22 Miles Done...Time to Taper

Only 3 weeks to go until Patriot's Day, the Boston Marathon and completing my 6th Boston Marathon with Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge!

Saturday's run was our longest run for the training season, 22 miles were planned.  This year I joined some friends, drove out to Hopkinton, MA and ran the first 22 miles of the course.  It felt odd not to start with the DFMC team, but we finished with team members and the DFMC support staff.  Looking back at it, I think it was a good choice to start in Hopkinton and remember what the start of the course will be like.

As for the run itself, I felt surprisingly good.  I wanted to run a bit slower, but only managed to do so for the 1st 8-10 miles.  As I started talking with a teammate, I lost track of the time and pace and we started speeding up.  In the end, this lead to negative splits and pushing a 8:50-9:10 minute per mile pace through the Newtown Hills.  I'm encouraged by this and to finally break 4 hrs in Boston, I'll need to average around 9 mins/mile over the 26.2 miles.  To be clear, this year, I want to enjoy the race and the day without injury, stomach issues or 90F temps, but if I can set a personal best for Boston as well, that would be the 'icing on the cake.'  We'll see what the day is like, but perhaps everything will align on April 16.

$2500+ in 3 Days!

WOW! The support and generosity of many people in the last 4 days is incredible as we've raised over $2,500 in 4 days!  Some of these donations can receive company matches so the total will be even a bit more.  Thank you to all the donors (80+) who have generously contributed to my 2018 efforts and support DFMC!

Though not a fundraising wow, I'm having some flashbacks to 2015 and winter nor'easters.  Really, a 4th nor'easter hitting Boston today & tonight?!  Luckily, I adjusted my running this week and moved my speed work to Monday.  I'm hoping to get out again tonight before the snow/rain starts, though the wind is already here and will be a nice little challenge.  Fingers crossed that the storm isn't too bad and we're able to run our 22 miles safely this weekend!

Pace$etter Reached!

DFMC has a goal of raising $5.5M this year for the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Cancer Research at Dana-Farber.  As part of the DFMC team, team members who raise at least $8,000 are considered pacesetters from a fundraising perspective.  Thanks to nearly 70 donors, we surpassed $8,000 today!  I've now reached pacesetter status each of the 6 years I've run and couldn't have done it without the generosity of so many amazing donors.

This weekend's run was a solo run of 18-miles.  For various reasons I just didn't make it out to the team run on Saturday, but managed to get my miles in, despite the cold (20s) and wind (20+ mph).  Running into a headwind for 1/2 the run wasn't fun, but it made me work a bit harder.  This run resembled the rest of the week in that things didn't go quite as expected.

After last week's 15 miles, I geared up for a speed workout on Tuesday.  As the nor'easter hit Boston on Tuesday and Arlington racked up 20+ inches of snow, I decided that 3+ hrs of shoveling was a sufficient workout for the day.  Thursday was a good tempo workout, 9 miles at ~8.10 min pace.  A bit faster than I plan for marathon day, but a good workout given the missed day on Tuesday.  This week will be more of the same - speed work, tempo work and our longest training run of the season next weekend - 22 miles.  Fingers crossed the week goes well with no more shoveling!

Medford Leprechaun 5k

After 15 miles yesterday, I ran my first 5k in 2 years today, well at least my first 5k race.  It was one of those races where I just took it easy and enjoyed the run with some friends.  Rushing around this morning I forgot my watch and at the finish I forgot to check the clock.  I felt ok after yesterday's 15 miles, though I realized I need to stretch a bit more. It was a nice day for a run and in the middle of marathon training, was a nice little break from long runs every run.
The upcoming week should include a speed workout on Tuesday, a tempo run on Thursday and ~18 miles on Saturday.  Unfortunately, there's a chance of another nor'easter early this week so we'll see what happens.  Time to rest up from the weekend and get some stretching in.

Another 15 miles done

With only 36 days to go, we're getting into the higher mileage weeks for training.  This week included a speed workout on Tuesday (3 x 2miles).  I had planned to run on Thursday as well, but after the nor'easter dropped 6" of heavy wet snow on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, I decided to take Thursday evening as a indoor training day.  With some 40F temps since then, this morning's training run went well, though it was a bit windy.  I got through my 15 miles though ran a bit faster than I probably should have, more of a race pace run rather than pacing for a long run.  Overall I felt pretty good.
What made the training run even better was coming home to find 2 new donations that put us over $7,500, more than half way to the $15,000 goal for 2018!  With 36 days to go, reaching $15,000 is certainly possible.  Thank you to everyone who has supported my 2018 DFMC efforts and with just 5 weeks to go, we'll finish strong!

Group Run & 2018 Singlet

This week's training included a speed workout on Tuesday (4x 1.5mi), an 8 mile tempo run on Thursday and this morning's group run, 17 miles.  Overall, they felt ok, though each run seemed to require a bit more effort that I would like.  The speed work went well and I got the speed segments in at about my 5-10k pace. Thursday's tempo run was good in that I finished with negative splits.  Glad to be able to push the pace on the 2nd 1/2 of the run.  Today was a day where I hoped to get 16-18 miles in after last week's 13 miles.  I knew the pace would be a bit slowed, but that's ok for a long training run.  In the end, the run probably could have been a bit slower, but oh well.  We had a good day to run and after the bomb cyclone on Friday, we still had some wind to deal with, but it wasn't too bad.  We had a great group today and some of the volunteers were able to grab a few pics during our water stops.

This week was also a good week as a few more donations rolled in and we're closing in on $7,400!  I also received my 2018 singlet.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but the main color is a navy blue and the fluorescent yellow really stands out.  I'd like if the colors had been reversed but that's just me assuming that marathon day will be warm and sunny.  Then again, Accuweather is predicting that April 16 will be mostly sunny at ~50F.  That would be a pretty nice day for the marathon, so we'll see how accurate the long long long range forecast is.  With only about 6 weeks to go, it's time to break up the 6 weeks into 2 sets of 3 - a plan for the 1st 3 weeks of  serious training culminating in our 22 mile training run on March 24 and another plan for the 3 weeks of tapering.  Regardless or how training goes the next few weeks, I know that I'm capable of running and completing Boston on April 16, running in honor of and in memory of too many people affected by cancer.  Running for RJ, for Heather, Don, Josh and loved ones of many donors will make my 6th DFMC and Boston as memorable as my first.