile in 5:26, probably the fastest mile I've run in a year and it felt pretty good. From there, though, it was a tough fade. I never really blew up, just gradually faded the rest of the way and every little rise felt like a mountain. I guess it's what I should have expected given my training or lack thereof lately, but it was still frustrating and a tough bit of medicine to swallow. Having that tailwind from the first mile turn into a headwind for the last mile and then having to go up the slight incline that we had come down at the start just added to the misery. The result (18:07 for 18th overall) was totally unacceptable to me, but in hindsight that's about as good as I had a right to expect. I was really sick a few weeks ago and really haven't very done much above a jogging pace since. As disappointing as it is, the truth is it was probably just the kick in the ass that I needed. I now start my 40's racing career the same way I started my 30's--trying to get back under 18 minutes for a 5k. This sport is beyond humbling at times.

After the race, Hudson and I jogged the course again before I went off to enjoy some free beverages and food and he and his wife set off for a day on the seacoast. My wife took Allie and the rest of the kids home by way of Kittery and my brother-in-law, Brian, and I sat on the patio taking in the sights and sounds, enjoying the warm day and planning out our summer of training that will lead to big things in the fall. The next big red letter day for both of us is the Baystate Marathon on October 17th, but there will be lots of races between now and then.

I won a $25 gift certificate to Runners Alley for being 3rd in my age group (hurray for being old!) so my entry was free. And I left Portsmouth more hungry to get back into some hard training than I've been in quite some time. As hard as it is to accept any number that starts with 18 when I so recently held out sub-17 as my primary goal for this Spring, there is a kind of freedom in knowing. When it's all said and done, this may very well turn out to be my most productive race in years.

Results.

Onward.

No reason necessary

2010-05-24T09:47:00.003-04:00

Talking about the weather is about as lame as it gets, right? And even if it wasn't, as runners we are conditioned to simultaneously obsess over and ignore the weather. Snowing? Doesn't matter, we run. Hot as balls? Doesn't matter, we run. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, locusts? Runners run. But while we're ignoring it, we're also constantly preparing for it. We're making sure the right clothes are clean, whenever possible we're timing our workouts and long runs to take advantage of the warmest or coolest or driest or wettest or breeziest or least windy part of the day. We're getting mentally psyched up for what it will take to git r done no matter what.

But not right now. Not this time of year, at least not in New England. Right now, and for a few more weeks, it really is irrelevant. We don't even need to look at the forecast.

Right now is when no willpower is needed. There is no need to ponder the question of why. Right now we are putting positive memories in the bank to be withdrawn on a hot, humid day in August or a freezing, icy day in January. Right now we're raking.

Now is when fifteen miles rolls off our legs like our phone number off our tongue. We don't even have to think about it. Right now we feed off the energy of the other runners, walkers and bikers we see out on the roads and we don't even wonder where they've been all winter. We're all smiles, all hello and what's up, and we're all on the same team. Right now our challenge is not getting out the door, it's getting back to our real lives and responsibilities. Right now anything is possible and the only thing we have to remind ourselves is that we can't do it all right this very minute.

Our racing goals seem eminently doable, and they are. We have time--we can't be stopped. Right now it's light out when we leave for a morning run and it's still light out when we get home from an evening run. We're not really sure how we've done it all year, but we're sure glad we did because right now there's nothing better than being a runner.

It's true. I am an idiot.

2010-05-04T13:10:00.005-04:00

Several people have commented via email and other means on my training log entry for Saturday, May 1st when I recorded my participation in the Footbridge 5k in Dover, to Benefit the Children's Museum of New Hampshire. While the journal entry itself is not fit for reprinting on this here family-oriented running blog, the industrious follower of these chronicles will be able to find it without much trouble. (Hint: it's on the INTERNETS.)

In my defense, I have since been diagnosed with a sinus infection and bronchitis, complicated by allergies and asthma. The headache that woke me at 1:30am on Saturday morning is easily one of the 3 or 4 worst I've ever had and is only slightly less intense now, three days later and after maybe 15 hours on antibiotics.

Apparently my trusty old method of dealing with all manner of illness and injury--ignore it and it will go away--didn't really pan out this time. What can ya do, right? When I told the PA at my doctor's office that I had attempted a 5k race on Saturday morning she just looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, "Really? And how did that work out?" But she should know as well as anyone that adequate oxygen to the brain is critical to good decision making.

It should go without saying but my disparaging comments in said training log entry were directed at myself alone and were in no way meant to show disrespect toward the Children's Museum of New Hampshire, Granite State Race Services, The Seacoast Race Series, The Town of Dover, Andy Schachat, Bob Wiles, John Mentzer, Jim Johnson or any of the other competitors, race officials, volunteers or spectators at Saturday's event.

I take solace in the fact that despite setting a new PW for 5k by a huge margin, my entry fees will allow one or more underprivileged children to experience the museum for free. (The same would be true even if I had wisely eaten my $22.50 entry fee and just not shown up for the race, but that's beside the point.)

Define: Racing

2010-03-25T12:16:00.003-04:00

When you're done talking about the thing and obsessing over the thing and you actually, finally, mercifully get to the starting line to do the thing--run the race that is--the number in your head doesn't mean shit.

You'll run the race you're capable of if you can just get your big dumb brain out of the way and execute a max effort over the distance you're racing that day. You can't do that if half your brain is preoccupied with a number--either a mile split or a pace or a finish time or one of the numbers on that beeping, blinking gizmoid the size of a toaster strapped onto your chicken-bone wrist.

This is what you trained for. Now do the thing. You find out the number at the end, and maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised. You just never know. And that's why you do it.

I used to have a blog

2010-03-17T08:52:00.008-04:00

Spring is almost here, sort of. It's been winter for a while now. I haven't run a race since November (haven't run a meaningful one since October) and I just took two weeks nearly off from training. I went skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado with one of my college buddies and a bunch of his friends from California and then I went straight to Phoenix for a work meeting. When I got home I had to go to Portland and Albany for meetings. I rolled into last weekend on fumes. It was worth it--the skiing was awesome and it was great to catch up with my buddy Pat.

I had always planned to start my 2010 training campaign after I got back from Breckenridge--before I knew the Phoenix trip would get tacked on and before I knew the New England area would get hit with the storm of the decade right as I was getting underway (we had 10 inches of rain in 72 hours in Middlesex County, driven by sustained 35 mph winds, gusting to 60.)

So here we are. It's just over 10 weeks until the Runners Alley Red Hook 5k and that seems as good a target as any at which to aim my training.

I've run 5 days in a row (woohoo!) and today I did a nice, gentle workout to prime the pump--a 10 mile run with 8 x 1 minute at 5k-10k effort with 3-minute jogs. I'm loosely following Pete Magill's Carlsbad 5000 training program. Pete's a few weeks ahead of me in his training but that's okay--that means I can do exactly what he doesn't want runners to do and look at what's on the program for next week and the week after. I'm starting to feel like a runner. And the days are starting to get longer.

Onward.

That's a wrap

2009-12-31T14:58:00.005-05:00

My last run of 2009 in in the books. It was a slow jog in the snow around the 6.5-mile "Norden Summer" loop that I've run a million times. I'd hoped to lay a good one down to close the year but you take what the weather gives you sometimes.

The final tally:

3,224.6 miles
14 races
Zero PRs

My best race was probably the Lone Gull 10k in September where I snuck under 36 minutes and under 29 minutes for the 5 mile split in the midst of marathon training. Neither of my marathons were stellar--a 2:54 at Boston and a 2:53 in brutal weather at Baystate--but they weren't disasters either. All in all I came close enough to some PRs to know I still have some in me and I came out the other end happy, healthy and still on the road.

2010 will be interesting. I've got a solid base of 2 years of 3000+ miles under me and, most importantly, I'm healthy. But work is starting to go better and be a lot busier than it's been in a while. I expect to be challenged to find as much time to train as consistently as I have been, but I think I've got the base to be able to do some really good stuff if I can find time. The constant balancing act between work, family and training is part of what excites me about the whole thing so I'm looking forward to the challenge. Right now, I have one specific racing goal for the year: finally break 17 for 5k.

Keep on truckin' friends. Onward.

Mill Cities Relay

2009-12-08T21:03:00.005-05:00

Relays are fun. On Sunday I met a bunch of Shamrocks, including my teammates Randy and Val, at the Woburn library and drove up to Nashua, New Hampshire for the 26th annual Mill Cities Relay. Our lead off runner, Mike, and our 2nd leg, Crystal, would meet us in Nashua.

We broke it down like this:

Leg 1, 5.6 miles -- Mike

Leg 2, 4.75 miles -- Crystal

Leg 3, 2.5 miles -- Val

Leg 4, 9.5 miles -- Me

Leg 5, 4.75 miles -- Randy

All of it ends, appropriately, at the Claddagh Pub, in Lawrence. All in all things went pretty well. the logistics of a 2-state, 5-person, point-to-point relay always offer a few challenges and this was no different. Crystal decided to jog a lap around the building as Mike was finishing his leg--leaving him nobody to hand off to and costing us somewhere around a minute and a half (not a big deal in the grand scheme, but pretty disconcerting to a guy who'd just run his ass off.) Later, after the leg 3 exchange, there was a small disagreement between me and the guy directing traffic at the exit of the Greater Lowell Technical School. Since Val was ahead of me and I was supposed to take the baton next, I didn't have time to stop and compare and contrast my credentials as a runner versus his credentials as a traffic director, but some colorful language was exchanged. However, I made it to the exchange before Val, with just enough time to throw off my sweatshirt and pants and get lined up.

I told Randy my goal was to pass 10 more people than passed me. That turned out to be a conservative goal as I lost count how many people I'd passed in the mid-to-high teens and nobody passed me. I just tried to aim for half marathon effort for the first 8 miles or so and then figured I'd bury the needle. The first 4 or 5 miles were mostly on an icy, snowy bike path along the river through Lowell before we returned to he road for the end. Despite (or maybe because of) my slacker training schedule lately, I felt great. I fed off the energy of having lots of targets up ahead and just rolled along. I wound up covering the 9.5 mile course in 57:53 or 6:06 pace and I'm pretty sure the last 1.5 miles were sub 6 pace. I came really close to catching Noel on our Men's Open team--I think the gap was about 30 seconds when we handed off. The great thing is nothing really hurt. My cranky hip made a few complaints in the late miles, but nothing serious.

Randy ran a great last leg and we wound up 26th out of 201 teams overall and 4th of 14 teams in our division, covering the 28.6 mile course in 2:54:38. We were the highest point-scoring team among the Shamrock entries. (Yay us!) If not for the little mishap at the first exchange, we would have been fastest Shamrock team overall. Oh well. Good times, nonetheless.

Results.

The best part, of course, is that this race ends at a pub. And even though we were done by 11 and they didn't serve beer until noon, we found a way. It was good as always to see a lot of the regulars of the New England running scene and overall a great way to usher out my 30's. That's right, my next race will be as a masters runner. Yikes.

