Sunday Run

As far as I know there is little to no interest in an 8AM Sunday Long Run tomorrow. As suspected, after a winter of getting up to run in cold weather, we all deserve a little rest. Due to many conflicts it seems the Providence training group is running on their own for the most part at various times through the weekend.

My advice: If you ran Boston last week, sleep in! If you’re running Providence drop a note here if you’re looking for someone to run with, or just get your 12 miles in yourself. If you’re in neither of those groups go run a race, take advantage of all this training all winter.

(BTW, thanks so much for all those that posted recaps on the forum and the blog. Tuesday night so many people told me they were sitting on the site all day waiting for the next exciting recap to come by. Different stories, same results, you all had an adventure making it to Boston.)

Well nobody’s been jumping on the Bruce Springsteen lyrics so I’ll go back to Bob Seger. For our Boston Marathon trainers this is your “Famous Final Scene”, a nice easy run around Spot Pond. You may remember this as a gruelingly hilly run during week 2 of training but now it’s an easy taper run to finish out your training. Enjoy it for all its worth!

Another group of us will be heading out for a 20 mile training run to round out our Providence Marathon training. Here is a map to see where we’re going. Its a mix of the old Melrose Half, the MRC Summer route, and the Melrose Run For Women all rolled up into a bunch of 3 mile runs (give or take)

If neither of those runs fit your needs take a look at the map and make your own route starting from Brueggers or jumping in at a water stop along the way.

This is officially the last run of the Winter Sunday Long Run Program. The season is coming to an end. With Providence still a few weeks out we’ll continue meeting at Brueggers at 8AM but things will become less formal. More about that later though…

See you all at Brueggers at 8AM (If I can get rid of this nasty cold!)

April ushers in the final month of the Winter Long Run Program. Yes, where approaching the end of another season. Many of the Halfs have come and gone, Boston runners start their taper, and Providence Marathoners are fast approaching their tapers. 

This week we do a slow, easy 14.8  mile run if you’re running Boston. It’s key to remember that your training is done, now you’re preparing for race day. There is no cramming for a marathon so pushing it now isn’t going to amount to much, except maybe an injury. Enjoy this run!

For those running Providence, we’ll need to tack on another 3 miles or so. This can be done late in the run with a loop around Quannapowitt or at the end of the run with a loop around Pine Banks. I’m thinking Quannapowitt but can be convinced otherwise. What do you think?

The rest of you have options. Follow the route and decide to loop back to Brueggers at Main St (~4.5 miles), at Wyoming (~7 miles), or at Main later in the run (~8 miles).

To help with spreading out the water stop supplies, one again ROLL CALL! Who’s in and for how far?

I’ve posted the long run map. You’ll notice the full route is only 21.5 miles long. When plans get finalized we’ll look at possible moving the end of our run down to Cleveland Circle to get the full 22 in. If that doesn’t happen (parking logistics could be an issue) a loop around the Flynn Recreation Center on the BC Campus will get you 22 miles.

At this point I think we’ll have at least 9 runners doing most if not all the miles, 3 running a portion of the route, 2 fulltime waterstop drivers, and 4 young volunteers/spectators helping us along.

If you aren’t excited about running the course yet, here’s a few tidbits online to get you familiar with the history you’ll be running through:

BAA Course Maps

Boston.com A runner’s view of the Boston Marathon course

Runners World Boston Map

Garmin’s Virtual Tour of the route

WBZ Arial Tour of the course

The BostonChannel course overview

Wikipedia’s Boston Marathon entry

Now if you’re feeling overwhelmed… it’s just seven 3 mile runs, sounds simple.

I posted a note on the MRC forum about this. This week we’re looking for support from runners who want to run part of the marathon course and can drive the support vehicles for the other portions. There is quite a bit of organizing needed to figure this out so the sooner I know who’s in, the better the planning will be. Either send me an e-mail or post here if you can help our band of marathoners get in their last big training run of the 2008 winter training session.

Also, let’s start an early roll call here so I know how many empty seats we’ll need to get people out to Hopkinton and back from Boston.

Thanks,
Jim