Urban Run

It's Thursday so that means another run from Crossroad's.

We had a nice break from the cold over the weekend, and Tuesday it warmed up for the snow (if you consider 30F warm), but overnight it dropped like a bad habit and at the start of the tonight's run it was near to 19F.  This caused my usual running partners to sally out and stay home.  Most of the group had already left to do the Woodland Hills run by the time I got there, so I couldn't do that (not that I would have anyway, that's way too much work for a Thursday), so I was on my own for a run.  

The goal was to do about 5 miles, which I could normally do on the river, but the wind along the river was strong and I wasn't sure that the paths wouldn't be too icy.  I decided to try out a course that I had once planned for an earlier Crossroad's run that was about what I was looking for. 

I cut over from the bar to Commonwealth Avenue, which in the Back Bay is actually more like a boulevard in the French sense of it.  There's expensive sandstone row houses down either side, and 2 pairs of traffic lanes divided by a wide, tree-lined walkway that is punctuated every so often by a statue or monument of some kind.  In the winter they put white christmas lights on the trunks of the trees so this area is illuminated in a warm light.  I headed east between the trees and into the Public Garden.  Crossing over what is apparently the worlds smallest suspension bridge (according to the Wikipedia which is never wrong) I noticed a guy clearing snow off the little ice-covered lake that the Swan Boats float on in the summertime.  I imagine he wanted to teach his kids how to play hockey here tomorrow or something - that's the Runner Mind talking again.  At Charles Street I looped around Beacon Hill and came up past the classically beautiful City Hall but neglected to look for the wind turbine on the roof that the Mayor hasn't been good at telling anyone about.  From here it was a quick run over the hill to Park Street T Station and after that I made a right onto Boylston Street.  I then cut across the West side of Boston Common and made a left to reenter the Garden from where I had left it. 

I could tell at this point that I wouldn't make the 5 miles I was looking for if I went straight back to Crossroads, so I decided to act on a thought I had had on the way in.  In order to make up the extra mileage I would run a loop around every statue along Comm Ave.  I know it doesn't seem like it would add much distance, but sometimes when you're running you just do something for the rigor of it, and ignore the fact that people might think you look crazy for doing it.  

First up was a giant statue of George Washington on his horse, and was a big loop because it's still in the Garden and has quite a formal path around it that looped me right out towards Arlington Street where I hit a light for the first time in this 3-mile journey.  It wasn't a long delay and from here it was a straight shot to all those statues and the loops they wanted me to do around them.  On I went and loop I did around:

Alexander Hamilton, slain by Aaron Burr

John Glover, Revolutionary War Hero

Patrick Andrew Collins, former Mayor

The Vendome Fire Memorial, which honors the deaths of 9 firefighters in the line of duty

William Loyd Garrison, abolitionist

Samuel Eliot Morrison, naval historian and sailor 

- after Sam I had a good long straightaway and decided to see if I could sprint it, which I did -

The Boston Women's Memorial

Domingo Sarmiento, one-time President of Argentina

and finally;

Leif Ericson, famed Icelander who may have once sailed into Boston Harbor, depending on your source....

After that I still wasn't quite up to 5 miles yet so I went past Mass. Ave to the Charlesgate overpasses and made the two rights that got me back to Beacon Street and the bar.  I felt strong in the end and sprinted again.  

It was a good run and I was glad to engage the city's beauty and history a bit more than I normally do.  Those statues that I passed range in age by over 100 years and you can tell by looking at them; not because some look old or new, but because of the way you're meant to interact with them.  The older ones are always a bronze man on a huge stone block that you're meant to walk around and observe from afar like a painting in a museum.  The newer ones have smaller parts that you're meant to walk right up to and engage in order to learn their meaning.  the Vendome Memorial has a timeline of the fire and features the names of the men who died on that corner which offers a much different experience than the Bunker Hill Monument in nearby Charlestown (hint, it's a giant stone obelisk).