Because we can

2009-11-24T20:11:00.004-05:00

Uncle Jimmy's black Lincoln Continental was parked on the wrong side of Powder House Boulevard in Somerville but since I was sitting in the back seat on the drivers side, it gave me a great view of the triangle-shaped field at the end of the Tufts University property where the woman in gray sweats and a rain jacket was throwing a tennis ball for her Doberman using one of those "Chuck It" ball launcher thingies. She could throw the ball a great distance with that thing and the dog never seemed to tire of chasing it--sometimes he would snag the ball out of the air on the bounce and other times he would totally miss and go sliding on his face before recovering to pick the ball up from wherever it had stopped rolling. He didn't seem to mind either way. And most of the time he didn't run straight back and drop the ball at the woman's feet but instead took the long route, circling the field and running along the fence at what looked like full speed, just because he could.

By the wrong side I mean that the car was parked on the left, facing the oncoming traffic that was turning off of the rotary at Powder House Square. It was okay though--the Doherty Funeral Home guys had parked us that way to make it easier to fall into line when Auntie Marge's funeral procession got rolling on its way through Somerville and Arlington. I rode with Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Fran and my mom, listening to the Graceland Channel on Sirius Satellite Radio.

It was a long day--a long, sad, beautiful, hopeful, memorable, reassuring, nostalgic, emotional day. Later, just before dark, I went for a run. I thought about that dog on Tufts field. I thought about Auntie Marge. I didn't think about my creaky hip or my balky IT Band. The run was good enough. Sometimes because we can is good enough.

Old ramblings

2009-11-17T14:11:00.002-05:00

Yes, an appreciation for the aesthetic value of a run is very important to me. At first, I guess I needed an ostensibly beautiful and unpopulated place like Rancho San Antonio County Park in Santa Clara County, California to help motivate me to run. Now, several years and thousands of miles later, my motivation comes much more from within--but the aesthetic is still a huge part of why running is therapeutic. Even some of my more mundane suburban/urban routes have for me their own beauty. There are sights, sounds, smells that I miss if I go more than a few days without running a certain route. When I was in California for a buddy's wedding, I mapped out a run for the sole purpose of experiencing the place where I would be, both the country side and the town. Running is now a big part of how I interpret and learn my environment.

One of my favorite runs ever was on Tuesday afternoon when I ran in a driving rain storm out around the Castle Island causeway in South Boston--there was nobody out due to the weather and I was running on a narrow jetty with water on both sides of me and water hitting me in the face and the harbor islands just faint shadows in the fog. I felt sorry for the poor slugs crouching in doorways downtown or running from cover to cover with umbrellas like the guys from the 5th floor of my building who rode the elevator down with me when I was heading out and couldn't believe I was going out running in that. "It's only water," I told them. They didn't get to know what I knew and they didn't get to experience the city from my perspective or feel physically connected to the natural world, and it was their loss.

Blah

2009-11-07T22:53:00.003-05:00

I ran the Run for All Ages 5k in Wakefield today in a time that was slower than I ran the second half of the Lone Gull 10k seven weeks ago. Boo. I guess running a marathon and then not doing a whole lot of running for three weeks after that doesn't do much for my racing fitness. Maybe it's time to--oh, I don't know--do a workout or something. Or maybe just take up running again. That might work too.

The race benefits prostate cancer and offers prize money for men over 40 on an age graded basis, so lots of fast masters showed up. Craig Fram (51) won it in 16:21. I wound up 10th in 17:58, I think my 4th slowest 5k ever.

Anyway, it was a nice day and it felt good to run hard for a change. But I've got some work to do.

Results.

Does this mean I've moved on?

2009-10-23T11:15:00.000-04:00

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. When I was 20 years old and an undergrad, I basically ran not at all. I ran a little for rugby and occasionally just to stay in some semblance of shape but that was about it. This pattern continued until I was 30 years old, out of shape, working tons of hours, traveling for business and my wife and I were expecting our 2nd child. Basically until I was so busy I couldn't imagine fitting one more priority into the pattern. That's when I finally decided to make the personal decision to be a runner. Now, almost a decade later, I run 3,000 miles a year while being the sole breadwinner for a family of 6, shuttling my kids all over, wiping noses and asses, taking care of a 100 year old house, helping with homework, organizing community activities and working probably 50 hours a week on a slow week.

Somehow having no free time makes me treasure my running time all the more and makes me crave something that's just for me that I'm in control of. Running is my decompression chamber.

I sometimes wish I'd gotten semi-serious about running when I was 20 years old and tried to find my true potential. I wasn't totally without talent. I wonder what I could have done, if I could have been a real animal.

But most of the time I'm just glad I'm running now and that's good enough.

Baystate '09

2009-10-20T21:08:00.003-04:00

I need to post something just to close the book on Baystate and move on. This was a strange race for me.

On the one hand there was a lot working against me. I spent the week leading up to the race at my company's worldwide sales conference in Nashville from Saturday through Thursday--in meetings all day, drinking at night, not sleeping, not eating right and running almost not at all. My flight home on Thursday night was weather delayed, I missed my connection in Philadelphia and wound up I renting a car then driving through the night to get home early Friday. I went into the weekend on fumes and then sometime Saturday realized--oh yeah--I have a marathon to run so I'd better go pickup my race packet in Lowell. The whole week was a lesson in how not to prepare for a marathon, really.

Still despite all of that the ominous weather forecast, when I picked up Mark Hudson on Sunday morning I felt like I had a good race in me.

It all went okay at first. It was cold and windy but not really raining yet at the start. I wasn't exactly feeling lots of pop in my legs but I felt okay--I was rolling off low 6:20's with ease. I had run 2:49 on this course last year and felt like I had better overall fitness and that sub 2:48 was not out of the question. The early pace was right about on that target. Really through halfway I was running 2:47 pace. Then around 14 miles I started to really notice the cold a lot--the rain had picked up quite a bit, I'd been wet for a while by that point and the whole thing just started sucking.

Around the 2 hour mark I could tell I was slowing--my legs were just so cold and achy, as if I was standing in the ocean in Maine. My feet were cramping and it was frustrating because I just couldn't turn my legs over. I went through 30k in under 2 hours but I knew it was going to be a total grind from there. My condition just got worse and worse from there and by the last couple of miles I was just grinding out painful 7:30's on legs that felt like blocks of ice.

Finally, mercifully, I finished in 2:53:25, way back in 49th place. I started shivering uncontrollably within a minute of finishing with my legs and feet cramping badly. I got my cloths, changed in one of the bathrooms of the ballpark then shuffled over to Beerworks to meet Hudson and his wife and friends. Several people in the street offered me help so I must have looked like death. When I got to Beerworks it took a while before I stopped shivering but the beer and pizza went down really nicely. By the time I left Beerworks, the cold, wind-driven rain was mixing with big, wet snowflakes.

I am disappointed and I know I'm a bit of a prick for being so. It's my second fastest marathon ever and two or three years ago I would have killed to be at the point where I could run 2:53 on a bad day. But we put so much into these stupid marathons that it's tough when you don't do what you know you're capable of. I don't know why the brutal weather seemed to affect me more than some people (although less than some others.) Maybe the cumulative fatigue of the week caught up to me.

Anyway, it's in the books and I move on. Runners run. It was great to see a lot of the usual suspects of a New England Grand-Prix race and there were some inspired performances out there--Hudson ran 2:31:40 in that shit for 4th place and yet another marathon PR (the kid is an animal), Brendan Newbold tore the race apart and looks like he's just scratching the surface, and the CMS guys had a great race to take the team title.

Results.

Lone Gull 10k

2009-09-21T07:55:00.007-04:00

photos by Ted Tyler of Coolrunning

Mark Hudson picked me up bright and early on Sunday and we carpooled up to Good Harbor Beach for the Lone Gull 10k, the USATF NE Grand Prix 10k. It was downright chilly when we left Reading, but by the time we got up there and started our warmup it was turning into perfect racing weather.

We did a little jog on the first and last couple miles of the out-and-back course with Dan Princic, Dave Dechellis and a few of the other Whirlaway guys. As usual before a grand prix race the atmosphere was festive, with most of the New England running scene on hand. Just before the start I got to chat a little with Dan Vassallo, the Colby grad now running for Adidas New England, whom I've known since he was in high school. Dan has been on fire lately and would go on to finish 2nd in 30:39.

After the usual pre-race chit chat I wisely buried myself a few rows deep on the starting line to keep from getting sucked out way too fast. The race got underway just a few minutes late and the pack of 800 runners thundered along Atlantic Road. I took it easy for the first half mile and let the crowd settle down before I started moving up through the pack to find my spot. My legs were by no means fresh, being in the heart of marathon training, but I figured if I could get through the first couple of miles without doing something stupid I would have the strength to close well. I wound up hitting the 1 mile mark in 5:45 and the race had settled down around me by that point.

I was 18:04 at 5k and starting to pick off a few more people. I passed 6 to 8 people between the 5k and 5 mile markers--it was good to have so many targets around as the pace was really starting to feel intense. Around 5 miles (photo below) I passed Robert Cipriano of Somerville RR and the 2nd place woman, Tammie Robbie of Whirlaway. My 5 mile split was 28:59.

The last mile featured no more passing, just hanging on with white knuckles. A short, steep little rise just before the 6 mile mark completely finished me off for the little run in to the finish. As I charged (wobbled) for the line I could see the clock winding toward that 36 minute mark but when I hit the finish mat the clock still read 35:56 so I felt confident I'd squeaked under. The official results had it a little closer, however.

The final tally: 79th place overall in 35:59 / 5:48 pace. Not bad for a USATF NE championships race.

It was my 2nd fastest 10k ever (granted I haven't run many of them) and my fastest 5 miler in 5 years en route. 5k splits of 18:04 / 17:55 indicate I have some good strength right now. The race itself was well done and features a beautiful seaside course. I would run this one again in a heartbeat.

Results.

If a tree falls in the woods

2009-09-13T10:58:00.004-04:00

Today I did huge run by my standards. I rarely do anything over 20 miles--even in marathon training--and I don't think I've ever done a training run over 3 hours, until this morning. At least I think I did a big run.

I didn't mean for it to be that far or take that long, really. I just set out with my Garmin aiming for "about 20" and planning to take my time about it. I headed over Bear Hill in Stoneham, past the golf course and into Stoneham center. Wound my way down toward the Spot Pond reservoir, and the Fellsway. I decided to pop into the Fells and run the orange trail which I hadn't really been on since I used to do a lot of mountain biking over there years ago. Running on the rocky, rooted single track of the orange trail is almost a different sport that road running. At times I got impatient picking my way along at 9-10 minute mile pace and a few times I popped off onto the fire roads around the reservoirs...but mostly I made my way around the entire orange trail and back to the entrance by the sheepfold parking lot and out onto the Fellsway.

There I kept going south and ran the loop around Spot Pond, back to Pond Street in Stoneham and headed the way I came. But near Bear Hill I turned onto Broadway and headed over to Wakefield Center and Lake Quannapowitt. At the Gazebo by the lake I was at 19 miles already and finally found my first water. I sucked down as much water as I could and the Gu that I'd been carrying for all 19 miles so far. I don't remember ever being so thirsty on a run.

From there I made my way down the lake shore via Main St and across the Wakefield rotary, past REI and up Salem Street in Reading to the square. I ran down Haven Street where the vendors were setting up for the street fair later today (which my daughter will participating in with her gymnastics academy), through the train station, up Prescott and home.

