Collegiate Nationals Race Report

In the days following the Boston Marathon I experienced the usual post-marathon stiffness and noticed that my quads and calves really did hurt that much more from all the downhill, but there was something else too. Two days after the race, on Wednesday afternoon, I received an email from a Clemson teammate exclaiming how it was just 2 days until Collegiate Nationals!

I knew it was a crazy plan to begin with, but crazy is right up my alley. I sacrificed my scoring spot on the Clemson roster because of Boston so my Nationals performance didn’t really mean much, but I had no plans of just going through the motions either. My plan was to go as fast as possible, just 5 days removed from a marathon.

Boston Marathon Race Report

Monday’s Boston Marathon went down in history as one of the hottest and toughest in the 125 year history of the race. The field as a whole was the fastest ever after the improved entry process allowed the fastest qualifiers into the race first. With my 2:51:03 qualifying time from Miami a year ago I was given bib number 1154, the 1054^th number assigned to the amateurs in order of qualifying time.

I arrived at the Athlete’s Village early, around 7:15am to be safe and in doing so actually got to drive right up to Hopkinton High School to be dropped off by my mom. Despite my early arrival there were already hundreds of other runners milling about preparing for the race. It was by no means “hot” at 7:15, but I was perfectly comfortable in just a short sleeved shirt. Around 8:45 I got up from the spot I had secured in the shade for some water. In the sun the heat hit me like a ton of bricks and by the time I had made my way down to my corral at 9:30 the temperature had officially reached 80 degrees at the start.

At the start I walked into another Clemson runner who lives in the same apartment complex as me. He told me that he had been hoping to go under 2:40 and still wanted to run a fast time despite the heat. I had no intention of going out very fast at all but my hopes of beating him seemed to be dashed by hearing about some of his training. My workouts had been pointing towards a 2:45 for me in good conditions, but that was before an untimely foot injury 12 days before the race that left me unable to run until race day. Under good conditions, though, I would have likely still been able to go under 2:50. With the extreme heat I made my goal to simply finish running down Boylston Street.

Race to the Rock Race Report

A few days ago I was entirely thinking that my next race would be the Boston Marathon. In a way it was, is, and will be but yesterday I participated in the Race to the Rock on Clemson's campus to benefit the library. Now you may be wondering how it could possibly not really count as a race. It's quite simple, I ran the 5k as miles 14, 15, and 16 of my 20 mile long run.

The race began at 8:30 am. My plan was initially to run 15 miles before the race and just over 2 miles as a cool down afterwards. I figured that meant I'd be heading out from my apartment at around 6:20 am. I ended up starting my run at 6:48 am, so it's rather impressive I managed to get the 12.7 miles in that I did before the race started.