Long time, no blog! 

It’s hard to believe Coastal Delaware was more than two months ago, and I’m about to embark upon another marathon training cycle – this time, for Boston 2022! I’ve still been running, of course, just haven’t been following a specific plan and have been running at whatever pace and distance I feel like. That’s about to change tomorrow, when I start my 12-week plan from Advanced Marathoning, the one that got me a huge PR and 2023 BQ at Coastal Delaware. 

I’m not trying for a PR in Boston – my 3:26 is really solid and Boston is pretty darn far from a PR course. I do have a lofty goal of running a BQ time there, even though I already have one for 2023, just because I think that would be really cool! And it doesn’t seem completely out of the question. But I mainly just want to beat my 3:47 from Boston 2019 and above all else, HAVE FUN and soak in the whole experience! 

I didn’t think I’d be as excited to run Boston a second time, but I totally am. Qualifying for Boston is hard – we all know that. But my 2022 BQ was particularly hard to achieve. Why? One word: 2020! I don’t have to tell anyone reading this what kind of year that was! And I don’t think I even had it anywhere near as bad as a lot of people – I worked remotely and my husband’s job in the maritime industry was essential, so we didn’t have any financial issues. And we have no children for whom we had to manage virtual schooling and that whole mess. But still, 2020 was shitty for everyone. At the time, I was working in the PR department of a local hospital, managing social media, and once COVID hit, had to start monitoring our accounts around the clock for messages, comments, questions, etc. It was a lot, and I quickly learned that I really don’t care too much for crisis communications (which surprised me– when I was a reporter, I thrived on breaking news!) I left that job a year ago for a new communications job in an entirely different industry, and as the pandemic continues on, I am thankful every day I’m no longer doing healthcare comms. Shout out to those who continue to plug along every day in these challenging times. 

That being said, running was my sanity in 2020 and the fact that I was actually able to BQ at the Chasing the Unicorn Marathon on Halloween 2020 was really special. Especially after it was canceled and rescheduled at the last minute. The race itself had plenty of “only in 2020” vibes (the cold standing water flowing up over the race course! The fallen tree!), and I missed my 3:30 goal by six minutes, but I got that BQ. 

Then, there was the whole confusion over which Boston the BQ was even for – the cancellation of Boston 2020 and the postponement of Boston 2021 from April to October obviously screwed everything up. Turns out the BQ was good for both, but I got squeaked out of the 2021 race because the Boston Athletic Association decided to take qualifying times from all the way back through September 2018. For those unfamiliar with the process, in the last decade or so, Boston hasn’t had enough room to accept all qualifiers, and will instead take only qualifiers who run a certain time under their qualifying standard, otherwise known as the cutoff time. Except you never know what the cutoff time will be until you register for the race and get your acceptance or non-acceptance email. It’s all very stressful!

But I was allowed to resubmit my time for 2022, and this time, EVERYONE who qualified and applied for the race was accepted! No cut off time! I first saw the news on Instagram, and shed happy tears. This is the first time in years there has been no cut off. I suspect that’s largely in part to the COVID vaccine mandate that the BAA put in place. Plenty of people were angry about that, but the BAA can do whatever it wants and I think we’ll see more and more of these rules moving forward.

Less than 90 days to go until the race! Check out my Boston 2019 race report for a detailed recap of my experience that year. 

Knocking Out a Few 5Ks

I’ve said it a million times on this blog – 5Ks are not my thing! They just hurt so bad! Yes, I know marathons are painful, too, but it’s a different kind of pain – I think I just prefer the slow burn of a longer race rather than the all out push of a shorter race. I still run them fairly frequently, but yeah, not my favorite distance! 

I’ve run two since my marathon, both on holidays. The first one was the Greensburg Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. I’ve run this annual 5K in my hometown every year since 2012, with the exception of 2020, when the pandemic canceled it. From 2016 through 2019, I was able to win second in my age group. (I never placed in prior years, most likely because I was out at the bar on Thanksgiving Eve and hungover for the Turkey Trot. Haha.) Finally, in 2021, I won my age group! (I’ve also aged up into a new age group since the last time I ran this race.) I ran a 20:54, which is a pretty big course PR. My previous fastest time was a 22:10. I’m always psyched to break 21 minutes in the 5K, and this course is tough – it is hilly western PA, after all!

Then on New Year’s Day, I won a 5K in Harrisburg, PA. My husband and I decided to go to Hershey for New Year’s, and of course I looked to see if there were any local races happening. I saw a 5K and a 10K happening on New Year’s Day at City Island, where I ran a St. Patrick’s Day 5K with Staci last year. I also set a PR at a half marathon there last May. I opted for the 5K over the 10K because I just PR’d the 10K in October and wanted to see what I could do in the 5K. I really had no expectations for the race, though. We were out late on New Year’s Eve, but didn’t drink too much and the race wasn’t happening until 11:20 in the morning, so I got plenty of sleep. But the weather was pretty yucky – very foggy with a cold drizzle – and I was a little afraid of slipping and falling.

I stuck with my usual 5K strategy – go out like a bat out of hell and see if I can hold on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That day, it worked. The course was similar to the one I’d run last March with Staci – you run over a bridge over the Susquehanna River and on a path beside the river. Before the race, one of the organizers told us to be careful of goose poop, and I remembered there being goose poop EVERYWHERE when I ran the half last May. But I very quickly entered the pain cave, and didn’t even think about goose poop. (Fortunately, none got on my beloved Alpha Flys!) My splits were positive, but not overly so – 6:30 for mile 1, 6:40 for mile 2, 6:50 for mile 3, and I’m not sure what I ran the last 0.1 in. My time was 20:33  – just seconds off my PR of 20:29! I was really happy about that. I was first female finisher, 11th overall. I am waiting for my award to arrive in the mail! 

But wait! When I checked my results, I saw that my gun time was 20:33, but my chip time was 20:30. So, literally ONE second off my PR. If only I had run two or three seconds faster! Per U.S. Track and Field rules, if you place among the top three overall spots in a race, your gun time is recorded as your official time instead of your chip time. Guess I should have lined up at the very front of the race with those speedy teenagers who clocked 17:xx finish times. LOL. 

Overall, it was a fun day and a great start to 2022. I have a few more 5Ks in mind over the next few months, despite my love-hate relationship with them! But training for Boston will still be my main focus.