Last weekend I took a little break from my "official" marathon training and flew to LA! I was sick of shoveling, missed my friends and needed some LA love. It worked! I feel more loved!

I saw a ton of friends and while I didn't have to shovel, the weather sadly wasn't in the 80's as it apparently had been for the previous 11 months. But, hey. I wasn't wearing mittens or earmuffs. Things were good.

Me, Nancy, Mary and some other TNT friends met up to do the Chinatown Firecracker race, which we'd been warned was pretty hilly. Nancy and I did the 10K and were all "what hills?" after the first half mile. And then the climb began. And kept on going. It was like a big hill training run - about 3 miles uphill.

There were millions of "Kids Run LA" kids which usually make LA runners a little bit nervous, if not irritated. It's a great cause - don't get me wrong. And we love the kids! But there are millions of the little critters all over the roads, and as Mary so aptly said, co-erced running isn't necessarily as much fun as the kind you choose to do yourself.

Kids Run LA is a program in the LA public schools where they get kids to run the LA Marathon. Little kids - junior high, even, training to run 26.2 miles. Adult Angelenos who enjoy running see them out at any and every community race from about October til the marathon in March (or this year, May!)

And while they're cute, certain aspects of them are not cute. Like when they're running right in front of you up a hill, and you're both exerting a certain amount of concerted effort (ie, strain) to put one foot in front of the other, and they just stop. Suddenly. Right in front of you, without looking behind or to the side.

So... aside from the little road obstacles, it was really really fun. The weather was perfect for running - overcast and in the high 50's. The views were amazing.. all though Echo Park near Dodger's Stadium. And not to brag, but because of my 6am hill runs in Charlestown, I didn't find the hills that bad at all. It was also just a 6 mile run, which isn't much compared to some of the runs I've been doing.

Afterwards, we feasted on delicious dim sum at a spot recommended by our very own Yelp expert Shawna. She actually is some head honcho at the LA Yelp, so we were in good hands. Mary and I took a blurry cameraphone snap post-meal. There are other pics and once they're available to me, I'l post them!

This weekend is a lovely 10.5 miler. I thought it was 16, but happily not. I do believe though, that from now till the end of March, every weekend run will be pretty long. With the exception of one weekend when I'll be in Atlanta and won't be able to do more than 10.

So... from now til April 20th, it's all about hunkering down and really training.
I think I hear "Eye of the Tiger" in the background, pumping me up...
Until next time!
J
xoxo

Late post...

Hi!

Belatedly posting about this weekend's10.5 mile run... It wasn't terribly eventful, which is a good thing, but I finally got to run with my friend Lisa for the first time in ages, which is a great thing!

Lisa and I met while doing Ultimate Bootcamp in Charlestown last summer and immediately bonded over a shared desire to do some local runs, London and British food (she's British!), being new to Boston, and a definite mutual love of shopping!! For months, we ran around the Charles river, even did some 5Ks and 10Ks together. Lisa's relatively new to running, but picked it up superfast!

She decided to run the Boston Marathon at about the same time as me, but for Team Fox, which is Michael J. Fox's charity team for Parkinson's disease. Lisa's Nan passed away from Parkinson's earlier this year and she wanted to do this marathon in her honor. Unfortunately, since Lisa started training for Boston, she's been plagued with injuries. For my running friends, I'll just say two letters: I.T.

What her sports therapist says is that her knees just weren't built for running. She hasn't let that stop her though and she's been stretching, resting, icing - all the things you're supposed to do. She hadn't been able to do any long runs - till this weekend!

We took the "T" out to Newton and ran back, basically following the last 10.5 miles of the Boston Marathon course. We took it easy (which was good for me too!) and made it in about 2 hours .We lucked out weather-wise, because it was a balmy 35 degrees. That's right, Angelenos. A Balmy 35.

This week, I've been taking it a little bit easy for no apparent reason. I ran around the river for the first time in ages on Monday because the roads were finally clear enough to risk it.. And this morning, I got up and met Beth at 6am in 8 degree weather for our Bunker Hill HILLS. BRRRRrrrrr!! It was cold!

