14th Annual Boston Prep 16 Miler-Derry, New Hampshire
While I have followed this event for many years (and even manned a water station a few years ago) today was my first time actually running the race. This race has become a tradition for Boston Marathon bound runners. The race draws runners from throughout New England. The race is organized by the Greater Derry Track Club and sold out this year at 800 runners.
The temperature this morning at race time (10:00 A.M.) was about 10 degrees but there was no noticeable wind and lots of sun. The roads were clear and dry. I had planned to run a pace of about 7:30-7:45/mile but felt pretty good right from the start even though we had run a hard 21 miles in Philadelphia on Monday. Cathy was unable to run because her high school team had a meet this morning at the University of New Hampshire. This finally guaranteed me (as the only runner) a first place finish in our family which is a rarity.
The early part of the race has many rolling hills but there seemed to be more downhills than up hills and I hit the 5k mark in 22:30 and the 10k in 44:20. At the half-way mark I was 56:54 (7:06 pace) so I brought it down a notch as I had been warned about about 2 1/2 miles of steady hills beginning at the 10 mile mark. At the 9 mile mark there was a hill so steep we were all practically walking but fortunately it was short and then a quick down hill before the impending doom. At about the 10 mile mark I got a big boost from fellow Granite State Flash coach Tina Pienta and her son Robbie who was a gold medalist on our Flash National Championship team this year. I ran several of these miles with fellow Strider Karen Long and we worked the hills together. I once again fell for the spectator who yelled to me at about the 11.5 mile mark "you've made it to the top...its all downhill from here" when the very next curve revealed a hill so long and steep it made Mt. Washington look easy. With a shortened stride I somehow worked my way up this hill and it was relatively flat and/or downhill the rest of the way. I passed the 13.1 half-marathon point at 1:34:59 and I felt pretty good these last 4 miles and ran the second half of the course in 58:54 (7:21) with a 6:51 finishing mile rounding back up to the West Running Brook School in Derry.
Overall, it was an incredibly well organized race, most of the course was run on residential and/or country roads and was a great workout on the road to Boston. I finished 68th in a time of 1:55:48 (7:15 pace). Here is the link to the results: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/09/nh/Jan25_14thAn_set1.shtml
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