BostonBound59

Posted by Mike Merra at 9:28 PM Links to this post    

Labels: Steamtown Marathon

Posted by Mike Merra at 8:50 PM Links to this post    

Labels: Granite State Flash, Mont Vernon, Santa Claus

There are plenty of local road races devoted to worthy causes but the St. Charles Children’s Home 5k race has got to be at the top of the list. The St. Charles Children Home in Rochester, founded in 1945 by the Grey Nuns of Canada was originally an orphanage and now serves as a group placement home under the direction of New Hampshire Catholic Charities for children from families in crisis. The home is staffed by Daughters of Mary, Mother of Healing Love. During the summer of 1996, the children’s running program at St. Charles was developed to help the children cope with the stress and anger accompanying placement and separation issues. The home’s philosophy is that running acts as a natural antidepressant and ultimately enables the enhancement of each child’s self esteem. The program has attracted national media attention, here is a short video link to a CBS Morning story on St. Charles back in 2006: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2042470n&tag=related;photovideo

We’ve run 12 out of the 13 St. Charles races. The race was originally held at Spaulding High School in Rochester but due to the size of the field the race was moved to Pease International Tradeport. The last 6 or 7 years we’ve made it an unofficial mini-family reunion with my parents along with my sisters Anne and JJ, their husbands and eight children usually attending or running the race. Today we also had a number of Granite State Flash runners (Ben Platt, Ethan Platt, Jake Rowell, Brett Quinn) competing led by Justin (pictured above) and Jan Platt. Cathy ran a great race finishing 3rd overall in 18:34 despite running 22 miles Saturday. I do not recover from long runs nearly as fast as my better half as my quads were cooked from the start and I didn't even attempt to stay with her and finished in 19:00. My sister Anne looked very strong (see picture above) finishing 25:51 accompanied by my nephew William (to her left) who ran unofficially as he is competing in his first year running cross country for St. Thomas Aquinas in Dover. Last but not least was my nephew Jonathan Donovan, our Ethiopian speedster (in his basketball high tops) who took it out hard in the children’s race.

Posted by Mike Merra at 11:06 PM Links to this post    

Labels: St. Charles Childrens Home

I'll be taking a break from blogging for a while starting today. I've enjoyed the blog but today I started coaching with the Nashua PAL school program and will coach the Granite State Flash youth boys from late October until mid-December. I am also running more than 70 miles/week getting ready for my October 11, 2009 marathon in Scranton, Pennsylvania, so, combined with family and work responsibilities, I need to put this blog (temporarily) on the shelf. I hope to pick it up again after the Flash season ends in December and we begin training for Boston 2010. I might however put up a post next Monday after the St. Charles Children Home race in Portsmouth which we've done 11 years in a row as well as a short post after my October marathon.

As I temporarily close up shop, here is a 10 minute slideshow I put together from the 113th Boston Marathon on April 20, 2009. The photos are from a variety of sources including family, friends as well as online sources. I did my best to include our Granite State Flash and Gate City Strider runners. I apologize in advance to those runners who were not included...I literally spent hours online looking for photos of everyone I knew who was running.

Posted by Mike Merra at 10:24 PM Links to this post    

Labels: Boston Marathon, Granite State Flash, Nashua PAL

The past week has been brutal payback for the cool and rainy summer we experienced here in New Hampshire from late June into early August. I'm a terrible hot weather runner so 4 out of 5 days this past week I (reluctantly) crawled out of bed early, put on my running gear and headed down to Nashua and the Mine Falls trails near where I work to get my run out of the way before the day's heat and humidity set in. Since we were planning to head to Portland, Maine from Friday afternoon until late Saturday and had a New Hampshire Grand Prix Race Sunday, I had to do my weekly long run--this week a 22 miler at 6:00 A.M. Friday.

For this summer's training cycle leading into my fall marathon I'm doing just four 20+ mile runs (vs. 8 for Boston) with shorter 16-18 mile "progression" runs in the alternate weeks. I felt I was flat at Boston and the extra 20 milers didn't help. This past Friday was my 2nd 20 miler in the cycle and quite ugly. When I began at Nashua South High School at 6:00 A.M. Friday the humidity was in excess of 70 degrees and the air temps. close to 80. When I finished more than three hours later the sun had broken through the overcast skies and heat index was in excess of 100. My pace was very slow--about 8:50/mile yet I was working harder each mile than the previous week when my pace was closer to 8 minutes a mile on a much hillier course. To make matters worse at about the 15 mile mark I experienced every runner's nightmare--in an instant I was pinned for close to 5 minutes against a car by a growling 8 month old pit bull (teeth fully bared...inches from my ankles) in a neighborhood near Nashua North High School. He had apparently jumped over the back yard fence when he heard my footsteps. Although the owner was (mildly) apologetic, even he couldn't get control of his dog. Only when a neighbor came over and threatened the pooch with a large tree branch did he run off. As one respected lawyer told me many years ago...forgive and remember.

