{"id":150,"date":"2008-08-18T17:43:51","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T00:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2008-08-18T17:44:49","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T00:44:49","slug":"tunnel-marathon-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/?p=150","title":{"rendered":"Tunnel Marathon, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, so where is everyone?\u00a0 Given yesterday’s major news<\/a> I expected a deluge of comments.\u00a0 Don’t tell me you actually HAVE a life.\u00a0 Obviously you failed to comprehend what I was slyly telling you.\u00a0 But I’ll give you one more chance.\u00a0 Go on — go back and reread yesterday’s post, paying particular attention to the last line.\u00a0 Take your time; I’ll wait.<\/p>\n

Oh for heaven’s sake.\u00a0 Here you go:<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 Oh my goodness; I almost forgot to mention!\u00a0 Based on my performance today, I’ll also be running a race back East the third Monday in April.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So now you’re probably asking yourself, “What’s the significance of the third Monday in April?”\u00a0 Could it be… Groundhog’s Day?\u00a0 No, that’s usually in early February.\u00a0 Easter?\u00a0 No, that’s on a Sunday.\u00a0 Taxes due?\u00a0 No, that’s April 15.\u00a0 Solstice?\u00a0 Come on, that’s June 21!\u00a0 No, the third Monday in April is an obscure holiday called Patriot’s Day celebrated in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.\u00a0 As part of the celebration they hold a marathon starting in the tiny town of Hopkinton.\u00a0 I know, I know — seems crazy for me to travel 3,000 miles just to race in such a tiny town, but I’ve heard it’s fun.<\/p>\n

Okay — I’ll stop with the coyness.<\/p>\n

I FREAKIN’ BQ’D YESTERDAY!!!!!<\/strong>
\nMy final time: 3:54:34.<\/p>\n

(Gold stars to K80K, Angie, Leana and Running from 30 for figuring it out.\u00a0 Nitmos receives only a silver star since he didn’t have a clue what the third Monday in April is).<\/em><\/p>\n

I do apologize for not filling you in earlier.\u00a0 But our plans kept changing and we didn’t commit to trying to BQ at the Tunnel Marathon until the end of July.\u00a0 As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we started looking at other marathons in August and September to fulfill the entry criteria for the Marathon Maniacs.\u00a0 When we read the course description for Skagit Flats — another Boston qualifier — we decided we’d try to BQ there rather than wait until Royal Victoria.\u00a0 Soon after we signed up for the Tunnel Marathon as it sounded like a fun race (we planned on running it very slowly as a training run).\u00a0 At the time the website stated they were hoping to get it certified, however, there was no guarantee.<\/p>\n

When I saw the promise it WOULD be certified, I decided to stick with my Skagit Flats plan as it would give me three additional weeks of training.\u00a0 My training to that point wasn’t going very well; I missed a week due to a cold, then I was overly ambitious with my speed work which left me beaten and defeated.\u00a0 In fact, after a particularly tough BUAL\u2122 workout, I decided to discontinue those and just focus on getting miles in.<\/p>\n

Well, fate had another plan for me.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of June the Tunnel Marathon became certified, and as I was looking through the photos<\/a> on the site I realized their claim the race was “potentially the fastest USATF-certified course in the country” was indeed true.\u00a0 Lest you doubt me, here’s the readout from Garmin:<\/p>\n

\"Tunnel<\/a><\/p>\n

So once again I was retooling my training, incorporating a week-long taper.\u00a0 Despite feeling my training was inadequate, I did log in more than 330 miles since North Olympic.\u00a0 I also incorporated a few “progression” runs where I would run a couple of miles at the marathon race pace for a 4-hour marathon, then increase my speed by 10 seconds per mile every two miles for a total of eight miles.\u00a0 As marathon day approached I felt I was as ready as I’d ever be.<\/p>\n

Next up: Tunnel Marathon, part 2 (the actual race report).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so where is everyone?\u00a0 Given yesterday’s major news I expected a deluge of comments.\u00a0 Don’t tell me you actually HAVE a life.\u00a0 Obviously you failed to comprehend what I was slyly telling you.\u00a0 But I’ll give you one more chance.\u00a0 Go on — go back and reread yesterday’s post, paying particular attention to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[30,24,28,32],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beantown","category-race-reports","tag-boston","tag-marathon","tag-marathon-maniacs","tag-race-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}