On distance running

Depending on how one defines "distance," I don't run distance. The furthest I ran was 7 miles, and that was by accident. I'm now signed up for a 7.5 mile (more or less) race and a 10 miler. Yikes. I don't want to ever want to run a marathon because moving for close to 5 hours just does not sound attractive to me. But I track people who do, like Jonelle, who ran Boston for charity, and Jon, who actually qualified and recently told me that he wants to shave off more minutes from his time. More yikes. Which is why the idea of selling and buying race bibs for the elite race confuses me. Because everyone who is not insanely speedy at Boston is wearing a charity bib, right? So if you paid $500 for an illegally re-sold bib acquired by someone who qualified, and then all of the sudden you pull up at the Boston Public Library 5 hours after you started, someone's going to wonder. And sure, you may have run the Boston Marathon course on Patriot day with a bib on, but it's not like you earned it one way or another.

In other news, last night, I went to a stride clinic/promo event at Pacers Running Store and conducted by Newton Running. Those were some pretty funky trainers that would have fit better if I'd tried on a wide shoe. I was also told that I had a calcification on my toe joint and how to deal with that in my shoe, but the question remains: what the heck is the calcification and what does it mean?

The fear of God as a deterrent...

Seen today at the International Gem & Jewelry Show in Baltimore...

On speed training.

I really have little to contribute on the topic of speed training, other than I'm not great at it. Thursday, I thought I was scheduled for two one-mile repeats, although at the end of the day, long after my run, I realized I was supposed to do six miles, with three miles in there at tempo. This has created utter havoc in my training schedule for B2B, but at least I've already bought part of my costume for that and have the excuse of "Oh, it's just B2B, I was doing that for fun!" I digress.

So I measured out a 1-mile section of the Mall, ran a warmup, did two repeats, and hated nearly every minute of it. The shocking part being my consistency: I did each piece within 30 seconds of each other. And were they faster than what I do my longer runs are, as this NY Times article discusses? I dare say so.

Good luck to the Boston runners tomorrow!