Humpty Dumpty

I went out Saturday to do my long run on the Boston Marathon course. The plan was simple, start in Hopkinton and run to BC for 21 miles. The Greater Lowell Road Runners were hosting the run and would have water and Gatorade every 3 miles.

When I woke up Saturday morning, I did a quick check of the temperature and at my house it read 22.6 F. Ouch!!! I don't know about the rest of you but I'm getting pretty tired of running in sub freezing temperatures. Anyway it was suppose to warm up as the day went on but we were starting our run at 9 so when we got into Hopkinton it had only warmed up to 32 F. The problem I see with doing all this running in cold weather is it doesn't prepare you for race day in most cases. Typically Boston is run when the temperature is around 55 to 60 degrees. Which of course isn't bad but if you're used to running at temperatures 20 to 30 degrees less your heading for trouble with over heating and dehydration. A couple of years ago the temperature headed into the mid to high 80's which caused lots of problems for NE runners. In my case I did a blazing 4:21 walk of the course.

OK back to my run on Saturday. I started out nice and smooth running with Jill Trotter and we were knocking down 7:15's right away and I felt great. At 3 miles I grabbed a Gatorade cut with 50% water. And we were back out quickly running 7:15's. At about 4.5 miles I turned to tell Jill something when my left foot hit a mound of sand that was frozen and it sent me tumbling to the ground. As I went down I had both my hands out in front of me and thought for a split second that I was going to be OK. As my arms reached out to absorb the fall I turned my head to the left and I was tucking it in case I needed to roll. As I tucked my head, the right side ended up clunking off the curb and made a loud thud. I popped up right away and as I did Jill shouted at me to SIT. I then noticed that my balance was a little off and my head was spinning a bit. I took Jill's advice and sat down. I kept telling her that I was all right, but she kept telling about some movie star who hit their head last week skiing and ended up dieing later in the day. At the same time a couple of other runners who were coming from the other direction stopped and asked if I was OK because they herd the thud too. After about a minute or two, I felt well enough to continue. Jill asked me if I was OK about once every mile, and continued to make me assure her that I'd tell my wife what happened when I got home so she could monitor me. What I think that saved me was I was wearing my Kahtoola fleece hat that softened the blow and was just enough cushion to stop any abrasions. I won this hat at the Kingman Farm race. Thanks Chris Dunn!!!

Back to running. So Jill and I just continued to knock down the miles until around mile 10 where I was starting to tire and I let Jill pull away. At mile 12 I caught her again while she was getting a drink. She also needed to adjust her shoes so I took off, and was hoping to hold her off for a while, but that was not to be. I think she caught me by mile 13.5. She was flying. From this point on I was on my own. My goal was to get over 128 then run through the Newtown hills with out walking. My planned worked and I managed to average 7:30's for the entire run. Not quite where I want to be during the race but hopefully next weekend I'll be able to knock another 15 seconds a mile off my pace and will be closing in on my race pace.

Jill on the other hand is primed to run sub 3 hours this year and I'd like to wish her luck but I don't think she'll need it the way she's running.

As for my head it's still a little tender but I don't think any real damage was done. I'll live to run another day. For all my snowshoe buddies I'm sure their not to surprised that I fell given the number of times I fell this season during races. I really have to pay closer attention to where I step.