No that is not a picture of me, and before I get to talking about the Boston Marathon, I need to fill you all in on a few runs from last week. I went 120 minutes on Friday after school and then went 80 minutes on Saturday after playing in our first game of the Teachers' Hoops league. More importantly than either of those runs, we won our game on Saturday and I played better than Jesse McDaniel ever could (not saying much). I was going to run another 80 minutes on Sunday, but the basketball team didn't have enough players for the Cinco de Mayo league they play in on Sundays, so I got suckered into playing my second game of the weekend. I was too tired and beat up after the game to run and called it a week, logging 560 minutes on 6 runs (not ideal, but I'll take it).
After taking a day off, I had the Boston Marathon to bandit on Monday. I had made up a training plan for one of my coworkers, and the race day plan was for me to start the race 40 to 45 minutes after her. This was supposed to allow us to meet up at around the half-way point and we planned to run the second half together. I never saw her on the course so the plan didn't work at all, but it ended up being fine. She ran great, finishing in 4:23 and I got in a 26.2 mile long run that took just under three hours. My favorite parts of the marathon were:
1. The fans are amazing. You never go more than 100 feet without having someone cheering you on. I had to make a concerted effort to not get sucked into a faster pace than I wanted because of the atmosphere. I can only imagine what it would be like to have that experience when racing. Hopefully, New York will be similar.
2. I saw a guy who was racing veer off the course and duck into the woods to light up a mid-race cigarette.
3. There were hundreds of people running for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. They had really sweet singlets that had a neon yellow back, so they were super visible. I received my treatment at DFCI, so to see that many people running a marathon for the institute was inspiring. As a singlet enthusiast, I really need to get my hands on one of those neon yellow numbers.
4. The weather was supposed to be horrible with heavy rain and strong winds. Neither of those happened and it was great running weather.
Today, I woke up around 8 to go for a 30 minute run. I have off school this week, so I should be able to get in solid mileage and top the century mark for the first time in a long while. This evening, GBTC practice was cancelled due to weather. I met Ryan A. at the track anyway and we went for what ended up being the windiest run I have ever been on. I was practically walking while we were going into the wind, but it was awesome having the wind at our backs on the way back to the track. We were flying. I ran home from the track to make it a 90 minute run.
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