Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Boston Bound
The family and I will be leaving tomorrow morning for Bean Town. I will be participating in the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 17th. To say I am excited, would be an understatement. For those of you who run (marathons), Boston is the gold standard everyone is compared to. This will be the closest I will ever get to an olympic event. I will be running with the best of the best.
The path to Boston for me has been a long struggle. My first taste of marathoning came with Team in Training back in 2001. I crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 24 minutes. I was overwhelmed by the entire experience - and seduced.
For those of you who know me, I've experimented with other types of training programs - I use to be a strong believer that you never had to run more than 16 miles during your long runs - well, after countless blow ups, I threw that training program out the window.
The only way to get better, stronger, faster is to do the work. There is no shortcut to endurance or speed. 26.2 miles is a humbling distance - the first marathoner back in the ancient times died after running that far.
So, I read lots of stuff from true marathon veterans, talked to a lot of people and put together a hybrid training program I look forward to do each day. I guess that's the key - live for the training because so many things can go wrong on marathon day. I am living proof of that. Of all the marathons I completed, only once, have I ran the perfect race. What is the perfect race? A negative split - running the second half of the course faster than the first half.
I've written extensively about that perfect day - check out the link in my bio as I will not talk about it here. It boils down to my love of training. I love to get up early in the morning and logging my miles in. I love going to the track on Tuesday nights and doing speed work, I love my Saturday runs in Huddart Park and my long runs on Sundays.
Before I go off on a tangent, there are some people I need to recognize. First one is my BFFL, Tony C. TC suggested to me early on this training season, I hook up with some fast people to take myself to the next level. For once, I actually listened to him and hooked up with Mark Goyette. Mark is a local guy here in Burlingame who we've become better friends. Mark and I met years ago during the track workouts on Tuesday Nights. This year, Mark and I started to run together early in the morninng and also up at Huddart. Mark is really fast and I think I probably held him up, but he's been really cool about it.
The next couple of guys I want to tip my hat to are Neale Mulligan and Patrick Lee. Both of these manly men are training for the Big Sur Marathon (the degree of difficulty makes Boston look like a very flat course!) We covered undless miles together, early in the morning, Sundays running 20+ miles together and even though the put downs and insults were flying about, they were great company. I know they will do an awesome job at Big Sur.
Finally, I'd like to acknowledge my track coach, Frank Hunt. Frank has a heart of gold - always with words of encouragement - thanks Frank!
If you want to follow my progress on the course, I am bib # 9920.
If I can, I'll try to post from my Treo....
The path to Boston for me has been a long struggle. My first taste of marathoning came with Team in Training back in 2001. I crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 24 minutes. I was overwhelmed by the entire experience - and seduced.
For those of you who know me, I've experimented with other types of training programs - I use to be a strong believer that you never had to run more than 16 miles during your long runs - well, after countless blow ups, I threw that training program out the window.
The only way to get better, stronger, faster is to do the work. There is no shortcut to endurance or speed. 26.2 miles is a humbling distance - the first marathoner back in the ancient times died after running that far.
So, I read lots of stuff from true marathon veterans, talked to a lot of people and put together a hybrid training program I look forward to do each day. I guess that's the key - live for the training because so many things can go wrong on marathon day. I am living proof of that. Of all the marathons I completed, only once, have I ran the perfect race. What is the perfect race? A negative split - running the second half of the course faster than the first half.
I've written extensively about that perfect day - check out the link in my bio as I will not talk about it here. It boils down to my love of training. I love to get up early in the morning and logging my miles in. I love going to the track on Tuesday nights and doing speed work, I love my Saturday runs in Huddart Park and my long runs on Sundays.
Before I go off on a tangent, there are some people I need to recognize. First one is my BFFL, Tony C. TC suggested to me early on this training season, I hook up with some fast people to take myself to the next level. For once, I actually listened to him and hooked up with Mark Goyette. Mark is a local guy here in Burlingame who we've become better friends. Mark and I met years ago during the track workouts on Tuesday Nights. This year, Mark and I started to run together early in the morninng and also up at Huddart. Mark is really fast and I think I probably held him up, but he's been really cool about it.
The next couple of guys I want to tip my hat to are Neale Mulligan and Patrick Lee. Both of these manly men are training for the Big Sur Marathon (the degree of difficulty makes Boston look like a very flat course!) We covered undless miles together, early in the morning, Sundays running 20+ miles together and even though the put downs and insults were flying about, they were great company. I know they will do an awesome job at Big Sur.
Finally, I'd like to acknowledge my track coach, Frank Hunt. Frank has a heart of gold - always with words of encouragement - thanks Frank!
If you want to follow my progress on the course, I am bib # 9920.
If I can, I'll try to post from my Treo....
Labels: running
