Boston Half-Marathon

I have been running for many years as my main form of exercise (since I can’t play soccer every day, which is what I used to do growing up). A couple of times I have trained for an actual race, only to suffer some injury or other along the way. This time, I managed to make it all the way through three months of training, and yesterday was the big day: I ran the BAA Boston Half-Marathon. It was a great day for running (after a few hot days, it cooled down just in time). My goal was to run the 13.1 miles in 2:30 hours for a pace of about 11:30 minutes per mile. That’s about the speed I ran in training. My longest run in training was 10 miles, but the wisdom is that the race day adrenaline will ensure that the remainder of the distance is achievable.

The experience far exceeded my expectations. It was a lot of fun to run the course along Boston’s riverway parkland, up into the Franklin Park Zoo (hi to the giraffes), and back. Running with 3,600 people sure does make a big difference compared to solitary runs along the Charles River. I ran at a speed that I truly did not know I could sustain for such a long time. I finished the run in 2:08:34 for a pace of 9:49 minutes per mile, placing in 2,670th place.

[The professionals, who we at the back of the pack got to see whizzing past on their way back to the finish when we were still on our way out to the half way point, ran about twice as fast.]

This was so much fun and so satisfying that I’m surely going to do it again.