Is this Brandon's running post about pooping?

Sorry this photo was too good.....

Sorry to disappoint you all but this will not be my post about one of the most significant hurdles any runner faces on marathon day. Saving it for a bit later....This guy just couldn't keep it in his pants....

Things have really turned the corner in Boston and within basically one week, the vast majority of the snow has melted. It would be difficult to tell right now that we had 250cm of snow over 1 month if you visited. While running conditions are still a bit treacherous because of melting snow turning to ice overnight, it really have been a pleasure to go out and run in the light as a result of daylight savings time (thank you George Bush! ugh....).

All this training has not been without sacrifice, as I feel like I haven't seen most of my friends at all over the past few months except for a few sporadic events and I am really looking forward to the end of training.

DFMC's marathon team training adviser posted a video that reviews the Boston marathon course. I thought it would just be boring (which it is) but I honestly had some chills watching it. I haven't cried in a marathon since finishing Montreal in the Olympic stadium but there probably is a legit chance that there might be some waterworks in this one.

Work in the lab has had more downs than ups lately, mostly thanks to a company's error in sending me a bad reagent but there is progress there. Amusingly, the fund that I am raising money for via DFMC, funds one of the projects I work on in the lab. So to all of you who have donated so far, thank you for directly supporting the cancer research that I do. I have definitely stepped up the effort in the fundraising the campaign over the past week or so, which I hate to do but it is necessary. The march madness pool starts on Thursday, March 19th @ noon, so please join and have a chance to win some money in the process! Just so everyone knows - if I win the pool, I will donate all the money towards my fundraising goal.

This week in running

Not much of interest to report this week so far. Have had some pretty decent runs and actually regained some of my motivation to train. Didn't have anything crazy to juggle around this week and I even managed an early morning Monday run (I always prefer to sleep). I have felt a couple of twinges here and there while running lately but it is probably more about me being hyper concerned about an injury that actually having one. No long run for me this Saturday because Sunday is the New Bedford Half Marathon. Conditions look OK for the race but pretty cold but still hoping to finish in under 1:27 which would be a PR by a 1 minute and 31 seconds, wish me luck!

I did have a "uh oh" moment this week when I learned that unfortunately I could not finagle my way out of the non-qualifier wave through a friend who knew people at the B.A.A. To explain, there are 4 waves of runners in the Boston Marathon, which are set based on your qualifying time. Wave 1-2-3 are made up of qualified runners and wave 4 is mostly the fundraising groups. Since Boston is so huge, each wave is separated by ~25 minutes making the start time for the 4th wave, 11:15am. Depending on the weather, you actually want to get out as early as possible, so that the temperatures are as low and cool during the majority of the race. Anyways, my efforts to move from wave 4 to wave 1 or 2 through a friend resulted in a email from the coordinator of the DFMC team to call her immediately. I have to admit I was shitting bricks that she was going to tell me that I had violated some team rule and they were kicking me off. Luckily, she just wanted to comfort me that it would be OK to start in wave 4 and that it would all be okay.

Hopefully I will have time to post after the New Bedford half!
Thanks for reading!

March's arrival, Boston's thaw and what seems like the home stretch!

Wow, as bad as February was in Boston, it sure seems to have gone by quickly. Boston's sits about 4 inches/10cm from the all time snow record and we will probably break it with two small snowfalls over the next coming days but psychologically I feel like winter is over and it is time for things to warm up. At work, Tom joked about how there is always a march storm, which led me to giving him the evil eye. Seriously, though as far as I am concerned, the corner has been turned and it's time for some decent weather, as you can see below, even the parking meters are getting ready.

Even the parking meters have made an appearance and have their shades ready!

Saturday's run was again extremely fast (16miles @6:50min/mile or 4:15min/km) but unli ke last week, I felt pretty shit. It was a real struggle for the 2nd half of the run, which wasn't helped by the extreme congestion on the marathon course. I can only imagine how bad it is going to be on marathon day when more than 30,000 people will be on the course. On a positive note, there are only 5 long runs left before the marathon, it almost seems too easy.

My recent pace explosion on the long runs has left me thinking about my plan and strategy for race. I have promised the wife that this will be my last marathon that I do (unless someone asks me to pace them) and I am conflicted about whether I should. Basically, my main goal for this marathon is to not implode during the race but I also want to give it my all without ruining the experience. One of my running club friends who ran the race in 2013 fainted at mile 25 while on pace for a 2:58. So with 7 weeks to go, I have a lot of thinking to do as to what my strategy will be that day. In reality, a lot will depend on the BAA and where they seat me in the starting lineup as there will be 4 waves this year again, 10am/10:25am/10:50am/11:15am.  In all likelihood, we start at 11:15am, which after a 4:30am wake up will be quite a wait and challenge and will definitely influence my race day performace. I mean, how does one even make a pre-marathon pooping schedule with that time lag? (More on that later)

While I have been very serious about running up until this point, I have definitely taken a laisser-faire approach to the fundraising side. I (like most people) don't like harassing people to donate for money. While that hasn't been totally useless to this point that is obviously going to have to change.

