Happy Monday, friends! Greetings from the happy end of another training cycle. This past weekend J and I ran the Seacoast Half Marathon in Portsmouth, NH–my 13th and his 1st. This race ticked all the boxes of a goal race for me. It’s on the smaller side, it’s reasonably priced, the scenery is gorgeous, and it’s somewhere new but still within a couple hours of home. We decided to “splurge” and spend credit card points on a hotel the night before–Portsmouth is just over an hour from home, but staying up there made for a much more relaxed race morning. An added bonus was that we got to have dinner with some good friends who live in the area on Saturday night. We ended up at Street, which was awesome. I had my traditional pre-race burger and a side of yucca fries, which were AMAZING. I definitely want to go back to Street some time to try out their cocktails and some of the more interesting dishes 😉
Saturday night I had a fair amount of trouble falling asleep, which is typical for me before races. Luckily I had gotten a great night of sleep on Friday night, so I knew I’d be fine for the race. Saturday morning we had breakfast and coffee in our hotel room before heading just a few miles down the road to Portsmouth High School, where the race starts. We easily parked right by the school and grabbed our race bibs and shirts fairly quickly. There wasn’t a secure bag check for this race, but we were able to leave our coats in the school’s cafeteria and just left our valuables in the car. It was chilly, with temps around 30 degrees at the start of the race, so I opted for tights, a warm base layer, gloves, and a buff. I probably slightly overdressed but I hate being cold at the beginning of races! I ended up taking off my gloves and buff by mile 3 😉
After a couple of rounds waiting in the porto potty lines and a very quick warmup jog, we headed up towards the race start. I wished J good luck and scooted up to the 7:30 pacer. Thanks to my race plan from Coach Laura, I knew race starts downhill and I wanted to make a very concerted effort to hold the pace back. The first two miles were light and easy.
- Mile 1: 7:20
- Mile 2: 7:24
By mile 3, I felt good and wanted to pick it up to closer to my goal pace (around 7:10-7:15). My goal was to feel comfortable and steady for the middle miles of the race, while actively conserving energy to be able to pick up the pace near the end.
- Mile 3: 7:06
- Mile 4: 7:08
- Mile 5: 7:18
- Mile 6: 7:08
- Mile 7: 7:04
- Mile 8: 6:56
- Mile 9: 7:11
- Mile 10: 7:10
I had accidentally set my watch with the automatic mile split setting off, so I could only see my overall average pace for the race. This turned out to be super helpful–my focus was just on pushing hard enough to inch my average pace slowly down instead of re-calibrating my effort every mile. I had tucked into a fairly steady group and I decided to stick with them through mile 10. The scenery during this section was gorgeous–lots of quaint old houses and sweeping views of the coastline. I made sure to grab a cup at each water stop and slowly sipped a Gu starting around mile 7.5. At mile 10, I could tell I still had some juice left in my legs, so I started picking folks off as I nudged the pace up.
- Mile 11: 7:00
- Mile 12: 6:51
- Mile 13: 6:55
- .2: 6:15
At mile 13 I was feeling strong, having picked off a couple of other female runners–at that point I knew there weren’t many more ahead of me. I hit the steepest hill of the race at this point, but I gritted my teeth and pushed my way up, knowing the finish line was around the corner. I totally channeled my inner Shalene Flanagan and let loose a “F*$& yeah!” as I crossed the finish line with the pace clock still at 1:34:XX. My official finish time was 1:34:19, which was good for 11th female finisher, 4th in my age group, and 52nd overall. My goals for the race were:
- A Goal: Sub-1:35
- B Goal: PR (Sub-1:36:55)
- C Goal: Sub 1:40
So, I was pretty happy with where I ended up. Jeremy ran an incredible first sub 2 hour half, and is already talking about signing up for his next one. I’ve created a monster!! It was really fun to get to watch him finish for once.
After taking the requisite photos we grabbed some post-race snacks (there was everything from pizza to a Mexican rice dish to squash soup and apple cider!) and then went back to our hotel for a hot tub dip and shower before tucking in at one of our favorite brunch spots, The Friendly Toast. Pro tip–they have an app you can use to skip the wait–our table was ready less than 10 minutes after we arrived! SO necessary.
Overall, this was a fantastic race for me–I felt well-trained, I raced hard and smart, and the course and weather were perfect. I also LOVE the half distance–it’s absolutely where I excel and I think where I still have the most room to grow (looking you, NYC marathon qualifying times!) I have a lot more to say about this training cycle but I’m incredibly happy to have PRed the 5k, 10k, and half this fall! I owe a big debt of gratitude to Coach Laura, who wrote the custom training plan that got me to my goals. More to come on what went well and what’s next–for now, I’m ready for a few sweet weeks of easy running and lots of yoga before Boston training kicks into gear.
