April 2018 Monthly Running Challenge

Y’all, I ran 3 whole miles today!! I’m going to be able to complete my 5k in two weeks after all! I deliberately kept myself slow for the majority of today’s run because I didn’t think I’d make the distance; I finished in just over 44 minutes. A long way from the 30 minute 5k I thought I’d be doing at this point, but I’m ecstatic.

April goal: 40 miles
Today: 3.0 miles
Total: 9.1 miles

So I think things went pretty well on my 10k today, considering I'm not quite done with my c25k plan. My legs are sore, though. I ran most of it, with a few walking breaks. All of my splits were under 12 minutes, and a couple were under 11. Whoot! I'll update my tracker later.

April Running Totals (miles)
4/1 – 6.21 easy
4/2 – rest day
4/3 – 6.35 easy to MP
4/4 – unscheduled rest day – wind storm
4/5 – 8.39 easy with snow showers
4/6 – 4.01 easy
4/7 – 12.01 paced run

April running total to date – 36.97

Nominal April mileage goal: 130 miles

Real goals: Arrive at Hopkinton healthy. Get to Boyleston Street under my own power. Recover well.

Today's notes – Weather forecast was for 26º F (-3º C) with 15 mph W wind. Actually got 27º F, and Garmin thinks the wind was only 10 mph. Wind was stronger at some times, weaker at others, but trending stronger as we ran.

Today was the second preview of the Flower City Challenge Half Marathon course, featuring the route through Mt. Hope Cemetery. On race day, there will be road marshalls; for preview runs, at least one pace group misses a turn or takes a wrong turn in the cemetery. You can't predict which pace group or pace groups will go off course, but you know it will happen. This year, the route maker updated the tic sheet with notes as to names on mausoleums (easier to read than the street sign posts in the cemetery) and posted pictures of all the turns to Facebook. No excuses.

So I held up the 8:00 sign. No takers. Two guys who ran with me last week were going out with the 7:30 pacer; last week Nick had been recovering from a long race and didn't pace 7:30. Snap decision, I went with the 7:30 group instead of dropping back with the 8:30 group. It's cold, it's hard to run slow when it's cold, and I would have pushed the 8:30s more than I should. It would be no big deal if I let the 7:30s drop me.

I got signal last, and the group was running 7:10 early on. Okay, I can drop. Then they stopped gaining distance on me. I stayed close to the same distance behind them for almost 3 miles, to the cemetery entrance. Then they waited for me. Huh? Got there, and the gate was closed and locked. Hmm.

How do you get into a locked cemetery? Unfortunately, none of us had brought a skeleton key. But the other three guys were young, and they decided to just climb over the gate. Left to myself, I wouldn't have; but what with peer pressure . . . over the gate I went. Then a brief chat with a cemetery maintenance worker, and off along the path. I assume the gate was opened by the time the 8:30 pace group got there. (In a prior year doing this preview, I had gone in the gate, through the cemetery, and found a locked gate at the exit. That year, we backtracked to an open gate; but the exit gate was open for the next slower pace group.)

Paid close attention to the tic sheet. Looked for the mausoleum names by the turn I missed last year, got the group to go there. Got to where I knew the rest of the cemetery route by heart, with confidence. And Nick and the other guys thought we were wrong, and took a different turn. I ran the race route accurately, they ran some other route of their own choosing.

Got to the exit. The gate was open, but there was no water stop at the exit as had been planned. No big deal, I carry water. Kept trucking. Got to the turn to the Genesee Riverway trail, and saw the 7:30s ahead of me. How did I catch up? Oh, yeah. There's the water stop, about a half mile later than planned. I ran past the water stop, and the 7:30s maintained a close to constant distance ahead of me for the rest of the route. Then they stopped for water at the start point, while I just continued on to the last few miles of the route. I called out, "Course cutters!" at them as I passed; and soon enough they caught up to me on the rest of the route.

The next section of the route was a repeat of the early section of the Flower City course; along about there, I let them drop me because they wanted to run perhaps 5 or 10 seconds per mile faster than I should. I passed them again with superior street crossing skills (i.e., I crossed with opportunity and they waited to be delayed by traffic at the turning point.) They caught up again, and the young guys wanted to run faster. Nick gave his tic sheet to them and ran the rest of the route with me.

Garmin says I averaged 7:45 per mile. Strava strips out the non-moving time (watch not paused at the cemetery gate) and says I averaged 7:37 per mile. Garmin's slowest mile was mile 3, 9:19 including time at the cemetery gate; miles 9 to 11 came in more like easy pace (7:55, 7:45, 7:48) after the young guys ran ahead and I told Nick I would make no effort to hold a 7:30 pace; and the other splits look like reasonable effort pacing 7:30. Which happens to be about what my Marathon Pace should be.

Call it 12 miles more or less at MP. I will not have a run this long again before Patriots' Day.

2018 races:
February 17, 2018 Freezeroo #5 (Valentines Run "In Memory of Tom Brannon" 8 Mile) (Greece, NY) finished in 54:48
February 24, 2018 Freezeroo #6 (White House Challenge 4.4 mile) (Webster, NY) finished in 28:46
March 17, 2018 USATF Masters 8K (Shamrock 8K, Virginia Beach, VA) finished in 31:55
March 24, 2018 Spring Forward 15K (Mendon, NY) ran at MP, finished in 1:10:47
April 16, 2018 Boston Marathon (Hopkinton, MA)
April 29, 2018 USATF Masters 10K (James Joyce Ramble, Dedham, MA)

I am not dead! Plans worked much better than my last set of races. Maybe I can learn from my mistakes... report later when I am home and stuff.

But got new bling!

Total - 21.3miles
Target - 40 miles
To Complete - 18.7 miles

1/4 - Rest
2/4 - Rest
3/4 - Rest
4/4 - 4.1 miles
5/4 - 4.9 miles
6/4 - 4 miles
7/4 - 3.1 miles. First park run with my daughter
7/4 - 5.22 miles. Evening run.