First on the docket is a March madness basketball tournament fundraiser. 50% of your contribution will go towards my fundraising - the rest to the pot. The pot will have 4 prizes: 1st overall (30%), 2nd overall (5%), 1st place after round 1 (10%), and last place overall (5%). Please sign up even if you know nothing about college basketball. If you don't want to sign up, then feel free to head over directly to my fundraising page and make a donation. :-)

Thanks for reading!

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!

Week 6-8 recap and reason number 2 - you probably don't want to run a marathon

It's been a busy week and I haven't had a recap of progress over the past few. As I am sure many of you know, or are experiencing first hand if you live in northeast US, snow has taken over with little evidence it is ready to give up it's iron grip of power. And while I was cocky last Saturday, the snow finally did me in this week. I managed only 1 run and 4.5 miles so far this week (tomorrow will be outside for the long run) and instead replaced Monday and Thursday's runs with sad depressing elliptical trainer workouts. At least I'm able to stream movies on the iPad via amazon instant video with feature titles this week of The Peacemaker starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman (not worth watching) and Pain and Gain featuing Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnston (slightly better and apparently a true story). I may have to cave next week and go to a gym for treadmill workout, especially with projected snowfalls on Sunday and Monday.

Very inspiration through 8.5 miles on the elliptical

Other than the snow, I can't complain much. I have been a little tired since donating blood last week but that could also be because I haven't taken a day off from cardio in almost 2 weeks.

This past Sunday was the Super Sunday 5 mile race and TMIRCE despite a solid effort and two ringers, we got our asses handed to us finishing in 6th place as a team, a whopping 1 hour behind first place. On a personal note, I finished in 32 minutes, 1 minute slower than last year. I can't say I am too disappointed with the finish, as it was probably about 15 degrees (celsius) colder this year and I had run 13 miles the day before. It was just fun to get out there and run all out for 5 miles. The New Bedford half marathon in March will be a much better test for how successful my training has been.

So, as I promised, another horrible reason you don't want to run marathons/train for marathons. Unlike the first reason, nipple bleeding, I have personally experience this second one, toe nail destruction. Luckily for everyone, I never kept a documentation of the toe damage I personally have experienced but am happy to say that my toes have healed (they don't always). So what kind of toe damage am I talking about? Well it usually involves some form of bleeding either caused by your toe nails cracking or a blister that is really, really bad. The worst kind of blisters are when they occur underneath your toe nail (how does that even happen???) causing your nail to lift and eventually fall off. So while I have had many toe damaging events, the worst one happened in the Jacksonville marathon, where my feet and toes were already sensitive due to running the Baystate marathon just 2 months earlier.

Jacksonville was supposed to be a good BQ (boston qualifier) location with a flat, scenic course and cool temps. It was flat and scenic but unfortunately for Dan and myself, it was far from cool. The temperature peaked at ~87F, making it extremely uncomfortable, especially after months of training in temperatures in the 30s/40s. Anyways, the heat also causes your foot to get a little sweatier than normal and meant that my feet were sliding more in my shoes than usual. After a lovely, 23 miles/37km, I heard and felt two almost simultaneous cracks, which happened to be the nail on both my big toes. Needless to say this was largely the end of my running that day as I struggled to a 3:16 marathon (slowest since my first). I am not sure I would have even finished in 3:16 if not for the motivation by another runner (who is also running Boston this year), Penny. It took almost 4 months to totally recover from the carnage, just in time for the Ottawa marathon :-)

So what was the lesson I learned in Jacksonville from snapping my toe nails?

Never run a Florida marathon. :-)

Thank you to Izabela for her generous donation! Just over 2800 to go to reach the minimum.


Below is a recap of the past 3 week. Just over 10 weeks to the marathon!

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Week 6 Scheduled	5-6	7-8	Cross train	7-8	Cross train	16-18	OFF	35-40
Week 6 Actual	1.2	5.25	46min elliptical	12.6	35min elliptical	18	Stretch	37.1
Week 7 Scheduled	4-5	6-8	Cross train	8-9	Cross train	12-14	OFF	30-35
Week 7 Actual	43min elliptical	6	56min elliptical	9	40min elliptical	13	5mi race	33
Week 8 Scheduled	5-6	7-8	Cross train	8-9	Cross train	16-18	OFF	36-41
Week 8 Actual	40min elliptical	4.5 track	37min elliptical	63min elliptical	30min elliptical	18 projected	Much needed OFF

January winter blast arrives but hasn't stopped me yet!