Hello from the land where it’s finally feeling like fall! I went for a run this morning and it was in the 40s, which I LOVED. For this post, however, I’m going to rewind a bit back to Monday when the weather was decidedly less nice for running. I had been carefully watching the weather all weekend since I knew we were going to be getting some aftereffects of Hurricane Nate. Luckily, race day came and it wasn’t pouring rain, but it was nearly 100% humidity and in the 70s–unfortunately similar to the weather for 
This race usually draws a pretty impressive crowd of elites, but even so we were right up at the front of the pack to start the race off. I wasn’t really feeling the heat for the first couple of miles and ticked off some hard but sustainable paces at 6:52, 6:52, and 6:58 for the first three miles. While the front of the field got spread out pretty quickly, the course loops back on itself so I got to exchange lots of cheers with friends as we ran along Memorial Drive in Cambridge. I love this race because women are so supportive of one another! Everyone was encouraging and positive even as we were passing each other. Once we crossed back over the Mass Ave Bridge, the heat and humidity had caught up with me and I was starting to drag. I got a big boost from my teammates cowbelling and then another push as I ran past J, who had come down to cheer me on.
Overall, I had an amazing time and am super proud of my mom and my teammates and friends for their strong finishes! Despite the race shirts being a bit underwhelming this year (cotton instead of dry-fit) I would absolutely run this race again and am super grateful to have had my entry comped by the race organizers. I’m looking forward to my next race, which will be my attempt to surpass 
Since this is my first race of my 30s, I was a little bummed the results aren’t officially broken out by age, but I’m super proud of my finish. This was a strong PR over 
I have a couple of big ones coming your way today, my friends. First, I am so excited about this year’s 
I haven’t been around for the past couple of years’ events because I’ve been running fall marathons, so I jumped at the chance to sign up for this year’s event as soon as registration opened. And I pretty much leapt at the chance to help promote the event! If you 
The other exciting piece of news (drumroll please) is that I’m going to be one of the new Oiselle Volée leaders for the MA/RI team!! This team has quickly stolen my heart and been such a fun way to meet and connect with a badass group of lady runners. In case you’re wondering, 
From there, we took a couple of quick photos at the 
From there, I hit the porto potties and took an easy shuttle to the start, while J took off for a 5 mile jog to meet me at the finish. The shuttles dropped us off on a rural road surrounded by farmland, and I was able to get in a bit of a warmup jog up and down the fields. The start was self-seeded so I slotted myself into the 7 minute mile corral. My A-goal was to run sub 7s, netting out to about a 42-43 minute 10k. I wanted to be fairly cautious because it was an unfamiliar course and especially because it was close to 100% humidity–not anyone’s favorite race conditions. My B-goal was any time under 44 minutes. I was glad I had that all in mind because the course was much hillier than I expected–rolling hills the whole time with a major climb near the finish.
I ticked off the first mile a bit fast (oops) on a slight downhill. The next couple of miles felt fairly steady at 6:54 and 7:08. I grabbed a couple of quick sips of water and pushed through a 7:00 and a 7:04. Then, the hill hit. Mile 5 was a steep climb into Fort Williams Park, and a much slower 7:24. I gritted my teeth and picked up the pace to a 6:20 for the final .2 sprint to the finish. My final time was 43:57, just about a 7 minute average pace and 23rd in my division.
Greetings from the first week of taper mania! I have to say that despite the mileage going down, this week didn’t feel particularly easy. I think that has something to do with the fact that it was a really busy week outside of running. I always make a concerted effort to see friends once classes wrap up for the semester, but I’m very guilty of making plans every night and burning myself out. I’m also feeling a few of the mental demons sneaking their way in, so I want to really cement my mantras and mental strategies during these final two weeks before race day. Here are my goals for the taper:
Also, Denise and I are planning to run Sugarloaf together! We run really similar paces and are totally in sync with our race strategies, so I think it will be great to aim to stick together–of course with the caveat that we’ll both need to run our own races and do what we need to do to take care of ourselves day-of. We ran a really strong long run together on Sunday so I’m very confident about our plan. I am starting to think throgh nutrition planning and race strategy also–more to come on those 🙂
Y’all–peak week is over and the mini-taper officially begins!! I’m so, so proud to have gotten though four 50+ mile weeks in a row, topping out at 214 miles for the month of April. I’m also grateful for the lovely comments last week about not getting too caught up in the numbers. While this wasn’t quite my highest mileage week of training, I know I nailed both of my key workouts and kept the easy miles nice and easy. In fact, I didn’t even bat an eyelash when my “20 miler” was actually 19.58 miles. Who cares?? GPS watches are never 100% accurate and that extra .42 miles running up and down my block wouldn’t have added anything to my training.
Shorter and Faster 