Boston Marathon : Official Thread (Page 4)

Well the plan I am following had 3 20s in it.  So that is what I am doing.  I think 20 is just that mark where you have used up all the stuff you have in ya and if you go farther then recovery will take longer.  If you get used to running the 20 then the last 6 is not so much.  But if you are only doing 16s you have a full 10 miler go to when you run past your longest run.  For IM's I may only do 17s or 18s, but for a straight mary I get in some 20s.  This 20 felt like the 18 did a few weeks ago.  On this run the first 18 was alright, the last 2 not so much.  So doing a few more will hopefully help me to be solid through 20 in Boston and then suck it up and get er done for the last 6.  For me, I pace it to mile 20 in a race and then the race starts and I try to not lose time in that last 6 which requires a lot of effort for me.  In my last mary (my 2nd one) I lost maybe 1 minute or so total (10 sec per mile) off the last 6 miles from the pace of the first 20, but was pushing myself much harder for those last 6 for sure.

It would really suck to bottom out at 16.  But if your weekly mileage is high enough you could recover quicker.  I ran 183 miles in Feb.. what did everyone else do?

Wow, I did a 3 mile race today in 17:58... where did that speed come from.  Too bad I can't sustain it for longer distances.  This was a 2:30 PR over my last shorter run... a while ago.  My goal was to go sub 20 and blew that away.  Perhaps in another 5 years I can suck that Mary time down a bit .. hrm.  I must be running my 800 repeats too slow.  Hr was nailed at LT for nearly the whole race, so it was not a cakewalk. 

Anyone else got anything encouraing in training?  I know my build is a little late to nail Boston, but I have hopes of making a respectible showing...it is great to have hopes of continuing to develop some speed in my 40s. 

I beat the 16 year old (who missed qualifying for state in cross country by 1 second) by 2:40 on the run, so braggin rights to me this year.  Next year... he may win, we shall see. 

Just stoked, had to share with folks who know that a sub 6:00 pace for a 3 mile run is an accomplishment for us late bloomers.  I know it's not blazing in this crowd but, I ain't slow anymore.  (10:40 pace runs in 2007). 

Congrats, Baowolf!  That is some amazing speed and a HUGE pr.  Hard work and determination pays big dividends.  

With a 5k time like that you are nowhere near your potential yet for the marathon...that is sub 3:00 stuff with the right training.  Go get 'em!!! 

Fairly epic run in the mountains today (haven't been able to do much in the way of hills due to recent injury and not much time left to remedy that)...18.65 miles with 1805' of climbing (max grade of 17%).  Nice to be healthy again with a little bit of time left to train:

Great news on your health, Todd!  I should change the direction of my run...I always start downhill and have the uphill coming home (nowhere near as big of a hill as you, though!)  Got a full 20 in yesterday and am so happy to have one in the books.

Unfortunately, where we live, we're surrounded by pancake flat to the north and east and pretty decent climbs to the south and west...for better or worse, starting downhill is the one option I don't have running out the front door. 

GRRRR!  I had a slight roll of my right ankle, yesterday, felt nothing yesterday, not really anything today until ya bout 9 miles into a 20 miler it stiffened up badly.  Ended up walking 5 miles to town.  Not sure if I am done or not.  Endurance sports suck, you pay all this money 6 months or 1 year out get injured and the season is shot.  Oh well, ice, rest, and I will probably still do the race but at a crappy time and be hurting aftewords.  Very depressed.

5 weeks from today!!  Getting pretty excited now.

Fitness is coming back at a pretty good clip now, since being injured.  It just took a while for it all to start sinking in.  Yesterday was one of my best runs of the year.  I felt good from the get-go with 30 minutes of warmup in Z1 at 7:20 pace.  Then 30 min of tempo, wrapping up with a 6:17avg for that piece. Definitely surprised myself. Marathon goal at this point is still about 3:05. 

I'll be checking in on y'all.

And baowolf - that ankle roll will not derail what you've been doing. give it a couple days of RICE. this is just a speedbump for you, i hope.

~B

Hang in there, Steve.  A month ago, I wasn't sure I'd be running at all for a long time, but it really just came down to about 11 days of rest and I was back to full training.  If you did something really longterm (like a high ankle sprain) you'd have known it immediately.

Personally, I was about back to 100% after last week's long run, but I managed to get strains in first the left, then the right lower calf/Achilles during the week.  Left was okay after a couple days, working on the right one now.  Rolled the dice on going ahead with my one planned (at this point) 20 miler yesterday despite a small but sore knot in right calf just above the Achilles and it turned out to be a really great run (at least given all the training I missed in February)...very close to the last 20 I did before my BQ in October.  Given how hurt I was a month ago, I'm really happy to have knocked out a comfortable 20 miler, 51 miles last week and about 70 in the last 8 days.  I'm taking a long taper to (hopefully) put all the lower leg issues in the rear view...though I may run a hilly HM on 3/27 as a tuneup, if I feel 100%.

Getting close now...

Bib numbers are out: http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/participant-information/entrants.aspx

Good news so far, injured area is no longer red and swelling is pretty much gone.  There is some sensitivity but if I walk jog for a mile I can ease into a steady z1 effort without pain on the run.  Thankefully this is a recovery week so low miles.  Thanks for the support, this might turn out alright, with luck and ice I will try the 20 miler next weekend (9 days).  My IM training plan started this week so I am torn about how much swim and bike to add to the run workouts.  Vineman is 7/30 so not a lot of time between races.  It would be nice if it stopped snowing and that 30 mph wind is not so fun on the runs where we have no tree cover.  I am confident that I will be able to run the whole race now (wel pretty sure if things continue to heal alright).  My number is 7904 (still 1st wave) are the numbers in order of how fast you are/qualifying time?

Yup - bib numbers are basically your seeding based on your qualifying time.  For at least the past 2 years (with 2 waves), corrals were broken up by 1,000s, so I was in corral 6 with 6671 and corral 3 with 3413.  Not sure how it will work this year since there will be 3 waves, but I'm guessing it will be the same.

I'm 2843 this year, so I moved up 570 spots with a moderately slower (34 seconds) qualifying time.  Must have been all of those faster runners that got shut out when registration closed in 8 hours.  I actually thought there might be more of a difference.

My number is 11296,  2nd wave.  So you're saying there are corrals within each wave?  Split by 1000?  Then I should be close to the front.  I'm going to get run over!! 

I just want to finish!

That is my best guess, basing it on experience from the last 2 years.  There have been some obvious changes this year, but I wouldn't expect much difference in the starting procedure (besides the addition of the third wave).  Last year, the split between waves 1 and 2 was between corrals 13 & 14 (bib #s 13,999 and 14,000).

Everyone seeded behind you has a slower qualifying time, so you should be fine - and you can always move back to a higher numbered corral.  You just can't move up.

I'm sure they'll send out all of this information shortly - around the time that we receive our number pick-up cards.