Month: September 2012

Boston Marathon 2013 Registration

Dear Benjamin S Hauck,

This is to notify you that your entry into the 117th Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15, 2013 has been accepted, provided that the information you submitted is accurate.

A Confirmation of Acceptance card will soon be mailed to you via US Postal Service mail.

In early April 2013, an official Number Pick-up Card and Welcome Booklet regarding the B.A.A. Boston Marathon and related race week activities will be mailed to you via US Postal Service first class mail. If you do not receive your Number Pick-up Card (required to claim number) and brochure by April 9, please contact our Registration Office at registration@baa.org. Registration related inquiries may also be directed to 508-435-6905.

Note that bib numbers will not be distributed on Race Day. Your travel arrangements should take into account picking up your number at the Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street, on Friday, April 12 from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., or Saturday, April 13 or Sunday, April 14 from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Get the best hotel rates by using the Official Lodging form from Marathon Tours and Travel. For more information, email info@marathontours.com or call 617-242-7845.

JetBlue is proud to be the Official Airline of the Boston Marathon!

Travel to Boston on JetBlue and save money with a promotional travel code available on our travel and accommodations page.

For additional tourist information, please visit www.bostonusa.com

We look forward to seeing you in April! Best of luck in your training!

Sincerely,

Boston Athletic Association

Pretty Much on Target

This morning I ran the NYRR Fifth Avenue Mile along, you guessed it, 5th Avenue in Manhattan. I ran the 1-mile race in 5:29. That was just about what I expected at the starting line today (“5:30”), which makes me pretty happy.

The weather wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t that bad, either. It was cloudy and about 66 degrees at the start with 78% humidity. You could feel the humidity a slight bit but the effects of it would be to-be-determined. (The effects seemed minimal.) I didn’t wear my Garmin for stats, especially since I think my net time says it all. I had a 0x-caffeine PowerGel around 8:15am, then a 2x-caffeine PowerGel 20 minutes before my race with some water. I was in a good mood for this race. I just wanted to have fun, and I decided that my strategy would be different from prior years. My recommendation to myself in prior years would be to hold off a bit on the pace on the first 1/4, then for the second 1/4 when it’s uphill gun it. This year, I decided I’d just run as fast I can could (yet still a little conservatively since I couldn’t do 100% sprinting for that distance!).

I crossed the 1/2-mile mark just about 2:40, which set me up for a 5:20 finish. I still had gas in the tank though I could tell I was slowing a little, so I just pushed myself, saving some for the very end. A guy in a green shirt who started with me and who was running for a 5:30 after running a 5:45 last year was about 50 feet ahead of me for the second half of the race, which surprised me a bit but I couldn’t catch him. (He beat his expectations; I basically met mine.) As I approached the finish line, there’s surprisingly a nice amount of distance between seeing the time on the clock and actually finishing. I saw 5:07 and thought I might end up with a 5:20, but there’s a good 10 seconds to go after that! Strange. Fortunately this year no one got in my way as I powered to the finish.

5:30’s not that fast, but it’s respectable, especially because, yet again, I didn’t train specifically for this race and I continue to say I want to. It’s really hard to balance marathon training along with it, along with a grueling, unpredictable work schedule that has me up at extraordinarily early hours. I was dreaming that maybe next year, instead of really doing marathon training, I’ll focus on doing well in the shorter races. And maybe THAT will be my marathon training. Hey, it’s an idea. Might make the races even more exciting for me, and make me a bit more proud of my results. I think I still have a body that can turn out PRs. And I want the pride of doing that! We shall see!

A Little Heavy, Not Quite a PR, But Alright …

This morning I ran the men’s version of the Fitness Mind, Body, Spirit Games 4-Miler in Central Park. I ran it in 26:31 (6:38s).

Below are my unoffficial Garmin stats. I forgot to turn off my watch right after the race so the end time and true distance is compromised a little bit:

The weather was quite gorgeous though I didn’t quite get to notice it as I raced to get to the start line before the corrals closed. I set out on bike this morning to the race, but just before I left I found out that (again) my Garmin 610 discharged while it was charging so I took a few minutes to see how much juice I could get into it. I got into my corral with 30 seconds to spare before they were supposed to be closed! A bit hectic but probably a good thing so I didn’t stew impatiently for the start.

Suddenly, I was off. My first mile was a fast 6:22, which was exciting to see but implied it would be hard to beat my PR for this race (6:22s back in 2009 for a 25:29). I thought my second mile would be on that pace, and while it was a 6:25 that wasn’t so bad. However, mile 3 is the toughest of this course, and sure enough I lost a lot of my speed there. I ran 7:05 (ugh!) for my 3rd mile given all the hills, but I also felt that my body was slower, too, and I couldn’t get it going much faster. That feeling, plus the large number of men who were speeding past me even at my fastest, reduced my confidence to achieve a PR (not that I really believed I could today) which almost zapped my speed. I was able to push myself a bit more in the 4th mile (6:42), with an exciting sprint at the end when I was challenged by someone who met each little nudge I tried to do past him. I have no idea if I won or he won!

I did something not so great last night and it could have spelled disaster today but fortunately didn’t. I had a senna tea last night to help me this morning and it just didn’t work before I set out. During the race I felt a little instability there but it held back. Phew! I shouldn’t try that in the future. I did that because of all the junk I’d eaten in the last few days that I was still carrying. In fact, my weight pre-race ballooned to 180 lbs.! I was 177 after the race and bike home (though some of that weight might have been from treating myself to a Slurpee on the way back) but my eating has been ravenous and reckless of late and my weight is not where I want it to be right now.

6:38s weren’t all that thrilling to have done, but in writing this I realized that’s actually pretty cool. Not counting the 5th Avenue Miles, I’ve only done 3 previous races under 6:40s. My AG percentage was at 65.32% which is pretty good for me at this time of year considering my training.

I couldn’t help but think that also a drain on today’s speed was that I ran not one but TWO marathons last week! I never have done that before! Granted, they weren’t races but marathon-distance training runs, and I did them in 3:30ish, shaving off only 7 seconds in the second run. Those 26.2-mile runs with less than a week of rest between them probably did a number on my body in ways I don’t know (a small but significant number, I should think…), and they probably were a factor in my running 6:38s and not something faster. At least that’s what I was thinking when I couldn’t muster speed in the 3rd mile.

So, woohoo!