Garmie says it was about 22.7 miles and over 3 hours but here's the thing: my online training log at RunningAhead is DOWN right now and so I can't upload it. And I have to say I'm a little alarmed at just how much anxiety this fact is causing me. It was down before I went out--I know because I was planning to search for a route I'd created but couldn't thus the ad lib. And now it's still down. And so dependent have I become on my online tools that I can't even feel like the run is complete (i.e. be sure it actually happened) until I enter in my log and see it update my daily, weekly and monthly totals and make that tall orange bar on my summary graph representing today's run.

I need to feed my kids and shower now. I really stink. But I hope RunningAhead is up soon or I will start to freak out a little. And, yes, I hate myself a little for that fact.

Cape Ann 25k

2009-09-07T22:07:00.006-04:00

I went up to Gloucester on Monday morning for the 76th Annual Around Cape Ann 25k Road Race. It's amazing to me that I had never run this race before, but it seems like we've always got something going on on Labor Day weekend. I'm glad I finally did--this was a fun race on a great day for a 15.5 mile run.

At the start it was pretty clear the Greater Boston Track Club would be taking home the men's team title. I found myself in a pack that included at least 6 or 7 of their bright red singlets. Within the first mile I decided I'd better cut the balloon string and let them go or it would be a pretty awful second half of the race. I did, and after a 6:24 opening mile, settled into a good groove in the low 6:30's for a while. I found myself running with Diona Fulton of the Somerville Road Runners for a few of those early miles. She was looking strong and neither of us seemed to be working all that hard.

Everything was going fine and I was okay with the low 6:30's pace over the roller-coaster of a seaside course when around mile 5 or so a guy from the Cambridge Running Club caught up to us and broke up the party. He was working awfully hard for 5 miles into a 25k and between his feet slapping the ground and his breathing like a freight train I just for some reason decided I needed to leave. And so I did--out the front door. I dropped a 6:26, then a 6:18 and a 6:17 and suddenly I was all alone, having dropped Diona and the Cambridge guy and having caught and dropped the GBTC guy who had been about a hundred yards up the road from us. I caught a few more guys going through Rockport. I had gone from about 20th to about 14th in just about 3 miles.

It's funny but at that point I was still feeling fine and so I just went with it. I saw my sister somewhere in here and she snapped the photo below. I sure don't look like I'm working all that hard.

Around miles 10 to 11 I caught a BAA guy and a Somerville guy who were running together. I hung with them for a couple minutes and then moved on up the road. I could see two more targets up the road--a Wicked Running Club guy and the women's winner, Tara Wommack of GBTC. I would eventually catch the Wicked guy around mile 13 or so, but despite closing hard in the last mile I never did catch Tara.

I wound up 10th overall, in 1:38:56. I really didn't know what to expect going in and figured 1:40 would be a good effort on such a hilly, winding course--so I am more than satisfied. And I'm even more pleased with the fact I was clicking off low 6's at the end with relative ease. Any time you can negative split a long hilly race like that it's a big confidence boost.

It was a solid effort for me and should be excellent marathon training. I saw lots of Shamrocks, my sister and brother-in-law and their baby and a bunch of the usual suspects. Overall it was a great way to spend Labor Day morning.

Results.

Here come the Days of the Big Hammers

2009-08-31T10:00:00.002-04:00

I've had weeks of 74, 77 and 72 miles the last 3 with a few big strength workouts. Yesterday I did 18.5 miles with 3 x 2 miles at MP (although they came out a bit faster) around the fields at Ipswich River Park. The last 2 mile interval was in 12:19.5 but I split it 6:14, 6:06 and was getting stronger as the workout went along. I'm getting that indestructible feeling I get when marathon training starts to really roll.

I feel the last 3 weeks I've made huge strides in strength and endurance. After working more on the speed end of the spectrum for the first half of the summer and running a decent 5k (17:22) and 4 mi (22:53), not to mention my big 5 mile showdown with Thunder, I took 2 weeks down not really on purpose before getting serious about marathon training with these last 3 weeks. In hindsight it was a perfect combination. I think it takes 3 weeks of something to make a difference and I'm feeling the difference now. And I think the 2 down weeks in late-July and early-August, one of which was a vacation week, were perfectly timed to let some little niggles heal and let my legs recharge. I love it when the training starts to come together. I feel like I could run through a brick wall right now, the fall-like weather probably helps.

Right now I think I'll actually get this sub 17 thing this year. I have a couple target races picked out for early November, after a quick recovery from Baystate on Oct 18th. But it would not shock me if it happened before then...I'm going to leave myself open to the possibility of a breakthrough between now and then. The funny thing is even though I'm allegedly training for Baystate I spend a lot more time thinking about the 5k than the marathon.

The 5k and then some rinky-dink podunk marathon in Tennessee in November that I'm not even signed up for. We'll see.

Keep running my friends.

Always running from time

2009-08-12T20:15:00.003-04:00

Did workout tonight with people. I met Mark H., Mike C., and Marc C. (no relation) at the RMHS track for 4 x 1600. Damn good times. I need to do that more. We did the first one hellaciously too fast but settled in after that. Onward we go.

No sleep 'til...Baystate

2009-08-09T12:22:00.006-04:00

Yesterday afternoon we returned from a lovely if somewhat exhausting family vacation to Cape Neddick, Maine with Gina's whole family. We rented a big old house right on the ocean in the York Cliffs section of Cape Neddick--ocean front property with a short walk to a small private beach. I did a lot of swimming, boogie boarding, kayaking (including one possibly ill-advised 3+ mile open ocean trip in moderate offshore winds to Nubble Light and back with my brother-in-law), building sand castles, carrying small people, walking miles and miles in flip-flops, pushing strollers, going up and down stairs, loading and unloading, cleaning up and, oh yeah, eating and drinking. And very little running.

I counted yesterday and realized there are exactly 10 weeks until Baystate, for which I registered right before we left. Given that I have more than 2000 miles in the bank for the first 7 months of this year and have run my fastest 5k since 2004 this summer, it was probably not a bad time to take a recovery week before I put on my monastic training robes and disappear from polite society for the next 8-10 weeks.

But now it's really time to get crackin', starting with a 15 miler this morning that felt a lot longer than that. Here we go.

FORR 5k

2009-07-27T10:18:00.010-04:00

Last Thursday night I ran a 5k road race, while at the same time I ran a 5k road race. But I didn't race a 5k road race. Confused?

It seems that for some reason, someone (namely Pete Coumounduros, chairman of Friends of Reading Recreation) thought it would be a good idea to make me the the race director of the FORR 5k road race. So three years ago at a highly organized meeting at Chili's bar, a group of us began planning our first annual event and somehow here we are 3 years later with what looks like a fairly legitimate 5k road race on our hands. In fairness, I am really co-race director with Pete, Chris Ritondo and Mark Hudson. The four of us have shared the planning and promotion of the race almost equally since it started, and Pete is great at hooking in lots of other folks to help out. It really is a group effort from start to finish.

This time we decided to add a 14 and under age group to encourage more families to run, and I thought I'd throw out the challenge to my 12 and 10 year old girls, Allie and Emma. Knowing that we have great volunteers, I figured I should be able to let go my RD responsibilities for 30 minutes or so, and actually run the race with the girls.

Over the last couple of months I did some training with them, when they wanted to. I wanted it to keep it as low-key as possible while making sure they weren't scared of the distance. I was fully confident they could both run the whole thing, but they weren't as sure. We did a few training runs of up to 2 miles, but never really went longer than that. On the day of the race, they were both a bit nervous though neither would let on. After I spent the afternoon setting up the race with the guys, Gina brought the girls down to get ready. They got checked in and even did a little warm-up jog around the park to shake out the nerves.

Nervous? Who me?

We lined up way in the back of the pack--I didn't want them to feel any pressure to go out too fast--and I held them back quite a bit in the first couple of miles. We chatted as we rolled along with the long train of runners up ahead. After a mile, we were into our rhythm and the girls felt confident. The first mile was 10:12 or so which was slower than we'd run in training lots of times. At 2 miles they were working a little more, but still in control. As we passed the old Pearl Street School at about 2.5 miles, a couple of their friends were playing in a soccer game on the field and their parents cheered for the girls by name as they went by. This gave them a boost and soon after we could hear the hoopla at the finish.

Once on the field I told Emma to take off if she wanted and I'd stay with Allie. There was about a third of a mile to go, just a lap around the park. She went ahead a little bit but then Allie started to turn it on too and she kept her sister in her sights. In the end they both had plenty left in the tank for a big charge to the finish.

Emma bringing it in strong

Allie charging across the line leaving her old man in the dust

Emma took home hardware for finishing 3rd in the 14 and under age group, just 10 seconds ahead of her big sister. Both girls wore huge grins of accomplishment and are looking forward to their next race.

Much later, after the kids and wives had gone home, a bunch of other stuff happened. I know we broke down from the race in the rain, it got dark, there may have been a few beers consumed under a tent in the middle of the field. Pizza World may have had to come back with more pizza for the race crew. I believe the quote as the pizza was being ordered might have been something like, "Yeah, we'll be the ones under a green and white tent in the middle of the field."

The Hudson brothers may have raced a beer half mile that may or may not be the catalyst that leads to an official beer mile event in future years. If this were to happen it would likely NOT appear in our permit application with the town. A few of us may have brought the last remaining tent and chairs to a guy named Sean's garage near the park at around midnight. Details are hazy.

Results.

FORR 5k website.

Duel in the swamp

2009-07-20T20:55:00.009-04:00

On Saturday, July 18th, in Concord, New Hampshire I competed in my first actual race since high school. I'm talking here about a real and true race, as in the only thing that matters is who crosses the finish line first. A race very much unlike the dozens of glorified time trials I've run over the last decade. No clock was needed.

My rival for the great showdown at the Bill Luti 5-miler was my friend Andrew, a.k.a. "Thunder," whom I had met in real life only once before during the weekend of the Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon in Nashville last November. Although Andrew and I had only met that one weekend, we've been friends and rivals for a while now thanks to the virtual world of the swamp message board on RunningAhead.com, home of the worlds best online running log. Yeah, runners are weird.

After months of cyber smack talk, the big day had finally arrived. Andrew and his wife, Liz, a New Hampshire native, were in town for vacation with her family and it just so happened that the Bill Luti 5-miler fell on the first weekend of their trip.

I got on the road around 7am on Saturday to make the hour-long drive to Concord. Shortly after I arrived, I met Andrew and Liz and a few other "Swampers" who had also made the trip up from Massachusetts to bear witness to the great battle. And to complete the picture, all of us would be racing in our ridiculous green singlets (complete with skull and crossbones!) of the imaginary swamp racing team. Yes, it was magnificent.

Liz and Andrew with me in the background pinning my number

Apparently Andrew's warmup routine is a closely held trade secret and cannot commence until some exact number of minutes before the start. So I did a couple of miles by myself before meeting back up with the swampers on the walk down to the starting line. After a few pictures and a some last-minute taunting we got lined up as the announcer gave the final instructions and introductions. This was the 42nd annual Bill Luti 5-miler and was also part of the Concord Area Race Series so there was a decent pack of really fast locals, not that it mattered to us. Andrew and I were each only concerned with one other competitor. We took our positions on the starting line in our ridiculous uniforms--we even wore the same shorts which was NOT planned--and got ready for business.

