(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 32)

Yesterday I ran my Framingham Half Marathon.

The training program called for 13.1 miles this week - a drop down from the 15 last week, and a gear-up for the 17 next week.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m doing most of my long runs this training cycle along the Charles River in Boston - I think that kind of closely mimics what I’ll be encountering along the streets of Chicago.

But, since I’m also trying to run Every Street In Framingham, I figured I need to start mixing in some of these long mileage runs closer to home.

So Saturday I ran a half marathon in Framingham.

I never actually went out and measured 13.1 miles during the week like I said I was going to when I introduced this idea last week.

I ballparked it - every time I went out for an errand (to Target or the supermarket) I kind of kept an eye on the mileage.

I noticed a couple of routes that might work and then I even made a change on the morning of my run.

Here’s how it went down - I parked in Shopper’s World, because I figured that was a good place to start a loop from.

I planned on ending at one of the eastern borders of Framingham along Route 9…I had a ‘final 3 miles’ plan.

I immediately changed the beginning of my route - traffic was quiet so I went in a direction I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get to because there are no sidewalks, and I was glad to get that out of the way. That covered the edge of Framingham right near the mall, then I went up Speen Street and over to Old Connecticut Path, hitting some side streets along the way.

When I got to Route 126, I followed that all the way downtown, already with 5 miles under my belt. I think I didn’t expect to do that with more than 3. From 126 I had to come back north on Franklin Street, which I hadn't touched yet, and I had to cover the streets that connected Franklin to Union Avenue, which I had already run.

Turns out those connecting streets, back and forth, covered a good amount of miles.

Remember, I had that 3-mile ending plan…well, I quickly realized I was going to need to shave that down to 1 mile.

I hit 12 miles near where I knew there was about a mile to go, with just one wrong turn that prevented me from getting a new street done. So that worked out really well.

It was a huge success. (I came up short of the border, but I need to get back over to that area again anyway.)

This is what I love about Running Every Street in Framingham - I spend more time thinking about extra miles - “I hope I can get all these streets in” and then I quickly start to run out of miles and before I know it, I’m done with a long run.

Usually my thinking during a long run is “Oh, I have so many miles left.”

So this is definitely working for me.

The other fun thing about this run was that I ran some streets I hadn’t run since this winter when I was searching for the wooden soldiers…which is appropriate since that’s where I came up with the idea to try to run every street.

As for the run? I came in at about 2 hours, 20 minutes (there was a red light I had to wait for to cross Route 9 that I think my timer took into account but it kind of stopped my momentum…but I think 2:20 is a pretty accurate time for me in a half marathon).

And I think I won? I didn’t see anyone else on the course.

The trick for me is to translate that 2:20 in a half marathon into a 4:40 marathon (or 4:59…I don’t care).

That’s what I’ll continue to build on in this training cycle.

17 miles next week…not sure where I’ll run it but I know I have a lot more streets to get to in Framingham.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

I have a friend whose son was playing in the Senior Little League World Series (15-16 years old, as opposed to the 11-12 year-olds or whatever the Williamsport one is), and his New Jersey team went all the way through and won the United States championship and it was exciting to watch. They lost yesterday to the international winner in the final, but it was a great run.

Notes

*For what it’s worth my personal record (PR, in running parlance) for a half marathon is 2 hours, 2 minutes, which I somehow accomplished the first time I ran in Wilmington, North Carolina in the half marathon. Not sure I’ll ever approach that again.

*And a reminder amidst all of this that I am running the Chicago Marathon in October for Ronald McDonald House Charities. If you’d like to contribute to my fundraising, you can do so at this link.

*Going with a bunch of family to the Mets game on Monday night as I use up some of my last tickets from this lost season. The owners sent an e-mail this weekend that I found unsatisfying: They said they “shared our disappointment.” I understand you used this trade deadline to build for the future but it makes me feel like an idiot for buying into (literally) this season.

*The social media links are below. If you want to see the detailed map of where I ran or a time lapse video of the miles being entered onto the analog map, that’s where you can find all of it. Thanks for following along!