FIRST OF ALL:  A reminder that this SUNDAY MARCH 15TH is my fundraiser for CYCLEKids for the Marathon, hosted by me and 2 other runners.  Please come out and support us – I’d love to hang out!

WHERE: MIDDLESEX LOUNGE – 315 Mass Ave., Cambridge (Central Square)

WHEN: Sunday March 15, 2009, 5PM to 8PM

HIGHLIGHTS: The band Change Up will be playing, all ages welcome, raffle and silent auction of fun items, great food and drink for purchase, suggested (not obligated) donation $10-$20.

OK, now the blog!

The worlds stupidest picture. How do I get so many chins? Mark, sorry to pull you into this embarrassment. You agreed to run with me.

Mark and I had a fun little contest last week.  We wanted to run 16 miles together, so we each created 3 cool routes and had some friends vote on them .  The voting came out pretty close among the 5 routes, but a really cool run on the ocean in Quincy won.

It is a run I’ve had my eye on for months, starting on the mainland and going out seemingly into the ocean.

Click on this for a live map. As you see on this map, however, our intended *really* cool looking run was altered. Read below.

So, with the daylight savings time losing an hour, Mark picked me up at 7AM on Sunday morning.  Ow.  And we got started onto Squantum Street on a mild and sunny morning.

Immediately, we decided to take a little detour onto some trails – a little park that has majestic views of the ocean and the city. A little muddy and icy, but fun.

A little trail running. Mark in shorts. Yay spring! The blur is how I felt that early in the morning.

We got back onto the main road, excited for the ocean / island adventure when we arrived at a security house and RESTRICTED ENTRY signs.  Oh, of course, that must be only for cars, runners are harmless.  So we ran on.  And a policeman chased after us, explaining that everything beyond this was City of Boston land.  Bahhh.  Very disappointing, City of Boston!

Restricted Entry. It's only restricted for cars, right?

We turned around, made a small detour into Marina Bay, detoured out onto a dock, and then ran back past our starting point.  I knew there were some cool shoreline exposures and lots of mileage going south, so we did.

Marina Bay.

We ran miles 6-9 on the beach on Quincy Shores Drive, and then miles 9-11 onto yet another residential peninsula with lots of amazing ocean views.

A beautiful morning view of the skyline. Joe Moakley Courthouse in South Boston in the foreground.

For me, it was a good, solid chug-along run.  Wasn’t feeling amazing, but not terrible.  At 11 miles, I had my Gu (which i actually remembered to bring, though because I had to forget something, Mark supplied me with the water) and headed back north.

On our re-entry onto Quincy Shore Drive, we ran straight into a headwind for the last 3 exhausting miles.  Mark sprinted it in, just to show me that he had something left!

Almost done...!

So, driving home, he said that it was 16 miles flat with a 7:54 pace, according to his GPS watch.  That bummed me out.  It was a hard run!  I came up with lots of great reasons (excuses) why it was slower than i would have thought:  My quads were burnt from 2 days of hard skiing, i’ve barely been getting much sleep, the wind was in our face, we had a bit of trails.  Blah blah blah.

Then I got home and mapped it out and 16 seemed very short.  So Mark downloaded his GPS data, and AHA!  It was 16.75, putting our pace at about 7:30.  This changed my outlook on life, the run and the week, suddenly feeling good about myself again.

As I didn’t do a video during the run this week, I thought it might be good to share with you an after run ritual:  pullups.  I swear I’m really doing them here…

Click to see the 1 minute video.

Finally, a great, inspiring quote from a recent article in the New York Times about the history of women in running.  Imme Dyson, an older, very amazing, marathon runner:

Running, she said, “clears your mind.”

“It makes you feel satisfied,” she said. “You are doing something that’s a little more than you expect of yourself. To me it is wonderful.”