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February 18, 2006
Thankfully we were going in the 'right' direction
I heard the wind rattling our windows each time I woke up last night (once when Matt came home and a couple of other times) and I was definitely hoping it would have died down by the time I left to run. Luckily, when I went outside I realized that it wasn't nearly as cold as the forecasters had been predicting and the wind was definitely weaker. We also started in Hopkinton and ran the same direction (east, I guess) for the entire run. It was extremely fortuitous because that meant we got to have a tailwind for most of the run. It didn't make me feel particularly fast, though!
I've only done one long run on the course (besides the marathon in 2002) starting from the official starting line in Hopkinton. It's always thrilling to see the painted line, but today we laughed because it is so faded that you might even miss it! I'm sure they will be going over it with some fresh paint soon. Today's crew was my usual running partners Alyssa and Wynne and also a friend that Alison and I have in common. It was a good crowd. We couldn't find the port-o-potty that we thought was near the starting line so after the long drive out to Hopkinton (Wynne and I left our cars near Boston College) we were a little uncomfortable for the first three miles of the run. Thankfully a Dunkin' Donuts was right on the route. We were running a very consistent pace, which was interesting because it didn't always feel that way to me (i.e. sometimes it felt easy and sometimes I felt like I wanted to stop, even on downhills.)
The first 16 miles of the course are not exactly downhill, but more like rolling with some significant downhills that result in the "net" downhill you hear and read about. I think the very first few miles are tough because there are a couple of very steep downhill slopes. I noticed when we stopped for the bathroom that after only 3ish miles, my quads were already slightly sore. Luckily they didn't bother me too much after that. We ran through a couple of pretty serious snow squalls but like I said before, I was almost too warm for a lot of the run.
I was nervous the whole time about the Newton hills so I was just focusing on getting to the fire station (which amazingly has a wonderful COLD water fountain--who knew?) feeling decent. I noticed that we did slow down by 20 or 30 seconds on the very last (steepest) hill but I was never dying or anything. I actually really only think it's the last one that is evil. Maybe with more people around it'll be better :)
Instead of going all the way to the 22 mile mark, we went to 21.5 (ish) and turned around since we had already run past our cars at that point. I finished feeling okay but sore and COLD as the wind had picked up again and I was of course soaked with sweat. Wynne was great and drove Alyssa back to her car in Hopkinton so I could get back here and hang out with Matt and our visiting friend. I had hoped to make it to New Englands to cheer on the MIT folks, but it was late by the time I got back and I decided to get some stuff done here.
We're going to visit some friends in NH tonight. She's a former Cornell trackster too and we haven't seen them in quite some time...should be a fun night!
Posted by becky at February 18, 2006 4:06 PM