Now that the marathon is over, I wanted to document my experience training for and running this race. So I’ll do this in a few parts, starting with today’s post on my training.
Initially this year I wasn’t planning to run Boston with the Tufts PMC. I love the PMC and I love training with them, but I didn’t want to raise the money to get in. I felt bad asking my friends and family to donate once again to Tufts so that I could run the marathon. However, I signed up on the PMC website just in case, and I continued to run with the team for the early training runs.
Joining the PMC back in fall 2008 has been one of the best running decisions I’ve ever made. Our coach is incredibly dedicated and always there with a smile on his face. I’ve made some great friends during our hours and hours of training runs; you really get to know someone when you’re running 15-20 miles with him every Sunday. I don’t think I could have gotten through marathon training without the PMC. Those Wednesday morning 15-milers that dotted my training in February and March would have been unbearable without friends to run them with. Regardless of whether I run Boston again with the PMC, I will continue to do the training runs with them. I can’t stress enough how great the PMC has been to me.
PMC runners before our last 20-miler in March
I committed to running Boston around December, when my friend Parker gave me my first donation. I decided to use the Pfizinger 18-week 55 mpw training plan again, from the new edition of Advanced Marathoning. This year I tweaked the training a little bit, emphasizing those mid-week mid-long runs and the strides on top of the long runs and tempo/interval workouts that make up the bulk of the plan. I thought I could run 3:30 if everything went well, but given my experience last year with leg cramps that was a big if.
My training went surprisingly well. I didn’t feel as burned out by the training as I did last year, though it was tough to get out the door for some of those March runs. In addition, I remained remarkably healthy despite the high (for me) mileage. In fact, I didn’t miss a single day of training because of injury. At one point in February, I said to my friend Steve during a run, “I’m invincible!” I remained healthy despite the self-jinx.
During the first week of my taper, I ran the Somerville Striders weekly 5k race. When I run this race, I typically treat it as a tempo run instead of an all out effort, but on this night I wanted to see what I could do. I didn’t go in with a serious race plan or anything; I just planned to go out at the front and run by feel. In addition, my Garmin didn’t get signal by the time we started, so I was running “blind,” with no pace information to help me.
I started with the front pack with three other guys, one of whom I know is quite a bit faster than me. We stayed with that guy until mile 1, when we slowed down a bit. I stayed with the other two basically until the finish. Around mile 2 I took the lead in the small pack, but I was certain that the guy I passed was going to get me by the finish. But I was able to hold him off and finish second. My final time was 20:36, which included a 10-second stop at a light in Davis Square — my second fastest 5k ever. In addition, I had done a 7.5-mile tempo the day before and had run 20 four days before. This race gave me a lot of confidence in my fitness leading up to the marathon. It also gave me the temptation to race another 5k the following week to see what I could do on fresh legs, but I resisted, as my friend Susan told me “not to burn the hay in the barn.”
