Running for Boston
Last week, I wrote that I'd be participating in the One Run for Boston on Friday 6/28. Here is my recap: I headed up to my hometown in Pennsylvania on Thursday night. My segment of the run started Friday morning at 8:20am. It's a four hour drive from Annapolis, so I needed to head up early. Thursday night there were severe storms in the area along my drive. I stayed a little longer than usual at the office to let the storms pass. I still hit the tail end of them on my last hour of the drive, but I'm glad I didn't hit them head on. I was worried it would still be rainy for the run in the morning.
On Friday, I got up around 6:00am to get ready for the run. Kelly, our segment organizer, sent us a message the previous day to meet at the local high school for the relay exchange at around 8am. At about 6:30am, we got a text message from Kelly that the baton was about an hour behind schedule based on her conversation with the leg ahead of ours. That was surprisingly on time considering how far it had come and how much adverse weather they had encountered (heat, storms, etc). Most of the race was coordinated by the previous legs calling ahead to the legs next up to let them know the status of the baton and arrange the exchange. The baton (named Miles) was GPS enabled so there was live tracking available online, although it was a few minutes behind the actually position of the baton.
We all arrived around 8:30am since we weren't sure if the leg before us would be fast and make up time. There were 5 people running our leg. I was the only one familiar with the area. Kelly was from Harrisburg, PA along with another female runner. There was a runner who had arrived from Syracuse, NY and another runner who had come in from Albany, Massachusetts (outside Boston) to run this segment while traveling through the state to another destination. Five strangers brought together in this small town in PA to carry on something that had been shared by hundreds of runners from Venice, CA through the desert of New Mexico, across the great plains, through the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, across the Ohio Valley and Appalachian mountains, and finally to us in coal country Pennsylvania. That is pretty impressive if you ask me.
About 9:35, our segment (278) started. We had 12 miles to run to the next relay exchange. I have driven this route thousands of times (at least daily growing up) but this would be my first time running it. In fact, before I left my hometown to move to Maryland I had not even run one mile on the road. (I'd done running on the HS track). We decided in the first few minutes that we would pass Miles around every two or so miles. He was pretty heavy after a while of running. He looked like a modified Olympic torch without a flame. There was plenty of time to chat on the run. We had to maintain a minimum 10 min/mile pace per the organizers to ensure the times stayed relatively close. We settled in to around a 9:30 pace. The course is very hilly with three very steep climbs. One climb is steep for just over a mile to the summit (512ft elevation gain in one mile). That climb came between mile 1 and mile 2.
Our little group spread out at times with some being able to run a little faster than others and with narrow shoulders but we always met back up at least every half-mile as the terrain changed. My family provided support as there were no water stops or course support for us. My father escorted us with the car through some of the narrower sections of single lane road and my grandparents had water and bananas halfway through. We had cloud-cover and sun mixed but it was stupid humid. This whole week has been very humid in the mid-Atlantic. The consistency of the air would be judged as somewhere between tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup.
We ran the last mile of our segment completely together as a tight group with our coordinator, Kelly handling Miles. We figured the baton should be the first thing to enter the relay exchange. We handed off to the next group after 12 tough miles and paused for the obligatory photo ops with the local papers and with spectators. There were about 20-30 people at the relay exchange. They took pictures of our leg handing off to the next leg. They were run in the local paper the next day. After we exchanged, our group said goodbyes and headed back to our respective lives, sharing this brief two-hour period. You know, you don't feel like strangers even though you only met them two hours ago. It's being part of a larger community. I've always said this that endurance athletes (whether runners, cyclists, swimmers, triathletes, etc) were the wrong group to target to instill fear or to break the human spirit. Each race, each local running club, each online running forum, and the larger "running community" are groups of strangers that happen to be the closest friends.