The memory of our amazing winter in Boston has quickly faded this week after two snowfalls including "snowmageddon". This morning we got a light dusting from the Alberta Clipper but Monday may bring another blizzard, bringing 10-14in/25-35cm with it.

Despite missing my Monday run in exchange for shoveling, I managed a fun and stupid run on Tuesday in the blizzard, although that meant there was no track Tuesday, and something tells me we will be a few weeks before the next one since Harvard doesn't clear the track in the winter. Thursday, the DMFC run from Crossroads did a few repeats on the river back and forth (Thanks New Balance for paying Boston to plow the esplanade) to reach the 9 miles I needed.

As a result of an email plea from Dana-Farber, I donated blood which was definitely not in my marathon training plans. They said they were really low on blood supply, so I figured I'd make the donation. Apparently I was nervous as I spiked my blood pressure but luckily they can accept you as long as your BP is below 200/100.

Today's group run was largely revised because of the snow banks in Wellesley, so it ended up being a double out and bank along the Newton Hills starting at Boston College. Since I already despise out and back routes as it is (they are very boring) I decided to run back and forth between Boston College (~2miles/3.2km), which meant I only had to do 1 out and back to reach my target of 12-14 miles. I didn't want too crazy of a run today because I am racing the Super Sunday 5 miler tomorrow.

Tim and Steve weren't running their usual pace, so I luckily caught up with 3 runners from the Spaulding rehabilitation network run for Boston and joined them for the run. Thanks Sam, Dan and Jen for the company and a solid run!

Will post a weekly update tomorrow and hopefully a good result from Super Sunday!
Stay tuned for embarrassing marathon fact #2 next week!

Thanks for reading!

Snow day = snow run

As I am sure you all of heard the snowpocalypse is hitting the north east of the States, and numerous states declared a state of emergency in preparation for the storm. In an unprecedented move for Dana-Farber, they closed down all locations since pretty much everything is closed in Boston.

Shoveling is definitely a lost cause in this storm (see below), and a couple of my TMRICE friends decided to go for a snow run. Since I am obviously insane as them, I figured it was a good idea as well. So I suited up and met them in Kenmore Square (~2.5 miles from our place) for a fun snow run.
Numerous people definitely laughed at us as crazies but there were plenty of people out for walks or cross-country skiing in the streets. There was even a cow man running in the snow but I didn't get a picture.

The best I could do with our walkway, driveway.....still snowing.

While many people bailed on the run, Erin and (American) Chris came out and we enjoy a brisk enjoyable ~3 mile run together. The snow is useless for snowballs so there was no snowball fights, sadly.

Hope everything is enjoying their day!

Kenmore Square and me waiting for Chris and Erin to show up (20min late!)

The end of the run....I swear my eyes are open....

Let it snow! And embarrassing secret/fact #1 of marathon running!

So winter finally hit Boston today with a lovely powdering of at least 4 inches of snow. While I love snow usually, it is really throws a wrench into normal running plans. It also means that I have to shovel the sidewalks (in Boston/Brookline, residents are responsible for shoveling the snow on the sidewalk....) and driveway at our condo building, which is such a joy. The DFMC run was already cancelled for today because of the snow, so I was largely on my own for the run. This is an older photo, but this is legit how Boston cleans the sidewalks they are responsible for....

After warming up for 30 minutes by shoveling the snow for the building, I somehow convinced myself to get out there for the planned 18 mile/29 kilometer run. My plan was to run the first 10-11 miles on my own, and then meet up at City Sports for TMRICE's Saturday morning run at 10am. That meant ~ 5 miles out of the city through Newton with a return through the dreaded Newton Hills trifecta from the marathon. Honestly, I thought about abandoning this run at least 3-4 times in the first few miles as I trudged through the slush and snow but decided to suck it up. Once I got to the Newton Hills, I was spurred on by all the other crazzies (runners) who were out there with me. It didn't hurt that I passed every single person I saw. "Heartbreak hill" was extremely challenging, especially with the difficult footing because of the snow but within a few minutes it was a distant memory. 

Made it to TMRICE on time but unfortunately even though there was a bunch of people there, no one was my pace or running my distance (thanks a lot Jill ;-)) The last 7-7.5 were lonely and difficult on the Charles, especially since the river was only plowed on the Boston side (thanks New Balance!) but the Cambridge side was a disaster. 

TMRICE gang pre-run!

Full details on the run here.

Some gross stuff to end the post! There are a few runner secrets/shameful facts when it comes to marathon running that no one wants to talk about or discuss. Today, one of the grosser ones, nipple bleeding during long runs, especially marathons. So first off, let's get this clear - I do not deal with this thanks to an amazing product called body glide. It is an amazing stick that prevents all sorts of chaffing and can help with blisters on your feet too. I was going to share a picture with you about nipple bleeding but that just seemed wrong. Anyways, if you decide to pick up running, don't forget your trusty anti-chafe stick.