Month: January 2018

100 miles in one month: Mission accomplished!

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I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that I’m not a goal-oriented person. But it always makes more sense to me to set personal goals on my birthday than on New Year’s. (This could be because I think New Year’s is the most overblown, overhyped holiday out there. But I digress.)

That said, I LOVE a good challenge, especially when there is a competitive edge to it! So I am happy to announce that I completed my friend Matt’s annual 25/50/75/100 Mile Challenge for the month of January.

The rules are simple: You choose your goal (could be 25, 50, 75 or 100 miles) and commit to completing that mileage by Jan. 31. Every time you finish a run, you log your miles and report them to Matt, who keeps a daily leaderboard that he posts in a private Facebook event. Several dozen of his friends signed up for the challenge, and it’s so fun to see all the participants proudly reporting their miles each day — especially because not everyone is a hardcore runner. It’s inspiring to see people who insist they aren’t runners crush their goals!

Since I am training for yet another marathon, I knew reaching 100 miles would not be a problem for me, but I thought I’d get there sooner than I did. I hit 100 on Jan. 26, after being sick with a nasty cold/cough the week earlier that ruined my long run plans for last weekend. And as I said, having a friendly competition is a powerful motivator! I knew my friend Kree (Matt’s wife) would be at 100 miles on Jan. 26, so I made sure I met my goal that night — even though it was Friday night and I totally did not feel like getting on the treadmill. But I ran those last five miles anyway!

Then the next day, I ran 16 miles in keeping with my marathon training plan — so I am now at 116 miles for January. I should be able to finish out the month somewhere in the low 120s. I was hoping to be in the 130s, and I probably would have been had I not gotten sick. But what can you do? It is cold and flu season, after all.

January is my least favorite month by far — it’s cold (though we’ve had some mild days the past week), the holidays are over and spring and summer feel SO far away. Having a goal definitely makes the month go by faster — which is probably why I just can’t quit spring marathons!

Book review: Long Road to Boston

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I love to read just as much as I love to run, so I am always looking for books that inspire me as a runner.

Long Road to Boston: The Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Marathon, by Mark Sutcliffe, did just that. This book is a must-read for anyone who aspires to run the Boston Marathon.

As the title indicates, this book is largely a memoir of marathoner Sutcliffe’s attempts to qualify for the Boston Marathon. But it’s also a well-researched book that goes into a lot of detail about the history of the Boston Marathon. For example, probably all marathon runners (and lots of people who don’t run marathons) have heard of Heartbreak Hill. They may even know it’s at mile 20 of the Boston Marathon. But did you know why it’s called Heartbreak Hill? Back in 1936, defending champion Johnny Kelley passed another runner, Ellison Brown, patting him on the shoulder as he surged ahead of him. Brown then ended up winning the marathon in the end, leading to Kelley’s heartbreak.

I did not know this — I always thought Heartbreak Hill was so named because it’s at the point in the marathon where runners often begin to hit the wall and maybe miss their goal times, therefore breaking their hearts.

I also learned a lot about the history of the Boston Marathon qualifying standards and how much they have changed over the years. At one point in time, male runners had to post a 2:50 marathon to be allowed to run Boston, and female runners had to run a 3:20. Glad the Boston Athletic Association has relaxed the standards since those days!

In the author’s case, his qualifying standard was 3:25 when he started seriously trying to qualify after he’d already run many marathons. After missing his qualifying standard by a few minutes again and again, Sutcliffe qualified for and ran the 2014 Boston Marathon. The cutoff that year was 1:38, meaning runners had to run 1 minute, 38 seconds below their BQ time, and Sutcliffe made it by 22 seconds!

I felt pretty fortunate reading all about his journey to a BQ, because it didn’t take me nearly as long to qualify. I qualified in my fourth marathon, the first time I’d ever truly attempted to BQ. I say that not to brag, but to point out that I most definitely had an advantage being a woman in the 35-39 age group, where the standard is 3:40. The standards are much tougher for men, and there is some debate about whether that’s fair or not.

However, I definitely related to Sutcliffe’s comments that getting older is something a lot of runners look forward to, because it means they’ll be in a new age group with new qualifying standards. I’ll be 40 in two and a half years, and you can bet I’m excited for a 3:45 standard (assuming the BAA doesn’t change the standards, which they very well might in the next couple of years.)

What I loved the most about his book, though, was his vivid descriptions of the race. From the start of the race in Hopkinton to the famous Wellesley scream tunnel to the Newton Hills to the finish line on Boylston Street, reading the book has made me more excited than ever to run the 2019 Boston Marathon! (Assuming the BAA accepts my time with its 4:59 cushion — or five-minute cushion, depending on whether they count that extra 7/10 of a second! It”s still unclear to me.)

I’ve read several other memoirs written by runners trying to get to Boston, but this was my favorite because Sutcliffe also included so much historical information about the marathon itself. That made the book more than just a typical running memoir, and I know will make me appreciate my Boston experience all the more when I line up at the starting line in Hopkinton.

January running goal: 100 miles in one month

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Happy New Year! This year has gotten off to a bitterly cold start. This morning, it was 12 degrees when I woke up — and it’s been like that for days. And it will be like that for many more days to come, according to the forecast. I really fear for the upcoming winter months — and for my B&A Trail Marathon training. (Every year, I say I won’t run another spring marathon. Yet I can’t seem to help myself.)

That said, my goal for January is still to run at least 100 miles. My friend Matt, owner of 5 Peaks Martial Arts Academy, always does a running challenge to kick off the new year. Participants can choose to do 25, 50, 75 or 100 miles. As I typically hit 20-25 miles a week, even when I am not in marathon training mode, I always opt for the 100 mile challenge.

I’ve been running on the treadmill a lot lately after joining Edgewater Fitness, the gym in my new neighborhood. While I would rather be running outside in beautiful weather, I don’t hate the treadmill like a lot of runners do. When the days are so short, and I work until 5 p.m. during the week, I don’t have much of a choice. I just don’t feel safe running alone at night, or in the early morning hours. And as I mentioned before — it’s damn cold out there right now.

I’ve also been hitting the treadmill at the gym for the last four days for a reason unrelated to training goals. My husband is renovating our main bathroom (you know, that one with the shower!) and asked me last week if I would mind showering at the gym while he lays tiles. Um, can’t say I was thrilled about that idea, but at least the showers at Edgewater Fitness are nice — and I’ll have a beautiful bathroom when he’s (finally!) finished!

So yesterday I ran six miles on the treadmill to kick off the challenge. I have kickboxing class on Tuesdays, so I normally would not have run today. However, I needed to shower this morning, so I woke up at 5 a.m. to haul my butt to the gym before work. Because it is super weird to go to the gym just to take a shower, I obviously ran three miles, too.

Not a bad start to the month at all.

Tell me — do you see the treadmill as something to be avoided at all costs? Or do you embrace it?