Today was the day. The day of Derry's "Moderately Challenging" Boston Prep 16 Miler. Not my favorite race to run but a definite gem of New England road races. It is a 16 mile course that is nothing but rolling hills in the back roads of Derry (well, East Derry).
Now for this race, all pre-registered runners received an email earlier in the week warning us about the cold temperatures and to come prepared as this could be one of the coldest races in the race's 16 year history. Here is a part of the email from the race director:
"As to the point of being comfortable, DRESS WARM, there will be NO SHORTS ALLOWED. The temperature at the start of the race will be near ZERO degrees (and that ain’t Celsius but Farenheit). It will battle the coldest starting temperature of -2 degrees about 5 years ago. But it won’t feel that cold because as we all know we have global warminghappening (not in New Hampshire)." -Dave Breeden, Race DirectorLuckily for us, the forecast for the day was wrong (I know you're surprised) and the temperature was in the double digits (about 16). Now I know many of you are still thinking that I am crazy for thinking this is warm but after running the Fudgcicle 5K last weekend and having all exposed facial hair freeze on my face, today was B-E-A-UTIFUL!
I arrived at the race headquarters about 45 minutes prior to the start of the race. It was great to see many familiar faces on this beautiful Sunday morning in Derry. Fil Faria, Jessica Costa, Linda McCarthy, Karen Grondine, Frank Georges, Dave Tyler , Kurt & Megan Bunting, Al Manzi, and many others were waiting inside for the race to begin.
Andy Schachat and Steve Moland were on the scene as well to announce the race as well as motivate all to have a great run. They did another great job today and provided runners with another excellent experience.
At about 9:50 I began to make my way down to the start line along with the other 650+ runners. Today I was going to just take it easy and have a good time. I was not looking to meet any set time or pace but simply have fun. Well, as much fun as possible while running 16 miles.
At 10:00 AM the race began and the runners were off and up the first of the uncountable hills. For those who have not run this race before, the picture at the top of the page is the actual elevation profile for the race. Hope you can join us next year! Ha ha ha
Anyway, I hadn't seen Kurt, Al, or Megan for a while so I decided I would just run with them for about the first 5 miles. We were way in the back of the pack but man is it fun back there. Many runners are too concerned with their times and never take the time to get to know the other runners that they are running with.
Today, this was my goal: meet as many new people as possible (check), share a few jokes (check), make fun of the idiots who wear headphones on and listening to music so loud that they can not hear other runners inform them of cars coming up behind them (check, check, check, check, . . .).
At about Mile 5, I caught up with Jess. Her and I ran the next 4 miles together. This brought us up to Mile 9 where Kurt, Al, and Megan caught us and I switched teams again. I ran the next 2 miles with that crew which took me to about the halfway mark of "The Hill".
At this point I picked up the pace to catch Jess to run the last couple of miles together. We, well I, was feeling great and had reached our furthest run of the year and knew we had enough to push it home. Jess at this point was saying something inspirational like "I hate you" or "You suck". I finished the race strong with the last 0.5 mile in 3:46. It felt great!
After finishing, I turned back to get Jess and run with her to the finish. After finishing with Jess, I went back out to run with Kurt, Al, and Megan to the finish. I know I can't win the race but I can at least get in as many finisher photos as possible. Right? If they did give an award for that, I would have won it!
Personal Favorite:
(Jess is telling me how she loves me as a running partner)
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