Tuesday, April 14: 6:00 PM - Track WO @ Bentley w/ Mario, Ari & Tony
25 min w/u
[4 x 1000m w/ 3mR] @ 5K pace
3:01, 2:58, 2:57, 2:55 (3mR)
3 x [500m (300m jR) 300m (200m jR) 200m (500m jR)] @ 3K pace
[1:25, 51, 33], [1:26, 50, 33], [1:26, 50, 33]
26 min c/d
Wednesday, April 15: 10:00 AM - 6 Miles, 40 min
Thursday, April 16: 9:30 PM - 6 Miles, 43 min
Friday, April 17: 8:00 AM - 6 Miles, 41 min
Saturday, April 18: 9:00 AM - Track WO @ Bentley w/ Ari & Dave
25 min w/u
[4 x 1200m w/ 1mR] - 3:39, 3:36, 3:38, 3:41
25 min c/d
Sunday, April 19: 0 Miles
Week Total = 49 Miles, 6 Sessions
As most of you know, this was marathon week here in Boston. I'm sure you also know how exciting this time of year can be for those of us that live and train here year-round. Every year around this time, I get motivated and inspired by my friends, teammates, and role models that compete in this race. And each year, I get a little more eager to one day compete in it myself. This year was a special year and my anticipation for the event was more than usual because of the tremendous possibilities involved. I'll talk about that more in a little bit. Last year was also a big year (partly because of the Olympic Trials) and like last year, I again had a lot going on and was extremely busy all week.
I previously alluded to the fact that I've been working a second job, but didn't actually state what job that was. So for those of you that don't know, I've been picking up some extra hours at the Greater Boston Running Company, working both at the Lexington and Hingham locations. Being a running specialty store, we were understandably very busy this week so I worked quite a bit, including some long hours down at the Expo. Even though it was a lot of long days, I certainly enjoyed this work more than being at the Olive Garden. I got through the week okay, but due to limited free time, I didn't get the amount of training in that I would have liked and the training that I did do was fairly mediocre. This is something that I should have done better with, but under the circumstances, it was inevitably going to be a lower quality week.
I had some ok workouts on Tuesday and Saturday, but neither of them felt as comfortable as they should have. I know I'm relatively fit right now, but I just haven't been feeling great in workouts and feel like I'm always slightly behind where I want to be. I do feel like I'm making progress still and if I'm able to work a little harder over the next few weeks, I'm optimistic that I'll see things start to come around. I'm still thinking about opening up my track season at the High Performance Meets in May/June, but might jump into a 10K on the roads this coming weekend to test my fitness.
All together, I put in about 60 hours of work this week and added some additional hours promoting the Santa Barbara Marathon that I've mentioned I'm working on. Among the craziness on Sunday, I did have a chance to watch the Elite Mile races downtown before heading into work and witnessed some exciting performances there. Once I finally got to Monday, most of the work had been done, and I could relax somewhat and enjoy the race with my friends and teammates.
As I started to mention above, there was some added anticipation for the elite race this year, and that was of course because of the presence of Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher. For the first time in about 25 years, an American might win the Boston Marathon! And if we were lucky we could actually get two laurel wreaths in the same year. A couple months ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time with both of these icons as they previewed the Boston course here and here. The two Americans certainly got the attention they deserved and I think the majority of the crowds out there realized what was at stake as they provided tons of support along the course. Both Ryan and Kara ran phenomenal races as true contenders for the title and at no point did they settle for anything less than first. As they passed us at mile 23, Kara was leading and looked amazing, while Ryan was in third but only about 30 seconds back from Merga. At that point, it was still a very good possibility that one or both could take the crown. Kara fought with Tune and Kosgei all the way to the finish and fell about 9 seconds short of the victory. Ryan's finish wasn't as close as Kara's but still had a good battle with Kebede over the closing miles. As all of you know, both Americans finished third, and while some have called it a disappointment, both Ryan and Kara should be proud of their efforts out there as these were huge steps in the right direction for our sport here in the States.
It's always exciting to feel like you're a part of an event like this. And even though I was mostly a spectator, I felt very connected to what was going on as I had been following the build up to this race for so many of the competitors. There have been so many world class athletes that have competed in the Boston Marathon over the years, and I know it's always an important event for them whenever they make an appearance. However, some athletes don't put as much emphasis on this race as others. This was not the case with Kara and Ryan. It was obvious that they made this their most important race of the year (possibly of their career) and showed up on that starting line as prepared as they knew how.
It always motivates me to hear someone talk about a race with so much emotion and passion and you see how important that performance was to them. You could certainly see an incredible passion in the words of Kara and Ryan after the race. To hear Ryan's thoughts on his race, check out his post race press conference as well as his interview with Mark. Furthermore, to see how much this race meant to Kara and how emotional this sport can be, check out her post race press conference, as well as a later interview with Nike, and finally her interview with Mark. It's evident how important this race was to these people and how badly they wanted to do well for those that supported them. This is a pretty incredible sport and it's amazing the impact it can have on our lives. These are the things that remind me why I'm doing this day in and day out. I don't know if I'll be doing the marathon anytime soon, but I know it will be somewhere in my future. And regardless of the event I'm competing in, I just want to continue to feel that same passion for sport and have the same feeling that I'm competing to the best of my ability.
I also had a few teammates in the race, which made the race even more exciting to follow. The husband and wife duo of Ryan and Christy Carrara ran very strong races to finish in 2:32:10 and 2:58:19 respectively. These times were a few minutes slower than each were hoping for, but with the strong headwind the whole way, there wasn't a whole lot more they could do. Furthermore, Liz Turner ran a big PR of 3:09:32 and is well on her way to being an experienced marathoning stud.
There are so many individual stories from Monday's race and so many people that I could talk more about, but I just want to list a few other names of friends that deserve to be noted.
Eric Blake 2:23:54
Evan Graves 2:26:11
David Bedoya 2:27:13
Ryan Carrara 2:32:10
Mark LaRosa 2:33:14
Bernie Muller 2:34:50
Colleen DeReuck 2:35:37 (8th Female and 1st Master)
Sheri Piers 2:37:04 (11th Female)
Darren DeReuck 2:37:27
Matt Carter 2:37:41
Andrew Combs 2:38:00
Matt Dunlap 2:38:24
Heidi Westerling 2:43:11 (14th Female)
Adam Fitzgerald 2:43:42
Dan Franek 2:51:36
Diona Fulton 2:52:05
Amy Gosztyla 2:52:23
Tammie Robie 2:55:39
Wayne Piers 2:57:05
Gary Allen 2:57:42
Christy Carrara 2:58:19
Lara Johnson 2:58:33
Scott Brown 3:00:11
Dave Manz 3:00:50
Liz Turner 3:09:32
Steve McCarthy 3:12:12
Lee Stanton 3:12:31
Tim Wright 3:17:00
Sarah Turner 3:33:15
Katie Meinelt 3:37:14
Congratulations and good luck next year!
Photos courtesy of PhotoRun.net
No comments:
Post a Comment