Bill Luti himself fired the starting gun, and we were off. The rollercoaster nature of the course, with decent climbs in miles 2 and 4, demand a conservative start and right away there was a lead pack of over 20 runners just ahead going a lot slower than your typical lead pack.

The first couple of miles were very conservative. I led to just past the mile marker at what felt like a jogging pace, apparently around 5;46. As the road bottomed out, Andrew went by me on the uphill in the 2nd mile and gradually put about 30 meters on me by the top of the 6/10 mile long hill. My plan was to relax the uphills and work the downhills and flats. I felt like I was probably slightly fitter and more experienced so if I could stay relaxed and keep it close, I'd be able to take it in the last couple of miles. I tried to gradually reel him in on the downhills and flats over the 2nd and 3rd miles, eventually pulling even somewhere in the 3rd mile and running shoulder-to-shoulder for a bit near the Saint Paul School. On the next uphill though he put another little gap on me and around here it occurred to me that Andrew looked stronger than I had expected. He was rolling along pretty good and not looking like he was going to crack any time soon.

The 4th mile was uphill again and I was not gaining and in fact seemed to be losing ground which caused me to genuinely start to worry that he might not come back. The gap was about 40 meters approaching the 4 mile marker and I thought to myself that perhaps my plan wasn't going to work out--I began working on my concession speech. But then I gradually made up a little of the gap on the downhill at the start of the 5th mile as the course ran through the grounds of a nursing home then down a private way onto the street that runs out to the main drag. Though the gap was coming down slightly, I still didn't think I was going to catch him. Strangely I also wasn't really upset about it. I was running as hard as I could and it was clear Andrew was running a great race to be holding me off like this. I was very aware through here just how awesome this whole experience was and how much fun I was having.

On a little rise before one of the last turns, with less than half a mile to go, I finally noticed Andrew's legs get wobbly for a second and realized I was still in it. There was blood in the water. The gap was down to about 20 meters and once we turned onto the main drag I opened it up and reeled him in on the last bit of road before the turn into the athletic fields and ran a stride off his shoulder as we tore ass through the parking lot and onto the grass surrounding the track and football field. The course made three quarters of a loop on the grass outside of the track to the finish straight on the walkway between the bleachers and the track--grass which was completely soaked from overnight rainstorms. I caught him on the back stretch just after the visitors bleachers as we splashed through puddles and I think I said something like, "lets finish this off!

I think I actually heard Andrew groan something as his fear became realized--the runner stalking him was me. I was kicking with almost everything I had now and was able to put a couple of strides on him as we took the long turn around the outside, going ankle deep in puddles at times and just trying to stay upright while running wide open on wet grass. We were holding nothing back. Pure racing.

During the entire race, and especially this final sprint, we were absolutely competing with and not against each other. But we sure as hell each wanted to win.

I knew he was gathering himself for one last attack coming off the the last turn and I had just enough left so that when I saw the finish line ahead and felt Andrew moving out into the outside lane--The Lane of High Hopes--I let loose everything I had in one last hellacious sprint to the line. And it was over.

Officially:
Me, 29:27
Andrew, 29:29

Andrew had run a PR by over 20 seconds. And he had very nearly pulled it off. We congratulated each other and rehashed the race as we cheered in the rest of the people we knew. Both of us were on a complete high.

We went for a cooldown and rehashed the race some more. Later we rehashed some more while we drank a beer together--a couple of Harpoon Summers I had packed for just that purpose. Andrew gave me a bottle of his homebrew to take home. We milled around talking with other runners for a bit and then Andrew and Liz had to take off to begin their vacation for real. Andrew would later report that it was the most fun he had ever had running a race. And I know exactly what he means.

Results.

To racing!

We took the lake

2009-07-12T20:32:00.006-04:00

Photos courtesy of Jim Rhodes

I love this race.

The Take the Lake 5k in Wakefield is in it's 10th year and has grown up quite a bit from the first time I ran it back in 2001 or so. It's still about the fastest USATF certified 5k course you can find in these parts and more importantly has a start and finish less than 2 miles from my front door. So it made sense at the start of the year when I put down a sub 17-minute 5k as my number one goal for 2009 to circle July 12th on the calendar as a possible date to take it down. As the date got closer I knew that it was probably not going to happen just yet, but I also knew I was close enough to sub-17 fitness that I had to give it a good go. I was pretty sure no matter what I was ready to run my fastest 5k in almost exactly 5 years--since I ran 17:06 at this race on July 11th 2004.

Mark Hudson and I did a warmup loop of the course (because we don't run around this lake often enough as it is) and then got ready to go. There was the normal pre-race chit chat around the start. As we lined up Bobby Bligh was next to me on the line and gave me a, "Good luck, brother!" Then race director Tom Mignosa made the last minute announcements and we were off.

It had rained a lot overnight and all that water was sitting on the roads and evaporating quickly as the sun tried its best to burn off the cloud layer--making it feel a little like running in a greenhouse. I did my best to settle into a comfortable rhythm but it was really hard to relax. I felt like my heart rate and breathing were elevated right from the go and just kept trying to settle in. I was 5:34 at the mile and pretty much knew at that point it was a very long shot for 17...I figured I needed to be 5:27 or maybe 5:28 max to have a real shot, and that 5:34 first mile sure felt like 5:27. Not a good sign. I just tried to focus on staying near the red line, not backing off.

At about a mile and a half, the course turns right at the gazebo onto Church Street before you leave the road and take the gravel path by the old cemetery and behind the softball field. At this point the headwind was gone but that just meant I instantly started to overheat. Still, I like the little bit on the gravel path under the trees.

Once on North Ave I saw the 2 mile marker and just tried to focus on maintaining turnover up the little rise there. I hit 2 miles in 11:14, knowing then that 17 was out the window but I really tried not to let that rattle me--I still wanted to put down a good time, whatever it was. There was a kid who was running nearly shoulder to shoulder with me now and we would trade the lead about a half dozen times the rest of the way. I just tried to keep my foot on the gas, stay right at the red line.

Through the last turns things got pretty hazy as they do at the end of a 5k, but I remember hearing 16:50 at the 3 mile mark. It was all blood and guts to the finish line, where I became the subject of absolutely the most brutal running photo I've ever seen of myself:

Yeah just...wow.

Anyway, the guy I had been racing for the last mile and a half wound up out kicking me to the line by 1 second, but I never gave in and fought for every yard. It turns out he was 21-year-old Tim Wood of West Roxbury. I wound up 10th overall in 17:22. It was in fact my fastest 5k in 5 years.

I jogged another lap of the lake for a cool down with Hudson (7th) and Dave Dechellis (4th) and then took off as quickly as possible for family commitments. I can't be the least bit upset about this result. I know I'll get sub 17, I'm getting closer. And, damn, I just love to race.

Results.

4 on the 4th

2009-07-05T19:56:00.010-04:00

On Friday afternoon Gina and I piled the kiddos into the family truckster and headed north to York, Maine where we crashed with my sister, Trish, her husband, Brian, and their month-old baby girl. They were psyched to have us, obviously. I mean who wouldn't want 6 (six!) extra people taking up space in their cozy three-bedroom house when they're still adjusting to life with a newborn baby?

Saturday morning Brian and I got up bright and early and headed over to the high school. I got registered and did a 3-mile warmup jog and when I got back to the school things were a little chaotic--this race had grown quite a bit since last year. I met a few friends pre-race and despite the early start time the energy was festive for the holiday weekend.

The race stayed on schedule though so at around 8 AM we were off. At this race last year, I had run a great race (for me) finishing in 22:44, but since I'm fitter now I figured I could beat that on a half decent day. It was definitely warmer though and right from the gun I never felt quite right. At the mile mark there was nobody reading splits so I went to look at my watch only to see all zeros--I thought I'd started it but apparently not, so I was running blind as far as splits. I was in about 20th place at the mile, moved up to about 15th by the time we came down onto Long Sands Beach just past 2 miles, and pretty much held there until the last mile where I picked up a couple more places.

The section along the beach is a double-edged sword. It's flat, there's good scenery and there's lots of crowd support, but you can also see the sign for the Sunrise Hotel that marks the final turn for pretty much the entire mile and a half or so along the beach. That damned hotel seemed to be moving farther and farther away down the beach leaving plenty of time for me to wonder why the hell I was doing this to myself and other such in-race dialogues that we runners are so accustomed to.

In that fourth and final mile I also kept hearing cheers for the first woman so I had that to help keep me focused--it turns out Lesley Hocking, a really solid BAA runner and the eventual women's winner, was moving up behind me. I don't mind being beaten by a woman a.k.a. "gettin' girled" but when it happens at the very end of a race in front of everyone with the PA announcer giving the play by play and the local media recording it in photos and video, well, it can be tough on a guy's confidence, I'll admit it. Which may have helped me find another gear for the last quarter mile. She would finish about 10 seconds behind me.

I wound up 13th out of 812 runners in 22:58. It was a little slower than I wanted but not a bad race. It leaves me a bit nervous about my chances at a sub 17 5k attempt next Sunday, but maybe that's a good thing at this stage, we'll see.

My kiddos tore it up in the fun run and then Brian and I jogged a scenic 7.5 miles back to their house (during which I stepped on a snake) where we met back up with the wives and kids and headed out for a day at the beach.

Results

The nearly perfect snot rocket

2009-07-02T14:22:00.005-04:00

I'm not one to brag, really. And in truth I'm not even one to launch snot rockets in polite company, or really in any company. But running down the road with not another living soul in sight and with a partially obstructed right nostril? Oh hells yeah.

So there I was, running, in a rainstorm. And though there was a lot of rain (like always lately) there was no thunder, which was nice. And by thunder, here I mean the weather phenomenon that usually goes with lightning and not the runner named Andrew, a.k.a. The Thunder, whom I intend beat like a red headed stepchild at the Bill Luti 5-miler on the 19th.

And so about a mile from home and annoyed by the congestion in my nose, in one smooth motion I reached up with my left hand and covered my left nostril with my thumb, tilted my head back slightly and to the right and let fly the most perfect projectile to ever take flight from my nose. This was not the messy, spraying kind of snot rocket either, but a single solid blob that held together beautifully in flight--almost in the shape of a dumbbell really--as it tumbled end over end in a perfect arc and into grass on the side of the road.

Energized by my accomplishment and my new ability to breathe freely, I enjoyed slightly more spring in my step for the final mile of an otherwise ho-hum ten miler. Ah the little things.

5 x 1000 in the rain

2009-06-24T10:14:00.007-04:00

Since it's still June of 2009 and since it's rained every damn day this month, I guess I can stop mentioning "in the rain" when referring to workouts. But that's what it was. And the RMHS track lived up to it's all-weather billing nicely, I might add.

This was a good workout. I often wonder how much if any 5k pace work you really need to run a decent 5k, especially as an almost masters runner. I tend to think very little, if any. But since I hadn't done any work right at 5k pace in a long time, I felt like I'd rather not leave that stone unturned just in case. So the plan was 5 x 1000m at 5k pace (5:28 ish or 3:24 per 1000) with 3/4 time recoveries, which works out to 2:33 per recovery or one lap at a really slow jog.

