Hey there, 2010...

It's been a long while since doing a blog update.  Liz and I ran the Philly Marathon in Nov.  I finished in 3h 24m 2s and Liz almost pulled off a Boston Qualifying time with 3h 44m 1s.  It was the hardest achievement that I have ever accomplished.  Everything was good up until Manayunk and the final 8ish miles.  Unfortunately, I had some cramping issues in my calves, which required me to stop a number of times to massage it out.  It happened often enough that a medic was trailing me on a segway and asked me if I needed the cart.  Once the course got back to the flat section along the river, I was fine for the rest of the race.  That's not to say that I wasn't in a tremendous amount of pain.  The picture says it all.  I was very happy with my results and I hope to improve with Boston. 

My goal is to run a 3h 20m marathon.  It should be a hard task since Boston is a grueling downhill-uphill battle compared to the relatively flat Philly terrain.  After a brief 3 week break, we started running again in December and my mileage is approaching 40 miles / week.  Liz will continue to train with me and the rest of the Tufts team, but -for Boston- she'll be coach / cheerleader.

It looks like I'm halfway to reaching $2500.  Thanks to all who have donated!  I'm going to double my efforts to reach my pledge goal.

The Philadelphia Marathon is 3 weeks away and Liz and I are finally starting to taper.  This is the time when we reduce our mileage and allow our bodies to freshen up before our ultimate goal.  A friend of ours calls the rigorous training period before races "putting hay in the barn".  We've stuck to a 28+ week program and now we've nearly filled the barn - it's a great feeling.

Philly is another step.  The accomplishment of finishing my first marathon has been piggybacked with my goal of running the Boston Marathon.  In my mind, I'm at the highest point that I've ever been at in terms of physical fitness.  After a couple weeks of recovery, I'm going to start right up again in preparation for Boston and hopefully, I'll still be maintaining that fitness into April.

I'm not taking the Philly marathon for granted.  This was the first goal and I think I will be able to run faster at Philly than Boston.  Philly is a relatively flat course while Boston is known for beating up runners' bodies.  For Philly, I want to go out, run a good race according to plan and not be destroyed at the end.  I want to look back at my time and say, "That's the fastest I could have run that marathon".  It's pretty much the same goal for Boston, but right now, I'm thinking about it as victory lap - a 26.2 mile victory lap.

PR stands for personal record.  Liz explained it best: "Since I'll never be first in these races I just keep racing against myself to beat my past records."  This past weekend, I was able to beat my previous PR, by a a couple of minutes in hellacious conditions during the Newport, RI half marathon. (1h 33m 26s)

http://www.coolrunning.com/results/09/ri/Oct18_AmicaN_set2.shtml

It was a hard race - 40 degrees, windy, rainy.  The last mile was like running into a wall of wind and by then I was soaked through.  I feel like all of the miles that I've put into marathon training and the 5 pounds that I've dropped since my last half marathon really benefitted me.  When you train for 26.2 miles, 13.1 miles seems so short.  It also helped to have a GPS watch telling me what my pace was during each mile of the race.  Doing math in your head while racing is definitely distracting.

This was a training exercise for our hydration / food plan.  Could we slow down enough to drink a couple of dixie cups of water / gatorade and eat something without sacrificing too much time.  The answer is yes - just don't panic.