BostonBound59

As part of my Boston training I signed up for weekly indoor workouts each Tuesday night during the winter months at the Hampshire Dome in Milford, New Hampshire with the Gate City Striders, my local running club of which our family has been a member since 1998. The Striders are the largest running club in the area with approximately 400 members. I'm not crazy about running on the track in light of my two knee meniscectomies in 2001 and much prefer running outside on the roads (even in the dark and cold) or in the Mine Falls Trails in Nashua and usually find an excuse to avoid track work at all costs. However, with Boston looming just 10 weeks away I needed some quality speed work so ran with the team tonight and actually enjoyed the pain and suffering. I was joined by another lawyer friend from Manchester, John Stanzel who ran a 2:58 marathon last May in Vermont and is also registered to run Boston. My McMillan Plan called for me to run 30 minutes easy, then 5 x 1000 and then 30 minutes on Wednesday but I instead opted for tonight's Strider workout (800, 800, 1 mile, 800, 800-4800 meter total speed work). We extended the workout a bit by running about 40 minutes warm-up before the workout and then 30 minutes easy after for a total of 14 miles. I ran in group two tonight which a year ago was unthinkable at my portly weight of 173 lbs. I was able to (almost) keep up with runners far more talented than me: Steve Piper, Karen Pattelena, my wife Cathy, Trevor Ward and Liz Hall to name a few. We ran just about 3 minutes/800 meters and just over 6 minutes for the mile split. Cathy has been battling a sore knee as well as a cold but as usual was two steps in front of me at all times. This weekend we are running the Hampton Half Marathon but I'm not sure whether to run hard or just at marathon pace and plan to e-mail Greg McMillan in Flagstaff, Ariz. for some divine guidance.