I'm a little surprised how easy this was, especially in the rain. I mean it wasn't easy, but it wasn't as gut wrenching as I was expecting. I ran the first one a little fast, which probably made the whole workout harder than it needed to be but still it was really only the last 200 of the 2nd through 4th rep that got uncomfortable, and maybe the last 400 of the last one.

The workout went:

3 mile warmup including jogging to the track and doing 3 x 100m strides,
5 x 1000m / jog 400 (3:21.7, 3:23.2, 3:24.6, 3:23.8, 3:22.0),
4 mile jog home.

11 miles total.

The 1000s were about 3:23 for an average, or 5:27 pace. And they add up to a 16:56 5k. Now if I can just do it without the recovery jogs...

The original random hammerfest (redux)

2009-06-20T20:46:00.003-04:00

Hobbyjogger's note: The following entry was originally posted on the swamp messageboard this past April, a few days before the Boston Marathon. I was on my way to bed one night after watching a Celtics playoff game against Chicago when for some reason I sat down at the computer and this poured out of me. Call it taper madness combined with the adrenaline of a Celtics playoff win combined with the nostalgia brought on by it being my oldest daughter's 12th birthday the next day. But for some reason I felt the need to write all of this down and then hastily post it somewhere for someone to read. Because this piece is one of the things that inspired me to start this silly blog in the first place and for other reasons that should become obvious, I thought it fitting to make it the first ever Father's Day edition of the Hobbyjogger Chronicles. So here, with only minor edits, is 'the original random hammerfest.' I hope you enjoy it.

In the summer of 1988 it was hot as balls, and my dad died. I graduated from high school in June of that year and in late July, he died. I did a decent amount of running that hot summer, sometimes at odd hours like 11 o'clock at night when I couldn’t fall asleep and the stress of my household would press on me like a great weight and I would sneak out of the house and just go. Anywhere. I would sneak back in during the middle of the night and lie in bed soaked in my own sweat but so exhausted I would just drift off. Then I would get up the next morning and go to work painting houses for TJ Bane & Co.

He died on a Saturday night. I remember sitting on our front porch shortly afterward and calling over to a friend’s house where I knew there was a party going on that most of my friends were attending. I asked for my buddy, Sean, and when he came on the phone I just said, “Hey, Sean, my dad died.”

“Ah shit, Mike, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yeah, I know…just tell the boys, will ya?”

Soon after that they all started rolling up in front of my house and a bunch of us were sitting on the front porch when the funeral home people wheeled him out the front door and took him away.

A couple of weeks later--after a day spent standing on ladders in the hot sun--I came home, rinsed off under the hose, changed shorts, threw on a pair of trainers and drove down to the high school to meet Sean. We had planned to meet that night to run The Lynnfield, our 10-mile loop from track. I parked my dad’s Civic by the edge of the baseball field and waited for Sean for a few minutes until he rolled up on a little motor scooter that he had borrowed from another one of our friends. We chatted for a few minutes and then when we heard the big bell in the Old South Church toll for 5 o’clock, I tossed my t-shirt and watch through the open window of the car onto the front seat, Sean tossed his t-shirt on the seat of the scooter, and we headed off.

Getting underway we chatted about the usual stuff like girls and work. We joked and made fun of each other like normal. I had spent the day sanding the side of a condo complex in the sun and Sean had spent it stocking beer in the basement of a bar. We were the negative image of each other—I was dark and made darker by the sun, he was pale as a ghost with blond hair and blue eyes.

We rolled on up Pearl Street, went right on Franklin and then turned left on Haverhill and headed into North Reading. It was flat here and we were jogging along carefree in the moment. When we crossed into North Reading and turned onto Chestnut Street around the 3 mile mark, the intensity started to build. It was nothing serious at first--just a little faster.

The conversation began to die down as the pace increased approaching the Lynnfield line and by the time we hit the stretch of rolling hills there, things had gotten pretty quiet. There was still the occasional word here or there, something added to a previous argument or a funny expression said randomly to get a laugh. But mostly it was quiet.

When you run The Lynnfield, at the end of Chestnut Street you approach Route 128 but just before you get there, you make a hard right onto Bay State Road at the Lynnfield Animal Hospital. Here the road is pancake flat as it runs parallel to the highway for a mile or so. The rush hour traffic on 128, about 150 yards to our left, was heavy enough that we were going as fast or faster than the cars. And so the sound we could hear over low traffic noise was the rhythmic, “pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft,” of our feet striking the ground in unison as we hammered along that flat, black asphalt with those summer heat ripples rising up into the late-afternoon haze. We crossed into Wakefield and passed the Elks lodge then the road veered slightly away from the highway and we were left with just the “pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft” and our breathing and the fact that neither of us had said a word in quite a while now and, lets face it, we were flying.

We hauled past the National Guard base and across the Wakefield rotary and headed up Salem Street toward Reading Square. The road goes from flat to slightly uphill around Memorial Park here but we barely noticed as we slid along faster than the cars that were backed up for the light at the square. Just before Main Street there is a short, very steep uphill that was the bane of every teenager learning to drive stick, but to our legs of steel that night it was just a bump. I don’t really remember looking to see if any cars were coming as we tore ass across Main Street through the square and right in front of the Old South church. I’ve often wondered what we must have looked like—two shirtless, skinny-ass teenagers ripping through town at five something pace in the midst of the afternoon rush. I wish I could have seen us.

Passing the Laurel Hill cemetery and turning onto Highland Street, we crested the highest hill on this route and it was all downhill now back to the high school campus. We were racing unabashedly and neither of us was going to blink. Our feet slapped the ground as we hurled ourselves down the steep but mercifully short hill just before the end of Bancroft and made the sharp right turn onto the path of the high school campus.

Upon turning onto the path we slowed to a jog and then a walk and then stopped at the water fountain by the little creek and just like that it was over. We took turns intermittently guzzling water from the fountain and letting the water flow over the backs of our necks and heads and at some point during this soaking we heard the big old church bell slowly sound out six times.

As we walked across the basketball court and the little field to my car, we still didn’t really speak. We just looked at each other and grinned and even giggled a few times sort of shaking our heads as if to say, “What the hell was that?” We made our plans to meet up with a few buddies later that night and then went our separate ways. Ten hot miles in the books.

A few weeks later I went off to Providence where I found out Ray Treacy had no use for a 2:03 800 meter runner who had never run more than 50 miles in a week. And so I drank beer, played some rugby, lived like a regular college idiot and that was that. Sean had one last year of high school to light up the track and then he ran a year at Cushing before winding up at Umass Lowell where a chronic knee injury finally got to be too much and he hung it up too.

Over the years I got pretty out of shape and went many long stretches without running a step. But I always, stubbornly perhaps, considered myself a runner and had a pair of trainers in the closet and knew where they were just in case. Eventually running did call me back and I began, tentatively and painfully at first, to undo the damage of years and sloth and idleness. And now, years later and a runner for sure, I know that it was not the memory of any schoolboy triumph, or individual win, or relay, or team championship, or race of any kind that kept me from ever getting so far gone that I couldn’t come all the way back.

It was just a random hammerfest.

Fifteen in the rain

2009-06-14T13:26:00.004-04:00

I had planned to race this week but part of the challenge of being the hobbyjogger is that, well, this is a hobby and sometimes other things take priority. The month of June is just crazy for my kids as every possible sports and extra-curricular activity is wrapping up and I wound up having to let several good races go by the boards including Joan's Jaunt 5-miler in Woburn on Thursday and the Market Square Day 10k in Portsmouth on Saturday. I briefly debated trying to squeeze a race in on Sunday morning but with the rain pelting the sides of my house all night on Saturday I finally decided it just wasn't to be.

So instead I lounged around with the family and read the paper for a while and then went out at around 10 for a hilly 15+ miler in the Breakheart Reservation, in a steady rain. And, just wow, am I glad I did. I hit a detour about half way there--Broadway in Wakefield was closed so I had to wind my way through Wakefield Center and take Water to Farm St to get to the Breakheart, making the run over closer to 6 miles than 5, but when I got there I had the place mostly to myself. The rain kept most of the normal Sunday walkers, bikers and beachgoers away and for long stretches it was just me, the woods, the hills, the raindrops and my thoughts. Goodness.

There were a few people in there and at one point on my 2nd loop, as I was passing the beach for the 2nd time, a group of older ladies was walking their dogs and one them said in what sounded like Portuguese accent, "Hi there, handsome." I just chuckled and her friends all giggled.

On the way home I went back through Wakefield center, through the common and by Lake Quannapowitt. There were some little kids walking with their parents and dogs and splashing in puddles on the gravel path between the softball field and the boat ramp and I smiled at their joy of running and splashing in a warmish early summer rain. It was the right way to end the week, which all in all turned out pretty well. I got in 67ish miles with 3 somewhat quality runs and kept pushing forward and kept making progress. There will be other weeks and plenty of other races.

Occasional chinks in the quixotic armor

2009-05-29T09:11:00.006-04:00

Motivation has always waxed and waned--this is nothing new. The veneer of relentless consistency is the product of a never-ending cycle of overcoming malaise through sheer acts of will and reigning in the urges to blaze a trail straight to hell, or at least the injury bench. But sometimes my own sanity starts to creep in and question the whole quest, and then it's really time to worry.

Running makes me happy. It makes me feel alive, strong and fit. Running heals wounds. It is a friend in good times and bad. We runners are so fortunate to know the feeling of running like a deer, of experiencing the natural world around us daily, of truly experiencing the spectrum of sights, sounds, smells and feelings of our environments by being in them, not just near them. I need to remind myself of these things especially when real life starts to spin out of control, like when my job and so-called career start to seem incredibly pointless and arbitrary and I'm torn between the itch to make irrational changes and the pragmatic guilt of being the sole breadwinner for a family of six and at having the gall to wallow when so many around me no longer have a job with which to feel dissatisfied.

So when this happens there's really only one option. As my friend, Jeff, once said,

"For us runners, the question of “why” is pretty moot. Not because it may not be interesting, or important, from a certain point of view, but because we’ve left the question of the meaning of running behind. After all the questions have been asked, and all the answers given, in spite of the disagreement on essences, physiology, rationales, training strategies, trail running, road racing, i-pod wearing, mid-foot striking, turnover cadences, arm carriages, Jack Daniels, Arthur Lydiard, 20 miles a week or 100, 5k or the 50k, whether it's really the Miles of Trials or the Trial of Miles, after all the words have been spoken and keyboards have been pounded, meanings given and ideologies subverted... After all this, we runners bend down and tighten the laces, open the door, brace for the cold and are renewed: another godawful, glorious, and meaningless 8 miler."

My wife said pretty much the same thing just now before she left for the grocery store: "Just go put your running stuff on and go running." And so I guess I will, before it dawns on me that Don Quixote eventually regained his senses...and then died, sane and broken. I didn't come this far to wind up sane, let alone broken.

Runners Alley/Redhook 5k

2009-05-25T14:32:00.015-04:00

At the start, that's me in green behind Hudson (1517) and Jim Johnson (11)

On Sunday I hitched a ride up to Portsmouth with Mark Hudson for the Runners Alley/Redhook 5k. This is my 3rd time running this race since my sister Trish started working for Runners Alley. It's gotten pretty big (2000 runners) but it's a good course, well organized and it finishes at a brewery. Tough to beat.

