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.

7 Weeks To Go

This past Saturday was a gorgeous day for a run.  It was SuperHero Saturday, so there were a lot of charity teams out for their training runs and a number of people running in costume.  Given the warmth, most of us were removing layers, and though I didn't get a picture, the guy running in a complete Jon Snow costume, including sword and cape (i.e. Ikea throw rug) was the most impressive.
I dropped my mileage to only 13.1 miles as planned.  At the 1/2 way point, I met up with a DFMC 1st-timer who was a bit faster.  We pushed the pace on the 2nd 1/2 (~1min/mi faster) so in the end, less mileage but a faster run.

At the run, we learned that the team had raised more than $2.5 million thus far! With 7 weeks to go, we've also seen the singlet for this year.  I'll save that picture for a future post :)