I know, I know. It's been a while...

I know, I know. It's been a while.

I'm not really sure what happened there. A little over a month ago I slid you over to the back burner  and forgot all about you!

Well, rest assured that even though I've completely dropped the ball and not kept up with my blog posts, training and fundraising have been thriving. In fact, with only a little over three weeks to go before the big day, everything seems to be coming together nicely!

Since I last wrote, I've competed in three races (including two half marathons), done three 20 plus mile training runs, and more than doubled my fundraising total!

Let me catch you up.....

Fundraising

As it stands right now, with all of your help, I have raised a little over $5200 !! My goal still stands at $6000, but I've got a few weeks to go and I'm hoping there are a handful of people out there who are planning on contributing. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

A HUGE thank you goes out to the following people who have donated since my last post!

Scott and Carol Parker

Allison and Dan Wiswell

Bailey and Sean Snyder

The Forester Family

Cindi and Ted Gavriel

David and Jeanne Durian

Don and Diana Coleman

The Harmon Family

Liz Eldridge

Jon Eldridge

Hiroshi Morimoto

John Dumont

Jeff and Judy Parker and family

Karen Balian

Kim Parker

Matty and Linda Veneziano

Rob Rose

Tony and Jill Tieuli

Farrah Veneziano

Training

As I sit here tired and sore, I can report that the hardest of the training is officially behind me! Yesterday morning's 21 mile run was the last Super Long run on the training schedule. We will now begin our long taper down in mileage over the next 3 weeks. I say the end of the "Super Long" runs because we will probably do about 16 next weekend, but anyone who runs long distance knows that there is a MASSIVE difference between a 16 miler and a 21 miler!

I'll save the reflective writing until after I've actually run the race, but I must say that it's nice to sit here and know that I'm actually in good enough shape enough to run the Boston Marathon!

Racing

Since we last talked, I've competed in 4 races. 

Winter Triathlon - Sunday February 13th 2011

In early February, a couple of friends and I teamed up to compete as a relay team in a winter triathlon. My friends Kristen Barranco, Rori Stumpf and I bundled up on a COLD sunday morning and headed out to Weston MA for the race.

This was fun little triathlon that adapts to the winter conditions by replacing swimming with cross country skiing, and takes place 100% on packed snow trails. I started the race with the Run leg, then my buddy Rori took over on his mountain bike, and then Kristen finished us off strong with the cross country ski leg.

We were hoping to win the team division, but we were pummeled by an elite team that showed up to our little race! We were pretty happy to get 2nd though, and had a great time. For me it was a nice break from the tough marathon training schedule.

Kristen, Rori and I get ready to compete in the Winter Triathlon in Weston, Ma

Foxboro Old Fashioned 10 Miler - Sunday Feb 20th 2011

1:22:36 (8:15/mile pace)

This was a fun day with some of the soup groupers, but was definitely not my best race.

My approach was to "train through" this race which basically means that I didn't taper down my mileage in preparation for the race. Instead, I treated it like a normal weekend "Long Run". In fact, a few of us did a 4.5 mile warm up before running the 10 mile race! As a result, my time wasn't all that great, but we had a good time!

Hyannis Half Marathon - Sunday February 27th 2011

1:45:04 (8:01/mile pace) NEW PR!!

Loved this race! 

For this race, Hiroshi and I ventured off on our own and left the Run for the Memory team and the rest of the Soup Group behind for the day.

It was snowing pretty heavily when we got on the road, but had let up by the time we got down to the Cape.

The course was pretty much flat with a few small rollers. A little off and on snow made things interesting, but all in all the conditions were just fine. I didn't really push hard until I reached the 9 mile mark. I was able to pick up my pace for the last few miles to turn in a new PR of 1:45:04.

One key change I made for this race was to carry my own water. In Foxboro I depended on the race's water stops which cost me time and comfort. (Have you ever tried drinking gatorade from a cup while running? Not good. )

This time I carried my own water and used the water stops as a guideline on when to drink my own water from my squeeze bottle. 

As a very welcome post race treat, we met up with a bunch of my triathlon friends at the British Beer Company for some Vitamin G! (guinness) 

All in all a very good day!

Hirsoshi's classic photo pose as he takes one for the team and drives us down to Hyannis.

I don't usually buy the race photos, but I liked this one!

distributing the Vitamin G amongst my running friends!