My goal for the day was to get under 17:30 in order to feel like sub-17 will be possible later in the season. It was a pretty good day to race, warm but not uncomfortable. The start at this race is always very fast as it's slightly downhill and with a good crowd, and despite trying to hold back a bit I hit the mile in 5:25. There's a small rise in mile 2 and with the fast start, my pace fell off a bit and I hit 2 miles in 11:15. There was a pretty good group of guys around me to race with, so I never really slacked off. The third mile starts with a slight downhill, then is flat until the little rise right at the end.

In the final mile, that slight uphill is placed for maximum hurtiness

It was good to see my cheering section here, as I was hurting about as bad as I look above.

My four with their newest cousin

I'm pretty happy with the fact that I was able to run 5:36 pace for the last 1.1 but that sure wasn't holding anything back. I finished in 17:27 for 10th overall and I'm happy with how I competed but it's a little daunting to think about taking 30 seconds off that.

Digging for the finish. Ouch.

After jogging a cooldown lap of the course with Hudson (5th) and his Whirlaway teammates, Chris Mahoney (3rd) and Seth Williams (14th) it was time to find the beer tent. I bumped into my brother in law, Brian, on the way and we found our families and then some beverages. Post-race festivities continued on at Brian and Trish's house into the afternoon. A good day.

Brian in blue, me in green...on a post-race beer hunt

17:27, 10th overall.

Results

Yet another 10-miler, saw a gray fox

2009-05-19T12:25:00.001-04:00

About 2 miles into a ho-hum 10-miler, I saw a gray fox perched on a rock next to a creek at the edge of some woods. This was right about where John Carver Road turns into Birch Meadow Drive, on the left. A bunch of crows were going berserk, but I'm not sure if it was because of the fox or just because crows tend to go apeshit right around sun up--always fun when you're sleeping with the windows open. It was pretty calm for a fox, I thought. I'm pretty sure all the foxes I've ever seen on my travels have been red foxes but they always seem a lot more skittish than this guy was. He (or she I suppose) was focused on something in the brush near the creek, looking ready to pounce. It had a black tip on its tail and a white chin and belly and seemed a little more stocky than a red fox which is what caused me to look it up to see if there even was a separate species of fox in this area called gray fox (there is!) But I also found out that gray foxes don't have "black stockings" which I kind of think this guy might have had. So maybe it was a red fox that was gray in color. Anyway. It was a fox of some sort.

Early morning wildlife sightings are always a treat.

Training is going well--73 miles last week, I'm feeling fully recovered from Boston and in need of a race. Good thing I'm going to Portsmouth on Sunday for the Runners Alley/Redhook 5k--a flat, fast 5k with beer at the finish! Until then...

Fitter and happier for sure, but more productive? Hmm...

2009-05-13T09:03:00.009-04:00

Irishman Keith Kelly ran for Providence College and was the 2000 NCAA Cross Country champion. He still trains and races at a very high level and his blog (ain't no hobbyjogger's blog) is called Fitter, Happier, More Productive. Keith actually sold me a couple of pairs of trainers when he was just out of college, training in Boston and working for Marathon Sports in Cambridge. And that's about as close as I'll ever get to running a sub-30 minute 10k.

I only stumbled upon Keith's blog because it's one of the many runners' blogs that Jim Johnson links to. I really like Jim's blog because he runs about a hundred races a year in New England and always gives excellent reviews.

So that's all a really round about way of saying that the phrase Fitter, Happier, More Productive has been bouncing around in my head for the last couple of weeks. I have no doubts about the fitter and happier parts. Fitter is easy. And I think my wife--despite the hassle of having me take off on a Sunday morning saying, "Going for a run!" and coming back 2 hours later--would agree I'm happier. But the more productive bit is more complicated. Over the long haul? Yes, I think so. But certainly there are pockets of time when I'm a whole lot less productive, at least when it comes to the basic necessities of life--little things like work, paying bills, renewing the car registration, yard work. Not a whole lot got done around here in the few weeks just before or the few days just after the Boston Marathon. Eh, what can you do? I'm not worried about that.

What troubles me is when it seems I need to run just to function as a normal human being. It's taken a decade or so but I have become 100% a morning runner and not because I prefer to run at the crack of dawn (or earlier.) It's just that is the only time I can make sure it gets done. And so over many years and tens of thousands of miles, its become part of who I am, to the point that that I can't do much else until I've got some miles in. The rare days when I decide to sleep in (until 6:30, woohoo!) and run later in the day or--good heavens--take a day off, I'm just not much good. I'm a mess, actually, tending to stare slackjawed at my computer screen unable to comprehend the email in my inbox, or stare at my phone hoping it calls somebody, anybody, because lord knows I can't make such decisions as whom to call next without having run that morning.

This would probably bother me more if I weren't so good at rationalizing my addiction. And besides the simple solution is to just go running every morning. Why, just look at me now--I ran nearly 13 miles with 6 x 1000 and 4 x 200 this morning and a few hours later I'm simultaneously blogging my ass off, listening/watching a web conference and doing email. Multitasking I say!!

And anyways how productive do I really need to be? I'm fitter and happier--that's pretty good.

Being "that runner guy"

2009-05-08T09:23:00.009-04:00

I work virtual office, which has its benefits and drawbacks. I work in sales and when I'm travelling a lot and out in front of customers most days, it's fantastic to not also have a commute to deal with. But recently I have taken on a new role that, at least in the early stages of getting ramped up, has resulted in me being in the office a lot more than I'm used to. And I'm going a bit stir crazy. And my kids are driving me nuts.

Today the cleaning people were coming and so rather than try to talk on the phone or do web conferences with the vacuum roaring or a mop slamming against my office door I decided to flee to the "Starbucks Office."

So I'm standing at that little counter where they keep all the goodies--sugar, milk, those little wooden stir sticks, etc.--and a woman in sweats and a Red Sox hat says, "Do you run a lot?"

"Uh, yeah, kinda," I answer, taking a quick look down just to make sure I'm not wearing any running clothes or a race t-shirt. Hmm, nope--jeans, button-down shirt, normalish shoes. Crap was it the watch? Stupid timex ironman is a dead giveaway.

"I thought so because I see you out running all the time," she says.

Ah, yes. Normally when I get this it's from someone I kind of know, or used to know and they see me running every day from their car as they whiz by in a blur--one hand on the wheel, one hand texting, one hand shoving a muffin down their gullet, one hand holding an extra large coffee from Dunks up to eye level--and they get to reconstruct how and why they know me over many daily sightings. And so when they finally corner me at the grocery store or at my kid's softball practice to them it's as if we've seen each other every morning for a year. Except I haven't seen them in 20 years because--and this may come as some surprise--I can't see let alone recognize anyone through the early morning glare off the windshield of an SUV going 45 mph the other direction while I'm hugging the shoulder just looking to keep a safe distance from their front quarter panel. It has resulted in countless awkward moments...but at least I wasn't expected to recognize this woman.

"Oh, yeah, are you a runner or do you normally see me from your car?" I ask knowing the answer.

"Uh, no, I'm usually driving," she says.

And then begins the obligatory 15 minutes of her telling me about her fits and starts with running, her knee troubles, how she ran a marathon in 2000 but has had 3 kids since then, and then of course, "Have you run a...you must run marathons, right?"

Ugh. Despite my initial instinct to scream that there's more to life than marathons, that marathons are stupid, that any overweight jogger can run a marathon, that I hate marathons, I simply say, "Yeah, I've run a few."

And on and on it goes. And she might run the Falmouth Road Race this year, and have I ever done that? And her knees, and her three kids, and she'll be 40 soon, and oh I'll be 40 this year? Wow. But how many kids do I have? FOUR? Wow, and shoes, and treadmills, and the gym, and okay nice to meet you, and thank God can I now just find a seat in the corner and drink my coffee and do some email? Please?

I'll never understand the phenomenon of non-runners feeling the need to tell runners every detail of their running/fitness/weight loss/health/diet history complete with a laundry list of excuses as to why they don't "work out" more. For starters, why assume I care? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate and enjoy running for its full spectrum of benefits including health, weight control, stress relief and everything else. But to be clear; even at my hobbyjogger level I long ago crossed over the threshold of the amount of running one would sanely do if it were really about that. I train to race. I race for sport. It's an athletic competition. You wouldn't start talking up some golf nut about your walking regimen would you? So start talking about calorie counting and weight loss and spinning class (what's that now?) and my eyes glaze over. But more importantly, would you offer all that info up to a non-running complete stranger? I dunno. Weird. But it happens all the time when you're "that runner guy."

Feet wet

2009-05-06T22:01:00.004-04:00

I'm not really sure why I feel the need to have a blog just now. I mean obviously what the world needs most is another navel-gazing running blog by some guy who's not even regionally competitive in the soon-to-be masters ranks. But anyway. I want some place to put a lot of the crazy shite I come up with and write down on message boards only to lose it forever. You know, for the great American novel or whatever. I doubt this will turn into a daily training blog since the 5 or 6 people who are interested in my training know where to find my training log already, and even if they didn't RunningAhead displays my latest workouts automagically in the right-hand margin. I'm not sure what it will be just yet but, hey. I need somthing to kick it off with and today's crappy workout seems as good a place as any to start. Yes, there are other posts that appear to be older than this one but those are imported so they don't count. So here we go...

Distance: 11.6 miles
Duration: 1:25:52

In a cold, hard rain.

3 mi warm up with 3 x strides,
4 x 1000m / jog 200 (3:39, 3:39, 3:40, 3:43--yuck stopped here and switched to 600s),
2 x 600 / jog 200 (2:08, 2:10),
2 x 400 / jog 200 (83, 80),
4 mi jog home with stiff, cold legs and cramping feet.

Yes, those splits are right. And the plan was 6 x 1000 in 3:35. As in, yikes.

It's tempting as hell to call this a fail but if I'm being honest I have to give myself at least a "C" on the workout. For starters it was probably a bad idea to do this in a cold, hard rain. And even without that it's probably still too soon after Boston to be doing a workout with hard targets anyway--should have just done 6 x 3 minutes on the road during a 90-minute road run or something. And then there's the fact that even with out all that bad workouts just happen sometimes. Suck it up and deal. And shortly thereafter of course the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Moving on.

Boston Marathon

2009-04-22T21:56:00.010-04:00

This was easily the most relaxed I have ever been going into a Boston Marathon, my 4th one. After finally deciding to do it in January, I went into it with one goal: to enjoy it. I wanted to, for once, appreciate the whole marathon experience. I didn't feel like there was any way I'd be ready to duplicate the kind of race I had at Bay State in October so soon and I didn't have the energy to try. And I really wanted to enjoy it. For once. That seemed like a good goal. Enjoy the Boston Marathon.

On Sunday afternoon we packed up the kids and went out to my mom and stepdad's house in Shrewsbury, about 20 minutes from Hopkinton. We had dinner and I ran around outside with the girls. They're getting fast now and I can't catch them without trying anymore, so I probably did a little more running than would normally be prudent the night before a marathon. But it was okay. It was a beautiful night. After it got dark, we put the younger ones in their pajamas and I helped load them into the car. I got lots of hugs and kisses and good luck wishes and then they left. I'd sleep at my mom's and she'd drive me to the start in the morning.

