8 Weeks to go!

Haven't written anything in a while pretty much because my schedule has sucked and been spending a lot of time still shoveling out our property. We got a notice of violation from the Brookline PD for our sidewalk, so 3 hours of Friday was that. Hopefully though, I won't have to talk about snow anymore and we are past the worst of winter with only 1 week of February left.

With the busy week I had made some changes to my schedule and didn't find time to do any crosstraining on Wednesday (yearly condo association meeting instead - could write a whole blog on this) or Friday (3 hours of shoveling), so I felt really fresh for my long run on Saturday. That said, on both my Tuesday and Thursday runs I felt the development of potentially my first injury in training this season where the region between my calf and ankle were got very sore and was causing me to limp. It was still a bit sore Saturday morning but I had stretched it out a long and used the "rumble roller" a torturous foam roller to massage the region. After dropping off the wife at work, I raced home to get out to the DFMC training run of the week, I ended up being late but I felt so good that I blazed by everyone within the first 0.5 mile. I kept hoping that Steve, the other DFMC runner with a similar pace to me would be there, but I never found him (because he wasn't there). Anyways, long story short I did the Newton Hills twice plus the distance to and from my home that brought me to 20 miles. It also was the best run, I've had in a while, possibly ever. I felt great and was cruising at a pace ~6:50min/mi or 4:14min/km for the entire run. It was as if the up and down hills weren't even there. Shout outs to Andrew Scholte and Chris Montgomery who I saw out there on the course from TMRICE. Thumbs down to Jill Conway and Jason Rossman who were nowhere to be seen ;-).

I really owe a lot of thanks to the DFMC volunteers for being out there on the course and for the water to wash down the 3 Gu I took. They are so friendly and a pleasure to talk to and really put a difference perspective on the run. They are so appreciative of the runner's raising money for Cancer Research as they have all been touched by cancer in some way. They and their stories are really inspiring to keep on pushing.

It also happens to be National Margarita day tomorrow, so the 1st water stop was set up in that theme, which was totally amazing. In that spirit, I took a shot of spirits at the water stop on my 2nd trip and had a shot of tequila to wash down my Gu. Probably not a good idea but it was fun and it didn't seem to affect the end of my run at all!

The amazing volunteers at water stop #1

I wish today had been Marathon Monday but I still got 8 more weeks of training to make sure I am going to crush this marathon. As much as I hope to do the marathon in under 3 hours, my real goal is just to be able to actually feel good and enjoy the marathon, which has only happened once in my previous 5 attempts. At this point, things seem to be going well but a lot can change it 8 weeks. Hopefully it doesn't!

March madness is coming up and I hope a bunch of you will be willing to play in my march madness pool where 50% of the pot will go towards my fundraising goal. If interested, please contact me - you don't need to know anything about College basketball! It is just a lot of fun and often people who know nothing win these things, since they are so hard to predict. There will be prizes for last place, the first place leader after round 1, and the overall winner! If you don't want to play and just would like to donate, please click here.

Thanks for reading!