(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 47)

For so long the BAA Half Marathon was some distant date on the calendar - something to look forward to.

After I ran the marathon in April I was eager to run a race over the summer…but there aren’t very many half marathons in the summer months…so the November half marathon in Boston was the one we set our sights on.

It’s hard to believe that it has come and gone already.

And it’s also hard to believe what a bear it was to run.

I don’t love uncertainties about a race.

There’s only so much you can control going in - and even that is contingent on how your legs feel when you wake up on the morning of a given race.

But the course layout, the weather - those are things you can try to prepare for but until you actually experience them it’s hard to know what it will be like in the moment.

And last Sunday…well, both presented a challenge.

I told you I ran this race with my friend Kevin, who flew in special for the run. On Saturday, we drove over to the Franklin Park Zoo, where the race began and ended, and tried to get a feel for the course. It seemed hilly, but nothing more than rolling hills, nothing worse than either of us had dealt with before.

I felt comfortable with our course preview.

By Saturday evening, the forecast for Sunday got increasingly worse. I did not sleep well, dreading standing around in the rain and then running in the rain in sopping wet, heavy clothes.

As it turned out, the weather held. It didn’t rain on us until we began running, which I was fine with. It was never a horrible rain, and the temperature was around 50 degrees, so it wasn’t a freezing rain either.

Weather wasn’t a factor…but the course? Hoo boy.

I’ve read in a couple of places after the fact that it was a challenging half marathon course. I’m glad to see that, because I was quite challenged by it.

The hills were a little tougher than they seemed from the car.

It took longer than I expected to run the roughly 13.2 miles (I also learned a half marathon is usually anywhere from 13 to 13.3 miles. I had no idea. I thought they were a set 13.1 all the time. When I entered the stadium at 13.1 miles and saw how far we were still from the finish line I think I blurted out, “Are you kidding me?!”). But the nice thing about this run was I had no set goal - Kevin and I just planned on running together and seeing how it went.

Turned out that worked out better for me than for Kevin. He was in great shape for this run - and by keeping up with him I was probably outperforming my training.

It’s not that I didn’t train well. I mean, I ran 13 miles, which is no small thing.

But it was a struggle. I still have half my mind thinking about the training ahead for the 26.2 I plan on doing in February, so I didn’t want to gas myself gearing up for this half.

I certainly didn’t do that.

If it wasn’t for Kevin I probably would have walked a lot of the second half of the race.

But keeping up with him was exactly what I was looking forward to - we had a nice long run together on a rainy Sunday morning in Boston. (And finished together as well - pictorial evidence at the end of this post.)

I’m impressed by the work he’s done - he really killed it.

I kind of feel like I got away with one.

It’s not that I should have done better…but I probably could have felt better.

Still…there’s something to be said for the strength work I’ve been doing and the fact that I was able to power through.

And I like to think that’s a good sign of what’s to come in the new year.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

“Highway Companion” - Tom Petty
“Graceland” - Paul Simon
“OK Computer” - Radiohead
“Dizzy up the Girl” - The Goo Goo Dolls
“The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” - Ms. Lauryn Hill
Scrooged
Vice
Julie & Julia
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

This exercise has done its job. As we near the end of it, I’m feeling duly inspired and ready to take the time I’ve devoted to watching/listening to other people’s work and create my own. This was a particularly inspiring week.

Notes

*A fun quirk of the half marathon course is that the turnaround point was less than a half mile from the apartment Kevin and I shared for about a year back in 1999 or 2000. Everything we did when we lived there, though, was in the other direction. So the half marathon was a part of Boston I was very unfamiliar with.

*I wish I knew this was coming - right at the end of the race you run through the zoo, right past the giraffes! I love giraffes. I wish I had the wherewithal to take out my camera and grab a quick giraffe selfie. But at the same time, it’s probably better that I didn’t - I don’t know that if I stopped to take a picture I would have been able to get going again.

*I’m honestly not sure whether I’m addicted more right now to the running or the medals. I don’t get a medal every other day when I run, so I guess the running wins out…but the medals sure are a nice reward for all the hard work.

*The social media links are below. Who knows what’s going on with Twitter, but I’m still going to attempt to use it. Maybe at some point I’ll write about it. The running Instagram is the one I use most often these days, I guess.