New Bedford Half Marathon - March 20th 2011

1:43:17 (7:53/mile Pace) New PR!!

Beautiful day, fantastic course!

The New Bedford Half Marathon has been on my radar as the "fitness indicator" race for the last 6 months. Whether it was with the Soup Group or with the Run for the Memory Crew, race discussions 

always seemed to lead to this race.

I took my turn behind the wheel and drove down with my buddies Dan and Dave. Once in New Bedford, we met up with the rest of the Run for the Memory Crew.

The weather was a little chilly, but nice and sunny, which is perfect for running!

To be honest, I wasn't feeling all that great before the race and so I wasn't sure how I was going to approach it. I began to think that I would once again "train through" the race, but someone (I don't remember who) pointed out to me that there was no guarantee that I would feel great on the Big Day either, so I better suck  it up and see what I could do. 

It was just what I needed to hear.

After the first couple of miles I started feeling really good and so I decided to try to take my "race pace" up a notch and see how long I could maintain it. 

It turns out that I'm capable of more than I thought, because I was able to keep up the pace for the entire race, and end up with an average pace under 8 minutes per mile for the first time!

At the end of the day I had a new PR and a whole bunch more confidence, so I would have to call that a complete success.

Training

There isn't too much exciting stuff to report about the last 6 weeks of training that I haven't already mentioned. One thing is for sure though. I MUST be careful and fully taper down in my mileage and energy output in the last couple of weeks before the race. This week was my biggest mileage week of the entire training process. I ran 58 miles including a half marathon at full race pace on Sunday and then another 9 miler at "tempo" pace (7:58/mile) on thursday night. As a result, I went into my long run on Saturday with less than a half a tank of gas. I was hoping to do 22-23 miles, but stopped at 21 feeling pretty crappy. The silver lining of course is that I was able to do 21 miles at a decent pace (8:30/mile) even though I was feeling crappy and unrested. I have no doubt that if I cross the starting line of the marathon fully rested and feeling energetic, I'll have a great day!

Now that the bulk of the training is over I can say that I truly enjoyed it. I've never really been a serious runner until the last 6 months, and I'm still shocked at how far I've been able to come. Every week has been an adventure to see if I could go just a little further or just a little faster. I think that many of the marathon veterans that I've trained with dread the long training miles, but not me. Not yet anyway!

It's been a huge life changing experience and I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Soup group crossovers Dan and Jeff getting ready for a long run with the Run for the Memory crew.

A big thanks to volunteer Mike Henry for coming out to help a few saturdays back.

 Here he is with Coach Rich getting ready to shuttle the crew out to the start line in Hopkinton. There have been tons of volunteers that have come out to help us over the last few months. As the runs have gotten longer and longer, I've stopped carrying my camera and replaced it with a gel flask, so I don't have many photos to do them the justice they deserve.

A huge thank you goes out to all of our volunteers!!

Soup Group

With the Boston Marathon only three weeks away, the Saturday Long Runs have taken over the weekends for the 6 Soup Groupers who are running in it. On top of that, a few injuries have sidelined some of the non-marathoners. When you also factor in that the 3 major races that have happened in the last 6 weeks have all taken place on Sundays you start to see how the Soup Group activities have dwindled quite a bit since I last wrote. We have had a few opportunities to get together however. The workouts have become more "recovery" based for most of us and even included some snowshoeing and hiking in place of running. 

A special congratulations go out to Mike and Tom McMullin and to Dave Soligon who with the help of the Soup Group (we'd like to think) competed in their first half marathons in New Bedford last weekend!

Here are the soups that we've gotten to enjoy over the last month or so...

The Payoff!

On March 6th we had Italian Sausage Soup which was made by my beautiful and awesome wife Kate.

On March 13th Dave Soligon and his girlfriend Karen hosted the Soup Group again. Here is Karen's Tomato and Tortellini soup!

Today the Soup Group was hosted by Joe Hamm.

You should definitely be jealous about his Seafood Bisque that we got to enjoy after our run!

Soup Group Face of the Week!

Jeff Hattem

Like many of us, this is Jeff's first year with both the Soup Group and running in the Boston Marathon.

Like me, he is fundraising for the Alzheimer's Association. In March, Jeff won the gold medal in the Snowshoe National Championships in the Masters Relay division!

That's it for now.....