Tonight I get on a plane for LA to see all of my LA friends. Very much looking forward to that! I won't be doing any long runs this weekend, but plan to do the Chinatown Firecracker 10K race on Sunday with my Team in Training friends, then stuff my face with Dim Sum.

I'll post pics and update the blog when I get back!

As for fundraising, things are going pretty well! I've already got almost $1000, and that's just from one round of emails! Feeling very good that my friends and family are going to come through and help me meet my goal!

Off to LA...
More when I return!
xoxo

16.3 Miles

At the beginning of Heartbreak Hill stands a
statue of the legendary John Kelly who ran the
Boston Marathon 61 times, the last time at age
84. The statue shows "young" John Kelly joining
hands with "old" John Kelly as they both "finish"
the marathon.


Wow. Today I ran 16.3 miles and let me tell you, that last .3 definitely counts.

It's the same finish each time I run with Fitcorp - up the incredibly steep part of Beacon Street near the Boston Common and State House for about .2 or .3 miles. Tough.

Just when you're almost done, you've got this one last major hurdle to overcome. Its one of those marathon things that makes you dig deeper, go further and see if you've got it in you.
Luckily, this time, I did. But only just.

I started today's run with these two girls I met about 6 weeks ago, BU third year medical students named Angela and Sylvena. They're very sweet and share the interesting medical stuff they're learning with me while we run and in return are subjected to any and all medical horror stories I can think of, inevitably resulting in TMI I'm sure, but anyone who's run long distance knows that sometimes it doesn't matter what you say, as long as you keep talking - just for something to do during the long, boring miles.

They started super fast this week, so luckily for them, I couldn't keep up after 5 miles, and they didn't have to listen to any more weird doctor stories for the rest of the run.

But, that meant I had to do the last 11 on my own, which was a little bit daunting because that's several hours of running with no one to talk to, nothing but your own thoughts. Its times like that when marathons are more mental than anything else.

During most of these training runs, we inevitably wind up on the actual Boston Marathon course and at least on part of the 4 mile stretch of "Heartbreak Hill." It's just a question of "at which mile?"

Heartbreak Hill itself isn't actually that bad. It's not as steep as say, San Francisco cable car hills or the street I lived on in LA, Marathon Street. It's just a series of steady hills with occasional plateaus - for 4 miles. For anyone who's done the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, the hills are like those. Except you hit them at mile 16. And the first 10 miles of the Boston Marathon are downhill. So when you hit these 4 miles of hills, you already want to die. Just setting that up...

Today, I happened to hit the hills at mile 8 of my run. And in my head, I froze. I got nervous and actually stopped running for a second, took some "goo" (in my case Powerbar Gel) and water and then started up the hill. For a moment, I even thought about walking.

This is crazy. At mile 8 of last week's run, I felt like I could run forever. When I hit this spot on April 20th, it will be at mile 16. I KNEW it was mental and I knew I had to do something to change the way I was feeling.

So I thought about Evan. Evan was my college boyfriend, a serious marathoner who did his best Boston Marathon in 2:52. I've never personally known anyone faster - and I've known a lot of runners. He was the best. Tragically, Evan's life ended far too early at age 31, just as he was getting into ultramarathons.

Mile 16 is the mile I'm running for Evan on marathon day because it's where Heartbreak Hill begins. I know he had to summon the courage to conquer that hill the many times he ran the Boston Marathon - and I know if he was here, he'd do whatever he could to help get me through those hills. So at the point where Heartbreak Hill began today, after I took my goo and started climbing those hills, I thought of Evan, and how much strength, courage and determination he had - and how he'd give ANYTHING to be doing exactly what I was doing at that moment. And I got through it.

The rest of the run was very much like a lot of long runs: periods of discomfort, even pain, followed by bouts of euphoria, or at least momentum and a comfortable pace.

