Boston Prep 16 Miler

Today, Justin and I headed down to Derry to run the Boston Prep 16 Miler. This was my second time running the race. In 2010 I did it in 1:50:50 and finished in 43rd place overall. Prior to this years race, I remember thinking about how hard the race was in 2010, and I vividly remembered sitting in my car horrified by the fact that my legs were shaking uncontrollably when the race was over. The course has a tremendous amount of hills, the worst being between miles 9 and 13. However, it is pretty consistently either up or down the whole way. To add an additional element of fun, this year we got to deal with snowy roads and temps in the area of 10-20 degrees.

My goal today was to run between 6:15-6:20 pace for the whole 16 miles and treat this race like a long Marathon Pace workout. I wanted to focus on fluid/fuel intake and run a controlled pace. Long-story-short: I ran pretty consistently the first several miles. I was through the hilly first two miles in 12:40, then locked into a pace of about 6:10-6:12 after that. I hit 10 miles in 62:30 (6:15 pc) and knew that this was going to go get a lot slower on the hills. I don't have any clue what my respective times were for the individual miles between 10 and 13.1, but I know that I did that 5k section in about 20:40 which is just shy of 6:40 pace. Actually, that is much better than I expected. These hills are horrendous, and can't truly be given the credit they deserve unless you run the race!

When I got to the 1/2 marathon mark in about 1:23:10 I pushed a bit harder and got my miles somewhere around 6:10 pace. My stomach was starting to rebel around 15 miles and I barely made it to the finish before losing my breakfast. The time on the clock read 1:41:05 (although when I checked the results they had me at 1:41:30ish...not true. Taking my watch time). I ended up finishing sixth place overall, and I don't really know how the age group worked out yet. It was almost a 10:00 improvement over my time from 2 years ago and I moved up 37 spots in the field. I am pleased with this.

I ran alone the entire race in 6th place. I never passed anyone, but no one passed me either. In fact, after about 5 miles I couldn't see or hear anyone in either direction. It really tested me to run MP when I was lonely, bored, and by myself.

Unfortunately, Justin didn't have the performance he was looking for. However, we both resolved before this race that it would be used simply as a workout and that it was going to be the step-off point for real marathon training. 12 weeks left before the big day. Here goes!!!