On the short ride to the Hopkinton State Park I was relaxed but excited. I knew no matter what happened I was going to run a Boston PR and I wasn't all that concerned with the exact number. My training had gone well and I was ready. It was very foggy as we pulled into the state park and the lake where the runner drop-off was looked sort of eerie as you could only see about 15 yards off shore. I could hear the PA announcer and the hoopla from downtown Hopkinton echoing across the invisible lake. It was game time.

My mom and stepdad wished me luck and I hopped on one of the school busses for the 5 minute ride into town. From this point forward every person I met in a yellow BAA volunteer jacket absolutely welcomed me and took care of me with open arms. Our bus driver was a jolly fellow who kept asking all kinds of dumb questions to break the tension for the nervous runners, "So how far is this marathon anyway?" and such.

After the quick ride we unloaded in Hopkinton square. As I stepped off the bus another smiling, yellow-clad volunteer greeted me, "Good morning and welcome to Hopkinton, runners!!" It would have been almost annoying in a Disneyland sort of way except everyone was feeling the exact same euphoria. It was Boston Marathon day, and where else would you rather be than right here, right now?

I chatted with a friendly Canadian fellow as we walked toward the athletes village at the high school. "That's a pretty low number you got there," he said, gesturing to the yellow gear bag with my number on it slung over my back. We chatted all the way down the road. The place was ajitter with very fit people. I didn't spend a lot of time in the athletes village. I didn't leave myself that much time, for one, and then I spent most of in in a port-o-potty line. After that I was ready to check my gear and get out of there. I checked my bag in, which meant stripping down to racing gear in some cold temps, and then began a relaxed walk down to the corrals, occasionally meeting a runner I knew or chatting with a random fellow runner--there are no strangers in this crowd. We've all earned our way here the same way.

The walk to the 1st corral is the longest, but it's a great walk. As you get closer to the front, walking along the side of the street past the descending numbered corrals the crowds get thicker and the starting line hoopla comes into focus. I have to admit, walking into that corral is a pretty cool thing. There are literally people lined up at the gate to the corral congratulating you as you go by and the volunteers there to keep out the rif raf give you some encouragement as you show your number and walk on in...and then the whole atmosphere changes. With 20 minutes to the gun still, everyone is just chilling. A lot of guys are sitting down. Some are walking or stretching. Most are just shootin' the shit. With 15 to the gun, I sat down and leaned my back against one of the fences for a minute as I sucked a gu and drank a cup of water. A big, burly old timer volunteer in a BAA jacket was walking around introducing himself to every runner, "What's your name? Where you from? Have you run Boston before? Well good luck, sonny." The answers were more interesting than the questions...Ireland, Minnesota, Manitoba, Japan...when he got to me he could tell as soon as I said my name, "You're a local guy? What town you from, Mike? Well good luck to you, have a great race." And like that.

I bumped into Hudson and some of the Whirlaway boys and a few other local guys. We made idle chit chat for a few minutes, talked race plans. Everyone was still pretty relaxed.

The first corral is like the coolest club on earth....until the elites come out. When they walked along the side of our corral to take their place in front of us, the cheers started coming out: "Go HALL!, Go HALL!, HALL, Go Ryan, bring it home! HALL!!" It was pretty cool. A little pomp, national anthem, Air Force flyover and, shit, the gun.

Here we go. I cross the start about 10 seconds after the gun and started my watch. We roll down that first steep hill as the press truck marking the elites drifts off in front. The first thing I always notice is how the embankment on the right side of the narrow, 2-lane road almost acts like bleachers and how thick and LOUD the crowds are as you get underway. It's like starting in a stadium.

The first few miles are always blur. The biker bar on the left side of the road a couple miles in, at the Ashland line is a hoot--very loud and festive. Crazy crowds. The wind now isn't bad yet. It's cool but not uncomfortable. There's lots of chit, chat. I guy in an orange adidas top asks my what I'm aiming for. We're around the same pace so we run together for the next bunch of miles. 5k is around 20 minutes, that would become a pattern for a while.

Framingham is loud, and fun. Natick is louder and funner. Everyone knows Wellesley is coming. We're rolling along pretty good and it's feeling easy as we hear the roar in the distance getting closer and closer. The wind is noticeably picking up and most of us are squished over to the right side of the street trying to draft off people in front. This makes the whole Wellesley thing that much more nuts because we're all on the right side of the street where the girls are. Wall of sound, as thousands of future leaders of America and the world practically hurl themselves over a fence at the runners and scream incessantly. It seems to go on for a mile, a mile that probably goes by in under 6 minutes. Calm down now, chief.

Halfway in 1:25:05, on the fast end of what I was aiming for but okay. Slower than Bay State so well within what I can handle.

At Wellesley center the crowds are a little more well-heeled than those in Natick and Framingham but they still bring it. The narrow street and stores on both sides also captures the sound. Wellesley is nice, lots of nice homes and stores and good looking people. The Newton hills are looming but before that, my girls!

On the steep downhill into Lower Falls, I start to move left out of the pack and into the direct path of the wind. As the road bottoms out I start scanning the crowd until I see them! I drift straight at the girls waving and smiling. After some high fives and pats on the head I'm off again, "Go daddy, go!" following me down the road. I move back into the pack on the right to begin the first climb over route 128 and it's time to get to work now. Playtime is over.

The first climb is really gradual and is really just there to soften you up for what's ahead. Around Newton-Wellesley hospital the road flattens out a bit and the crowds get even thicker. For the rest of the way the crowds will be thick, boisterous and excellent and will build all the way to Boylston Street. At the fire station I take a deep breath, turn the corner and join the fray of hill number 2. Turnover is becoming a grind now; the wind is stronger, the cold is having an effect, and fatigue is setting in.

Around heartbreak I start to allow myself to do the backward math...I could run 8's from here and still break 3, not that I'm going to but I could. I have to say the Boston College crowds brought their A game this year. They're not in Wellesley's class but they are definitely more festive (drunk) and they try hard. The downhill into Cleveland Circle is strange. Lots of people who were running along fine all of a sudden stop in their tracks and walk or stretch--they're cramping up. I can feel my hammys talking to me and at one point when I let my stride open on the downhill just a bit, I feel the right one grab and I slow it down, "Whoa, tiger, keep it under wraps, lets not get cocky now. It's a long way to the Back Bay still."

At Cleveland Circle I know I'll be battling daemons the rest of the way. This is the part I've never been able to appreciate in years past and I'm determined to this time. But it's starting to get really really hard. Turnover is forced and everything hurts. But it's not as bad as other years, I say. I can handle this.

The Newton Hills have pretty much deflated my legs and the idea of returning to the 6:30 pace range is sort of a joke now. I'm just running, pushing. Just keep moving. My quads and hammys are taking turns cramping and screaming at me. It's okay. I'm fine.

Sometimes I hear my name (though I have no idea if it's for me) or someone yells "Shamrock!" and I give a wave. Anything to distract from the effort. I'm looking for the Citgo sign. The crowds are deafening. There are a lot of really solid runners falling apart around me now. Occasionally a runner who's been reduced to a walk will force himself to pick up a choppy run again and the crowds will go insane--willing him on toward Copley. I feed off those cheers as if they're for just me. But I'm okay still.

40k. Good lord. The bridge over the Mass Pike is where the wheels really come off. The last 2k will easily be my slowest but I'm still running and it doesn't matter. Fenway Park. Kenmore Square. 1 to go. Loud. Crazy. Cold.

The road has to go under Mass Ave, where is it? There it is, the line of runners bends to the left. Go there. Down we go, fade to black...oh look at that I'm seeing stars in the dark spots...up a hill now? For real? Where's the right on Hereford? Oh there it is. Here, turn here. Is this up hill? It kind of seems up hill. I don't know. Loud.

Boylston. We're in the arena. Chaos. Damn it's loud. Smells good. Barbecue? Mmm. Beer. Finish line is moving..? Away from me...? How??? Just. Keep. Pushing. Push, push, push, push, push, push, PUSH, PUSH, GRIND, GRIND, GRIT...DONE."

Congratulations, you ran the Boston Marathon!" she says, handing me a bottle of water."

Thank you!" I exhale.

2:54:53, 774th overall.

Good Times 5k

2009-04-07T23:11:00.004-04:00

I really wanted to race a 5k before Boston so I would know what I'd be dealing with when I began my big sub-17 quest after the marathon, so on Tuesday night I headed up to Lowell for the opening night of the Good Times 5k series. I'm really glad I did.

It was a cold, windy night but otherwise okay racing weather. I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of the course by Good Times regular, EJ Hrynowski. The course is pretty flat, except for a couple bridge crossings but it does have a few quirks including some pedestrian bridges and weird-shaped walkways, so I was glad to see it before the race. The last mile of the race also includes a bit of the end of the Bay State marathon, so that brought back some harrowing but good memories.

Anyway, I ran 17:38 for my first ever road race win. Turns out all I had to do was find a weekly 5k race when no real fast guys showed up! Mostly though I was pleased with the time in a solo effort on a cold night, off of nothing but mileage--and it makes sub 17 seem somewhat within reach. After the race every week there is a fun post-race party at Hookslide Kelly's sportsbar in downtown Lowell. This was a lot of fun and I will definitely try to make it back for a few more Good Times races.

17:38, 1st
Results.

New Bedford Half Marathon

2009-03-15T12:22:00.003-04:00

Photo by Tricia Harmon

Booh. I thought for sure I'd be under 1:20 and I was rolling pretty good until mile 10 then a stitch just hobbled me. I could feel it coming on but thought I could keep it in check. Legs were fine. Damn. Just tried to keep moving and hoped it would go away. At the uphill at mile 12 it actually felt a bit better but by then it was too late. Frustrating. Lost like 30 places from last year and ran 10 seconds slower on a much faster day, and I was fitter. Shit. On to the next one.

1:20:46, 171st overall. Booh.
Results

Claddagh Pub 4-Miler

2009-03-01T10:43:00.008-05:00

Photo courtesy of Jim Rhoades

Well that was interesting. When 24:25 wins hardware you know the conditions are less than ideal. Hard to generate much more than tempo effort with the sketchy footing, but hey. Good effort. I was in 7th place with about a quarter mile to go when the kid in front of me just completely yard sale'd. He was running dangerously close to the shoulder and it was tough to tell what was road and what was shoulder when he stepped on the icy remnants of the snowbank which was now covered in an inch of new snow making it blend nicely with the road which was also covered with an inch of new snow. He went wheels up and came down hard on his elbow/shoulder. I slowed to see if he was okay but ,shit, the race was almost done and I was freezing my balls off so it's not like I was gonna let him take back 6th overall. Rubbin's racing.

24:45, 6th overall.
Results

Bay State Marathon

2008-10-20T13:22:00.005-04:00

I ran a 2:49:19 (PR) for 35th place overall at the Bay State Marathon in Lowell, MA on Sunday. The race served as the USATF New England Grand Prix Marathon Championships.

