Yankee Homecoming 10 Miler
It’s been more than a week since I’ve posted but I’ll try to catch up. Last Tuesday night (7/28) we ran the 49th Annual Yankee Homecoming 10 Miler in Newburyport. This was our first time running this race and the race drew more than 3500 runners for the 10 miler and 5k combined. Newburyport is an incredibly scenic coastal town and there were more spectators on the course than any race in recent memory other than Boston. It seemed every neighborhood had hoses and water tables set up for the runners and one group mercifully set up a water stop as we crossed back over Rt. 95 in the last 2 miles of the race. I stopped and snapped the above photo of this group in admiration. The second picture is of Cathy taken by JimRhodes and the third is one of the finish I took leading into Newburyport High School. The temperature was over 80 degrees at race time but it seemed cooler once the race started with ocean breezes directly in our face the last few miles. I decided before the start I’d raced enough lately so I ran this one as a workout at a steady 7:25-7:30 mile pace finishing in 1:14. Cathy was 7th overall and won her age group in 1:07.
On Sunday we began ramping up our long runs in anticipation of our Fall marathons with a brutal 19 miler-- this time heading north into Bedford, New Boston and finally back into Amherst. We started at 6:35 AM and the last several miles brought us back up over the New Boston Air Station (about an 800’ elevation climb) finishing in 2:48. The overall pace wasn’t fast but there were seven large hills during the run with elevation grades that at times seemed like we were back running Mt. Washington.
The bottom picture of Anthony was taken tonight. He asked me to set up “something tough” so I laid out a 16 miler on our favorite Boston training run into Mont Vernon. After I had finished my run on the Hollis rail trail I drove up and caught him heading toward Joe English Road.
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