Another Flying Pig Marathon weekend was upon us and D, Justin, and I gave it our best (Mark was sidelined by injury this year). D decided to return to some bit of sanity after last year’s Full and instead do the half marathon on Sunday. Justin and I choose to stick with a repeat of the 10k on Saturday. For whatever reason my training was lagging behind last year’s schedule. I only logged about 6 miles each in Jan and Feb, and 11 in March. I think I finally got worried enough to put in a healthy April, but I was still light on longer runs (with not one over 8.5k). But having run the distance once, I wasn’t nearly as anxious about it as last year.
We always get pretty pumped as the race weekend approaches, but this year had a deeper motivation as it followed just two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing. That event was really felt in the running community. Runners find a meditative escape in the miles they toil away on the road. Even at its most adversarial, running is just your body versus your mind in an internal struggle. On the road the outside falls away – no job, no bills, no government, and certainly no terrorism. Then suddenly we’re all reminded that bubble of calm can be intruded upon in horrific ways. So to support the victims, the city of Boston, and to reclaim their peaceful sport, runners signed up in record numbers for the Pig.
The race went pretty well. Since my prep was a little off, my goal was just to be as close to last year’s result as possible. My start felt better this year (not too fast), and I handled the hills and bridges a bit better maybe, but it was still really tough. At one point downtown around mile 3 or 4 the headwind was ridiculous. Into the last mile I had just a little IT pain starting to flare up, but gladly it wasn’t bad. I ended up finishing just over 2 minutes over last year’s time. Not bad at all.
| Time | Pace (per Mile) | overall place | men’s place | division place (M 40-44) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1:05:03 | 10:30 | 1,409 / 3,335 | 707 / 1,153 | 100 / 149 |
We stopped in The Holy Grail for a beer following the race and it was AMAZING. I think we have a new tradition!
D had a good run for the Half on the next day. She and her running buddies had fairly cool temps and pushed their way through a final leg in the rain to a time of 2:27:24. I don’t see myself getting up to that distance any time soon, but hopefully next year I’ll move into the Sunday races with the relay (a slight distance increase over the 10k).
