seekingbostonmarathon.com

Skip to main content SeekingBostonMarathon is an amateur's journey to race in the ultimate annual marathon--the Boston Athletic Association's Boston Marathon. While Sacramento's California International Marathon has a lot of hills, the tail end of the sixteen week (it was actually eighteen; I started a week early, lost a week on the calendar, thus had to repeat week ten) All that, and parents and Liam drove overnight on Wednesday (Dad works nights so he's used to this) to the first way point in Walnut Creek for the night. This week, fear of not being able to show up was playing with my head, but hit the chiropractor's office for a third time and went in for a massage around the lower back.

Skip to main content SeekingBostonMarathon is an amateur's journey to race in the ultimate annual marathon--the Boston Athletic Association's Boston Marathon. This is not an olympic runner or professional runner's advice site, but an "average joe" who got hooked on running and finally reached hallowed ground in 2010 and is constantly seeking to get back to Boston. This year, I have a lot to be thankful for starting with my family and the extended part of my family with respect to my I Run 4 Michael Run Buddy Liam. With that, the holidays can also bring tension; perhaps it's the drunk uncle that reeks of too much bourbon and "Old Spice" or debates around the table around the merits of raking 100's of thousands of acres of forest (yeah, I went there.)

Skip to main content SeekingBostonMarathon is an amateur's journey to race in the ultimate annual marathon--the Boston Athletic Association's Boston Marathon. It wasn't until yesterday that between texts from Liam's mom, and my wife giving me a geography lesson that I realized Sacramento is in the epicenter of activity and if the race were this weekend, either race promoters would cancel or we'd have to pull out of the race. As I wrote earlier this year, I had three goals with Liam; race a marathon together, run the Boston Marathon together, and tackle a half Ironman. I warmed up at a nine minute per mile pace for seven miles then had four sets of progressive miles at; three miles at 8:12 pace, three miles at 8:05 pace, two miles at 8:00 pace, and last two "goal-paced" miles at 7:53 pace.

The modified part is that I'm using an approach with my run days that mimics my best marathon (Boston 2013) with principles and training sessions taught by my old run coach (and world-class athlete) Benita Willis. With the ghost of coach Benita (she's not old by the way) whispering in my ear, I started with four nine minute per mile pace warm-up miles. I then went with three sets of three miles at an 8:41 pace, 8:20 pace and 8:06 pace. Last week went from a 6:24 pace to a six minute per mile pace over eight repeats.