I have been fitter than I was yesterday, and I have run races that were--according to the calculators--of higher quality, but I've never run so complete a race and come so close to doing absolutely everything I was capable of in any race at any distance. I don't know that there is anything I could have done to find one more second out on that course. That was everything.

*****

It has been a long and winding road to here. Sub-2:50 has been unfinished business since the spring of 2004, when it should have been a given for me. I'll spare you the details but suffice it to say that running, like life, is hard and it will humble you at times. From late summer of 2004 until early summer 2006 I did very little running and no racing--and the running I did barely registered as fitness jogging and was certainly did not resemble training. May of 2006 was rock bottom for me as I ran 6.5 miles for the entire month. Then I made the personal decision to be a runner again.

June of 2006 was when I ramped my mileage as quickly as I could from zero to 50 miles per week and then figured I keep doing that for a few months to let it soak in. In November of 2006, after a few 200 mile months strung together, I ran a half marathon in 1:25:31. My slowest ever. Humbling, but a start.

In March of 2007 I ran a half marathon in 1:23:33, a two-minute improvement from the previous November.

In November of 2007 I figured I'd try my first marathon in two-and-a-half years. I ran a 2:55:05 (PR) at Hartford.

March of this year I ran a 1:20:35 half marathon, three minutes faster than at the same race a year prior. It was on. In April I had a set back at the Boston Marathon when I came down with the flu (badly) a month before the marathon. I ran a disappointing 3:03:57. No worries, my half told me I was almost back.

After this year's Boston I took a few weeks to recover, as much from the flu as from the marathon itself, then set my sights on Bay State. I decided now was the time to take the next step in training. I took the month of May to ramp my mileage to 70 mpw and decided to try and do that all summer. I actually expected to do it for a few weeks and have to back off because I'd be too tired or worn out or something--but I never did. I just kept getting stronger. Somehow, magically, I just fit it all in with the rest of my life. Training in the summer is always easier than in the winter--it's light out in the morning, there's a lot less laundry, etc.--but still it just all had to work out. If I had to leave early for work to drive to Maine for a meeting, I just got up extra early and got my run in. If I had to be in New York for work, I just took my running gear. On vacation? No worries I just took my running gear. I got it done. All summer long. The summer of mikey. I ran some races along the way and those told me I was making progress. In August and September I started doing the longer long runs and the monster MP runs. I put down 335 miles in August and another 322 in September. I ran a 30k race. I ran a half marathon. Both in the pouring rain. I was a few years older this time around and I wasn't responding exactly the same way I had in 2004, but I could feel a deep-down fitness there. It had been a long, hard summer, but I was really, really fit. I started to get scared because it had all gone so well.

Finally, on Sunday, October 19th 2008, at 8:30 in the morning, I stood shivering in a crowd of my people on French Street in Lowell, Massachusetts with the rarest of rare opportunities in this life. A do-over. My chance, again, at 2:50.

*****

At the gun I was just relieved to be running. It was so cold--in the upper 30's--and quite windy. I just told myself that by mile 4 I'd be warm and to hang in--but I wanted to make sure I didn't use the cold as an excuse to go out too fast. These grand prix races always have a fast start and we were rolling along pretty good, but not out of control. I'd positioned myself about 4 rows from the line at the start and had a good crowd of 50-60 people in front of me stretching out to a point at the front of the lead pack with the police cruisers and motorcycles leading them. I focused on staying relaxed and kept my arms in tight to conserve heat. I hit the mile in 6:23, a tad faster than I wanted, but not too bad and it felt like a jog.

At near mile 3 the half marathoners took a right turn onto the Rourke Bridge. It didn't thin the crowd much though since the half marathon start was about 75 yards behind the marathon start and very few of them had passed me by this point, but at least now you knew who was who. Here is where I caught up to a guy in long red basketball shorts, a cotton crew-neck shirt, and court shoes, breathing like it was a 5k. He dropped out just past mile 4 and I saw him again on the 2nd loop at mile 14 or so standing in front of a convenience store looking like he was waiting for a ride. Weird. Anyhoo, I hit 5 miles at 32:05 (6:25 pace) feeling relaxed and easy. I was happy with that since I figured I needed to average right around 32:30 per 5 miles. I was ahead of schedule but not so much I needed to worry about going out too fast.

Mile 5 is also where you hit the only significant hills on the course. There are two smallish hills in a row which actually make a nice break. Despite its reputation, Bay State is not pancake flat--it runs up and down both banks of the Merrimack River, making in New England flat, which means gently rolling with a few small hills. There are a couple hills at miles 4-5 that you hit again at miles 14-15 plus the bridges. The rest of the course is very gently rolling. By this point the pack had stretched out and the race was settling in. I'm always happy to get that first 5 miles of a marathon out of the way--the jitters were gone and I was warmed up and feeling good, still relaxed and full of energy. I took my first gu around mile 6 when I saw a water stop coming up. The water stops at Bay State are each supported by a different high school and are very festive, loud and well supported. I think the Mile 6-7 and 16-17 ish water stop was the one with the girls in hula skirts.

Just before mile 8 you see the Tyngsborough Bridge, which you cross twice. I was still clicking off sub-6:30 miles with ease and feeling good. You can also see the mile markers for the 2nd loop so you get a sense of what you'll be seeing when the dark parts of the race start to set in. The pedestrian lane of the Tyngsborough Bridge is made of steel plates and you kind of bounce if you hit one in the middle. It was loud and kind of fun running over it. The water below looked really, really cold.

There were a few guys around me that I was alternating leading and following. We were working together pretty good and everyone was pretty relaxed at this point. I could see the eventual women's winner, Christy Carrara, up ahead about 2 or 300 meters. We went through 10 miles in 1:04:30 making that last 5 miles in 32:25 (6:29 pace) and still feeling really comfortable. We were heading toward the Rourke Bridge where we'd cross over and head up to the Tyngsborough Bridge again. The road here has a nice wide shoulder and for the most part there are just trees on the right between you and the river here. It's a nice road to run on.

At the water stop just before the Rourke Bridge, just past 12 miles, I moved ahead to make sure I'd get a clear shot at some water and downed my 2nd gu. I got through the water stop unscathed but had put a little gap between me and the pack I had been with. I debated taking my foot off the gas to let them catch back up but I was feeling good and didn't want to back off. There were targets up ahead who'd gone out too fast now so I wasn't too worried about spending a lot of time in no-man's land. On the Rourke Bridge I saw the great and powerful Eric : ) who yelled my name--I almost missed him I was so laser focused on my race but I think I yelled a "hi" and gave a wave.

I went through half in 1:24:40. I couldn't have nailed it more perfectly if I'd been paced by a robot. I was starting to feel the first inkling of fatigue in my legs but it was just a hint of it. Nothing to worry about. My right hamstring was tightening, but not really hurting.The next 5 miles or so to the Tyngsborough bridge flew by. I was catching people every few minutes now. Every time I caught up to someone, I'd see another target a few hundred yards up ahead and just lock my stare on their back. The wind was almost at our backs here, hitting me on the back of my right shoulder coming off the river, and it was pretty easy to lock in on my pace and just motor along, despite the fact I was definitely feeling some fatigue now. I hit 15 miles in 1:36:46 or 32:16 (6:28-) for miles 11-15.

The 2nd trip over the Tyngsborough Bridge at mile 18 was not as fun as the first, but it was still fun. I passed a guy in a blue CMS top on the bridge. I was getting pretty close to Christy Carrara now and figured I'd pass her in a mile or so. I hit the 30k mark in just under 2 hours, making it my 2nd fastest 30k ever.

I took my last gu at about mile 19 just before another of the awesome water stops. I'm always relieved to get rid of that last gu. I feel like now I can stop thinking and planning, and just race. Again on the really nice part of the course, somewhat shielded from the wind, I naturally picked it up a bit. Around here I think someone told me I was in 47th place, but I'm not sure. I caught Christy around (I think) 20-21 miles. She actually gave me a couple words of encouragement--I tried to do likewise but think I only managed a grunt and a thumbs-up or something. I'm not sure--memory starts to get hazy here. I hit the 20 mile mark in 2:08:36 so 31:49 (6:22 pace) for those 5 miles, my fastest it would turn out.We were lapping people here, which I hadn't really expected in a marathon. It made it hard to pick out targets up ahead because some of them were going really slow and were clearly not at the 20+ mile mark. At just before mile 23 you pass the Rourke Bridge and head straight toward downtown Lowell. The crowds were good here and I was starting to really need it. As the road turned toward the northeast the wind also was now right in our faces and blowing hard. It was getting really, really hard now but I felt strangely confident. I just didn't see myself falling apart. I was hurting, and my hamstring was starting to really worry me, but I felt like I could hold it together. Around here I saw RA'er MarkFive and he gave a big cheer for me--it REALLY helped (THANK YOU MARKFIVE!)

Math skills were out the window at this point but I felt like I was still on target. I felt like my stride was choppy and labored and I was really forcing turnover, but when I looked up ahead at some of the guys I was catching, they didn't look that bad. I was hurting badly but I figured they were hurting worse. So I figured if I was catching them I must look pretty good too. That's what I told myself anyway. The wind was pretty brutal.

I finally, mercifully, found mile 25 just before the big bend in the road at Umass Lowell. I hit it in 2:41:34 or 32:57 (6:36 pace) for miles 21-25, my slowest but also almost all into the teeth of that northeast wind. I felt like if I could just make that turn away from the wind, I'd be okay. I had a little over 8 minutes to run 1.2 miles and despite the fact I could not have calculated what pace that was if you put a gun to my head, it just felt like it was doable. I just put my head down and fought my body. At the one mile to go mark I had 7 minutes to make it. I felt 85% confident but you never know. My body was rapidly deteriorating.

When I could see the Aken Bridge just ahead and the ballpark on the other side of the river I started to actually kick, something I'm fairly sure I've never done in a marathon. I came across the bridge and the crowds got thick and loud. I so needed it. Half way around the outside of the stadium then 3/4 around the warning track I kept telling myself. That was it. I entered the stadium on the left field line and saw the 26 mile mark, glanced at my watch and saw it turn to 2:48 and kicked for my life. I turned left onto the warning track for that clockwise lap to the first base side. I heard Hudson screaming my name from the infield (he'd finished in 2:34 for 5th place) he could tell it was close. I abandoned all control and let the animal take over. At the final turn on the first base side I saw the clock and it still read 2:49:07 and I knew I'd done it. I charged for the line, heard my wife and kids screaming somewhere from my left and smashed through the imaginary plate glass window covering the finish line--I could have sworn I heard a crash when I went through.

I had done it.

After all that, it turns out all it took was the summer of mikey; just a few months of 70+ miles per week...oh and of course the other 8 years and probably 18,000 miles that came before it.

What's most satisfying about this result, though, is that I am not, primarily, a runner. I'm a dad and a husband and the sole breadwinner for a family of six. I'm an employee, a mentor, a trusted business adviser. I am an uncle, a brother and a son. I'm a neighbor, a friend and an interest leader. I'm a chauffer and a part-time third base coach. A homeowner and a laborer. I am all those things to all of those people. And to myself I am all of those things AND I'm a 2:49 marathoner. And in a way that I can't explain to you unless you've run several thousand miles in my shoes, that 2:49 makes all those other things just a little more precious.