Last 20 miler

Back to front: Tim Miller, John Heatherly, Robin Day, Jim Sowders, Me, Ryan Roberts, and Wendy Miller

There is an old expression, "the hay is in the barn," and it applies to my Boston Marathon training. The work has been done, so now it's time to taper toward the day. Relax. Focus. Imagine. I will run fewer miles now. I will do a 3 mile tempo on Tuesday and then a 10 miler a week from today. In between and after there will be shorter slower runs.

Our run today was good! We ran from Tapp Road to Oolitic and then back to, and around, the fish hatchery in Avoca. It totals 20 hilly hard miles, not unlike the Boston course. It was humid this morning, but the run went well. I finished 1 minute slower than last time but still managed an 8:26 pace. The group picture above stayed together for most of the run. Four of them pulled away and finished a couple of minutes ahead of me.

We ran mile 16 in an 8:01, and I let them go. I didn't need to go that fast, plus I don't think I could have. I ended up running mile 17, which was slightly downhill, in 7:43 and was falling further behind. At that point I just settled in for a good finish. It was a lot of fun running with the group. Not pictured are Larry Moffatt and Bill Deckard. They took off pretty early and finished way ahead of us.

Following the run several of us enjoyed a nice breakfast together. It was an awesome first half of the day!