Bring on the spring! #winterforever

Boston skyline during my run....can't you see it?!

Winter decided to give everyone in Boston at least one more fuck you on the first full day of spring yesterday. As you see above, my 2nd last long run in the Boston training calendar was in far from ideal weather conditions. This has been par for the course for Saturday runs, as the last 8 Saturdays have all had miserable weather, whether it was raining, snowing or just plain frigid! As such, as I was ready for it, and felt pretty good for the first 16 miles or so of my 20 miler, despite being under the weather with a sore throat. Unfortunately, the slipperiness of the ground began to affect my running stride and my calf and IT band were hurting big time. I stopped a few times to stretch and rest and slowed my pace until I could get to the end of my run. I finally realized at mile 19 that if I ran in the road my calf wasn't hurting because I wasn't slipping and managed to salvage at least 1 more decent mile.

I didn't do the group run with DFMC this week because it was out in Wayland, which meant I finished off my run with TMRICE. It is always nice to hang out and chat with them after a run. Since moving to Boston and joining this most informal run club, I have greatly improved at running. I owe them a lot!

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, with decent runs on Tuesday (TMRICE) and Thursday (DFMC) but I was definitely still feeling fatigued from the monster half marathon run on Sunday all week.

I didn't have a free evening all week with a "riveting" DFMC team meeting on Wednesday....Seriously, I wonder if they believe their own crap sometimes. Had poker night on Friday, along with runs on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and am really looking forward to my schedule freeing up when the marathon is over. I miss my lazy weeks :-)

Recruiting people for my March Madness pool took a lot of my time this week but with considerable effort many people graciously joined the pool and many who didn't decided to donate directly. This led to a surge in my total on the DFMC website to over 2000 in addition to the 765$ potentially raise from the March madness pool. Once I use a friend's matching program to double the contribution, I will have almost reached the minimum of 4000$ raised required by Dana-Farber. I really appreciate everyone's support and contribution. 4000 seemed like such a daunting number when I signed up for DFMC and finally I feel like I can breathe a bit on the fundraising component.

In addition to the March madness pool, it also meant there was actually going to be the March madness games. While I don't watch a single minute of NCAA basketball all year, the tournament brings out the deep deep down basketball fan in me. Thursday afternoon turned into a veritable waste of time at work as a result with myself, Tom and Sanchez sucked into the many tight, nail biter games. The same pretty much applied Friday afternoon and parts of Saturday and Sunday. Luckily as I am writing this, the exciting round of 64 and 32 is almost over. Here is a runner/basketball meme that runners with totally get :-)

Right after the water stop.....I always do my best!

To end this less than exciting blog, I'll say that while I haven't had any GI distress on my long runs, I certainly can use some CharcoCaps after my long runs because it really upsets my stomach. Something else I won't miss after this training. As many of you know, this will be my last marathon and between the GI issues and the toe damage, I won't miss the training. I know many people don't believe me on this being my last marathon but it will be, I promised the wife afterall.