The thing I'm noticing more and more lately is that when I do a shorter run (under 7 miles) I don't feel very tired when I'm done.  And today I felt that I could up my speed as I was going without getting too winded.  Something tells me that it's time for me to push harder and run faster more regularly.  Uh-oh.

Cold Midweek

So it has been very cold in Boston this week.  As I write this weather.com has a temp of -3º for Cambridge, which is lower that when I got home from my run last night by about 12º.  Something about cold runs must tire you out more because it was barely a 5-mile run and I still passed out on the couch until 3am.  Man that sleep felt good though!

Tuesday night was the first of the hill repeat training, which luckily saw a break in temps...it was up 33º!  Hill repeats are basically just what they sound like, a loop that takes us from FitCorp, down around the Boston Common and Public Garden, past the original Cheers, to the foot of Beacon Hill.  Then we run up and down Beacon Hill a bunch of times.  This week it was 5, next it will 6, and ascending for the rest of training.  Fun times.  There's a big crowd and since it's a repeat you never feel all that along which is nice.  It seemed very daunting the first time, but after the 5th repeat I felt surprisingly good.  I'm hopeful that this help me on the Woodland Run up Heartbreak tomorrow morning, which should see 7º temperatures. (cue ominous music...)

And off to ride my bike to work!

Running, even in the rain.

So I ran in the rain tonight.  That's not something that I do all that often, and most people feel like it's something to be avoided.  I agree, and usually am able to work around the weather which, let's face it, isn't as bad as everyone from New England makes it out to be.  Usually if it's raining in the morning when I'm supposed to run I can wait until the evening and it won't be that bad.  I was tempted not to run at all tonight, but all of my other attempts at running this week had been thwarted by frigid temperatures and general not-wanting-to-get-out-of-bed-ness.  I needed to run today otherwise the 10 (or 12) miles on Saturday would not be good.

Tonight was a group run set up by an Irish Pub in Boston called Crossroads.  They host a regular Thursday night run out of their second floor bar that is free to all but is mostly populated by people running Boston for charity.  Oh yeah, when a runner says that they're "running Boston" it's shorthand for the Boston Marathon, that's just a thing.  Tonight the running group was small, I think it was 2 groups of about a half-dozen each.  

Like I said, I wasn't super psyched about running in the rain and was a bit worried about not having a waterproof shell to wear over my cold-weather clothes like everybody else.  The idea was to run a 4.1 mile loop around the river, passing the Double Tree hotel that my folks stayed in last time they were here.  Word before we left was that some people were running an extra loop to get up to 4.5 miles.

Outside the bar the wind seemed to have come up, but it wasn't quite pouring yet so that's something.  We got to the river on on the ramp on the way down I pulled ahead of everybody.  The funny thing about running is that I never feel like I'm running fast, it just sometimes feels that the people around me are running slower than normal.  I was by myself right up until the bridge crossing that would've taken us 4.1 miles.  In my mind I had committed to doing the 4.5, I was feeling pretty good, so I joined up with 3 other people who had caught up to me and we headed towards the next bridge.  About three quarters of the way there Sheri Olivet, Chair of the Runner's Council, suggested that we go one more additional bridge for a total of 5.1 miles.  This was a bit more than the 4.1 I had been planning on, but who am I to say no the Council Chair?  

The wind got bad at times but never as bad as I feared it would -  it can get pretty bad on the Charles - even crossing the nearly half-mile long Mass Ave Bridge that is the home stretch.  At some point I went from tolerating the run to really really enjoying myself.  It's a weird transition that is hard to understand or to put your finger on, but it happens during some runs.  I found myself wishing that I had my camera with me several times because the city was draped in fog and the lights of the buildings were lighting up the clouds.  The lights of Fenway were on for no particular reason, but that happens a lot.  Plus there these random times when traffic along Memorial Drive would come to a lull between red lights and for a few precious seconds it would get quiet and dark - a rare thing in Boston.  Totally worth it.  

I felt really strong crossing the Mass Ave bridge, and felt great when I got back to the bar.  not just because I was done running running, but be because I had had a good run.