On Saturday things turned more positive and we had a great 9 mile run along the ocean in Portland harbor and Sunday we returned to New Hampshire and ran the annual Moose on the Loose 10 miler in Mine Falls. Despite being quite sore from Friday's long run I couldn't race but ran a comfortable 7:19 training pace for 10 miles. The course was actually short .25 miles according to my Garmin as the official results had me at 7:11 pace although I did run the 2nd half of the course about three minutes faster than the first half (37:08 vs. 34:11). Cathy's marathon is one week later than mine so she was able to race this week and ran a solid 1:06 to finish 3rd
overall. I've posted some great pictures of Sunday's race taken by Ethan Platt. Here is a link to the whole album: http://plattracingphotography.shutterfly.com/2009mooseontheloose10m/4

Here are the results: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/09/nh/Aug23_MooseO_set1.shtml

Posted by Mike Merra at 9:50 PM Links to this post    

Labels: Gate City Striders, Nashua

My son Chris is a runner but prefers to juggle. We have the dents on our living room ceiling to prove it. Here is a 5 minute juggling video he put together (filmed in our back yard) a few days ago and posted on juggling tv.

Posted by Mike Merra at 9:30 PM Links to this post    

Labels: juggling, upper body workout

It has been many years since I’ve run the Cigna 5k race but I decided to give it another shot this year after a nine year hiatus. The race is by far the largest field of any distance in New Hampshire and one of the largest 5k fields in New England with close to 5000 runners. I last ran the race in 2000 with temps close to 90 degrees and vowed it would be my last Cigna. This year I decided to find out what kind of shape I was in after a month of distance training for my Fall marathon. We lucked out with temperatures in the low to mid 70’s as race time approached plus we had a slight tailwind blowing in from the north which would help in the final (always brutal) mile down Canal Street before taking a left and finishing on Merrimack Street.

The field was loaded with elite runners. We had a decent 25 minute warm up but due to the size of the field we needed to get to the starting line earlier than usual just to hold a spot to prevent from getting boxed in during the early going. My goal was to run close to 18:30 (my previous PR on this course was in 2000 in 19:48—just before two knee surgeries) so I knew I had to get out fast to have a chance at 18:30. The gun went off after a long wait and the first mile is a straight shot up Elm Street. I’m not a natural 5k runner and felt very unsteady and out of sync as we pushed away from the start and thought to myself how much easier it would be to just pull up, bag it for the night and go on a long run but after about ¾ mile I started getting into my rhythm and passed the first mile mark in 5:54. I often describe to others that the first mile in a 5k feels like entering a state of semi-shock—you are standing still for several minutes then suddenly accelerating out from the start at speeds I rarely reach even during our Strider track work outs. Karen Long was running with me along with Justin Platt (pictured above) just to my left. I knew Cathy was in my midst but didn’t know for sure. At about the 1.5 mile mark the course swings left from Elm onto Thayer Street where there are two large water stops manned by Gate City Striders and Greater Derry Track Club members. I received many words of encouragement from my Strider teammates which helped immensely and after a slight downhill stretch passed the two mile mark in 5:42. I ran alongside Merrimack Valley High School Cross Country Coach Dave Irving the last mile, who had several of his high school runners with him in tandem and this helped me maintain a fairly steady pace. The last mile is pretty demoralizing as you see the 100 + runners strung out far in front of you along Canal Street making it all look so easy while my 50 year old lungs are literally exploding as I gasped for air trying to just hang on. Finally, I could see the turn onto Merrimack Street at 2.9 miles. As I came up the final hill I could see the clock in the distance at 17:45 so I pushed as best I could and came across the line in 18:05, 5th out of 244 in the 50-54 year old group. Cathy finished in 18:49 winning her age division and was 6th overall woman in the race. The photo above (by Strider Dave Delay) was taken at about the half-way mark showing eventual winner Alene Reta of Ethiopia (left), whose time of 13:53 was the fastest 5k road race time ever run in the State of New Hampshire. He is being closely pursued by Bajo Kiorku (right), the 2nd place finisher (14:03). If you look closely you can see the many Gate City Strider volunteers (in green shirts) manning the water stop.

There were many Striders and Granite State Flash runners and coaches in the race, here are the results: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/09/nh/Aug13_CIGNAE_set1.shtml

Posted by Mike Merra at 10:29 PM Links to this post    

Labels: Cigna/Elliot Corporate 5k, Manchester, New Hampshire