Boston '09

This years' training has been going pretty well, the weather has been cooperative and for the most part warm. I've only had a couple long runs that didn't go to well but they were 2 months back. This all changed with 2 weeks to go, it snowed 4 times in the last 2 weeks either on track days or key days. So nothing new when the predictions were snow on Friday and Saturday, except we were to leave on Saturday. Our flight was supposed to be at 11 so we figured we'd leave around 8 to anticipate problems. Checked in way early and we were cool..........nope, flight showed on-time on the departure schedule but was really an hour behind by the time we actually took off. Suck, because we had an hour layover in Cincinnati, that turned into 3 hours of waiting and we finally got into Boston 2 hours late.




Sunday, the plan was get up and head downtown to get my number and check out the expo and get back for the brunch and get off my feet. Came close to doing that although it took longer than planned. Joe wasn't running on Sunday so I thought I'd follow his lead and not bother with the 2 miles I had planned on besides I had been on my feet longer than I wanted already.



So the race........my goal was 3 hours or under if possible. The last thing Julia said was go out slow, hold back. I kind of had no choice this year since I was in the 4th corral and last year I was in the 1st corral. The long story short I went out slow, 7:10, but made up for it and hit 2 miles in 13:45. Some how I hit 5k in 21:00 and 10k in 42:00. I felt pretty good at this point and tried to get through the miles without over extending myself since I knew how mile 15 up through heart break hill and mile 18 or so killed me last year. Got through but my quads were starting to ache. At 20 miles (2:18 or so), my quads were screaming, but some how I kept gutting it out from there. If I could hit a 42 minute last 10k I would be close to breaking 3 hours. Well, 47 and some change is what ended up happening, closer to 8 minutes a mile, but wayyyy better than the walking I did last year in the last 10k.



It's the Friday after and this is the 1st day my quads aren't sore to the touch, definitely sore deeper in the muscle. I been on my bike 3 days and in the pool twice, so I would say that is some kind of active recovery. This weekend looks to be cool (50 or so) and some rain, so not sure if I'll be getting alot of long miles on the bike this weekend but I'll try. I may start running real easy Saturday but not real long yet.



Plan now is to ramp up the miles for the month of May, then I have the Deuces Wild Tri Fest May 30-31st, which I'm doing an Olympic distance one day and an Xterra the next. The next weekend I'm doing an Xterra in Farmington, NM and then 2 weeks to fine tune and taper for Ironman Coeur d'Alene. As demoralizing as 70.3 New Orleans was, Boston was encouraging. I feel like if I get my climbing legs on the bike and I get my nutrition right, Coeur d'Alene could be a good race.

Sorry I don't have more pictures. I should have pictures after the weekend of the house with most of the snow melted maybe even our new addition to the pack.

Ciao,
Drew