Other than that this week, I did a few short workouts and a long bike ride on Saturday and did miss some workouts this week due to plans. I'll get back on track this week hopefully. Only a month is left until Ft Ritchie Olympic in Cascade, MD. I hear it is hilly and I welcome the challenge. I've added a Fourth of July 50 mile ride with Parvilla Cycles this Thursday which will have some rolling hills. Here is to another week....
On Friday, I got up around 6:00am to get ready for the run. Kelly, our segment organizer, sent us a message the previous day to meet at the local high school for the relay exchange at around 8am. At about 6:30am, we got a text message from Kelly that the baton was about an hour behind schedule based on her conversation with the leg ahead of ours. That was surprisingly on time considering how far it had come and how much adverse weather they had encountered (heat, storms, etc). Most of the race was coordinated by the previous legs calling ahead to the legs next up to let them know the status of the baton and arrange the exchange. The baton (named Miles) was GPS enabled so there was live tracking available online, although it was a few minutes behind the actually position of the baton.
We all arrived around 8:30am since we weren't sure if the leg before us would be fast and make up time. There were 5 people running our leg. I was the only one familiar with the area. Kelly was from Harrisburg, PA along with another female runner. There was a runner who had arrived from Syracuse, NY and another runner who had come in from Albany, Massachusetts (outside Boston) to run this segment while traveling through the state to another destination. Five strangers brought together in this small town in PA to carry on something that had been shared by hundreds of runners from Venice, CA through the desert of New Mexico, across the great plains, through the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, across the Ohio Valley and Appalachian mountains, and finally to us in coal country Pennsylvania. That is pretty impressive if you ask me.
About 9:35, our segment (278) started. We had 12 miles to run to the next relay exchange. I have driven this route thousands of times (at least daily growing up) but this would be my first time running it. In fact, before I left my hometown to move to Maryland I had not even run one mile on the road. (I'd done running on the HS track). We decided in the first few minutes that we would pass Miles around every two or so miles. He was pretty heavy after a while of running. He looked like a modified Olympic torch without a flame. There was plenty of time to chat on the run. We had to maintain a minimum 10 min/mile pace per the organizers to ensure the times stayed relatively close. We settled in to around a 9:30 pace. The course is very hilly with three very steep climbs. One climb is steep for just over a mile to the summit (512ft elevation gain in one mile). That climb came between mile 1 and mile 2.
Our little group spread out at times with some being able to run a little faster than others and with narrow shoulders but we always met back up at least every half-mile as the terrain changed. My family provided support as there were no water stops or course support for us. My father escorted us with the car through some of the narrower sections of single lane road and my grandparents had water and bananas halfway through. We had cloud-cover and sun mixed but it was stupid humid. This whole week has been very humid in the mid-Atlantic. The consistency of the air would be judged as somewhere between tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup.
We ran the last mile of our segment completely together as a tight group with our coordinator, Kelly handling Miles. We figured the baton should be the first thing to enter the relay exchange. We handed off to the next group after 12 tough miles and paused for the obligatory photo ops with the local papers and with spectators. There were about 20-30 people at the relay exchange. They took pictures of our leg handing off to the next leg. They were run in the local paper the next day. After we exchanged, our group said goodbyes and headed back to our respective lives, sharing this brief two-hour period. You know, you don't feel like strangers even though you only met them two hours ago. It's being part of a larger community. I've always said this that endurance athletes (whether runners, cyclists, swimmers, triathletes, etc) were the wrong group to target to instill fear or to break the human spirit. Each race, each local running club, each online running forum, and the larger "running community" are groups of strangers that happen to be the closest friends.
Other than that this week, I did a few short workouts and a long bike ride on Saturday and did miss some workouts this week due to plans. I'll get back on track this week hopefully. Only a month is left until Ft Ritchie Olympic in Cascade, MD. I hear it is hilly and I welcome the challenge. I've added a Fourth of July 50 mile ride with Parvilla Cycles this Thursday which will have some rolling hills. Here is to another week....
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