I never listen to music on long runs, but fearing that maybe I'd be alone today, I brought the Ipod, just in case. With less than 3 miles to go, just after Kenmore Square, I put the headphones on, set the Ipod to "shuffle" and hoped something inspirational would come on. And it did.

First came St. Elmo's Fire, which had never sounded so good. Then Raspberry Beret, and as I was climbing that last .3 up Beacon Street and towards the State House, Amadaus kicked into gear.

Every time they sang "A-ma-de-us" I changed the words in my head to "You-can-do-it" and repeated it over and over again til I was at the top. Just then, the song changed to one of my favorite new songs, "The Story" by Brandi Carlyle, which is much more introspective and emotional, and I started to feel emotional.

I don't often cry tears of joy at the end of a marathon. There are usually so many other things going on to distract me (not the least of which is usually some pretty intense pain.) But once or twice, I've wept at the end of a long training run because it's somehow purer then. There are fewer people around and it's just about the fact that you did this thing that you didn't think you could do.

In this case, no one was watching (but of course I'm telling everyone now) and I was alone on Beacon Street having run 16.3 miles mostly alone and faster than I've ever run that kind of distance, and it's going to sound corny but I thought of my mom and how proud she would be and how proud I am of myself that I just kept going - even when my hip started to turn to steel and didn't want to move and my knee twinged a little bit and exhaustion overtook me from time to time, and I was all alone. And I did cry tears of joy; serious, euphoric, bittersweet joy.

So, it was a great run. I won't be doing such a long distance again til Valentine's Day, so hopefully by then, the midweek trainings will make 16.3 miles slightly less painful. Or maybe not. It's all a learning experience, all a challenge - a rewarding and fulfilling challenge indeed.

Now I'm off for a nap to rest up for an incredible meal tonight at Prezzo in The North End. And dessert. Lots and lots of dessert.

Winter Running Accessories... Brrrrrrr

Hill Training!

This morning marked week #2 for what I think I'll call "Bunker Hill Boot Camp Hill Training" with my friend Beth.
The two of us crawled out of bed at 5:30am and met on the dark, freezing streets of Charlestown to torture ourselves with hill repeats. Well, actually we kind of love it, but using the word torture makes us seem even more hard core.
I tried taking a picture of the killer hill (Bunker Hill Street) on my way to work this morning and the result is above. Due to blinding sun, you can't really see the whole thing, but you get the idea. We run to the top, where that church steeple is, and back down again. For about an hour.
We're kickass, hard as nails, don't-mess-with-us bad asses.
Well, at least we feel that way when we're done. Hills #7 and 8 aren't so kickass or badass. Just numbass and ache-ass.
But if you're going to conquer Heartbreak Hill, you've got to train for it.
One step at a time, one hill at a time.....

Training and Fundraising are Underway!

Well, here it goes; my blog, created to share the journey of training for the Boston Marathon.

I've been training for the past few months with the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge team as well as the Fitcorp marathon training program. At this point, I've run on Heartbreak Hill 3 times, although none of those occasions were at mile 16 after having run 10 miles downhill (which is what happens during the actual Marathon.) Heartbreak Hill is (I've been told) 4 miles of uphill ... that you hit at mile 16. Intense.

I'm fundraising for Dana Farber this time around because they've got a great training program and the money they will raise (with your help!), $4.5-5 million, is earmarked for basic cancer research.

Each year, they choose different cancer researchers to support and this year, one of them is a lung cancer researcher. You can go here to read about the kind of research he's doing. http://www.kintera.org/faf/home/ccp.asp?ievent=283893&ccp=86459. Click on the link that says "meet the Barr researchers" to read about specifically where your money is going!

OK, this is the end of my first post. It's just a taste of what's to come...
Sit back, relax and get ready to read about all of the sweating and freezing (training in the Boston winter, natch!) inspiration and perspiration I'm about to experience and expel, with all of you right beside me. Well, figuratively at least. Don't worry. You don't have to run.

Until next time....