Post Race Report: Boston Run to Remember

I want to start writing race reports to reflect on my running. That way I can look back on all my achievements and learn from my effort. They also help me with my goal to practice long form writing.

• Background
• Planning My Race Season
• Training
• Pre-race
• Race
• What's Next?

Background:

My grandfather passed away in December 2023. He was the most formative person in my life and the one who got me into running. When he passed, I had taken time off from running to try out other activities, but I figured that if he could run a sub four marathon at the age of 60 I should give a marathon a shot.

So last year I ran the same race he did at 60: the Ocean State Marathon. It went really well and while I didn't write up a race report after, it did set me up to think more seriously about running this year.

Planning My Race Season:

In December, I finally sat down to plan my training and race schedule for 2025. I had the following goals based on my experience with the marathon:

1. Instead of one marathon I wanted to target two half-marathons. That way I could see what it was like to have training cycles build on top of each other.
2. I pushed a lot of other things in life aside while marathon training and I wanted to be more present and balanced this year.
3. I couldn't sustain strength training and running with the workload of the marathon training. Strength training is so important for health and I wanted to integrate back into my schedule this year.

I saw there was enough time to do two full training cycles with a period in between to recover. I purchased my entrance to two races:

• Boston Run to Remember - Sounded like a very fun race, and it is local to me so no traveling. It's in late May, so there's plenty of time to train in warm weather, but it's also before the heat of summer.
• Amica Newport Marathon - I read it was a very scenic run and it's near my family which would make traveling for it easier. The race is in October, so I had time to rest between cycles.

Last year I used Matt Fitzgerald's 80/20 structured running plan to train for the marathon, and it worked well for me. So this year I wanted to use an 80/20 plan again for the Half Marathons. I take a stimulant medication and like how the plans are conscientious of heart rate.

Another nice aspect of the plans is there are different versions depending on experience level. For the marathon I used the level 0 total beginner plan. For the half-marathon this year I used the level 1 plan. The main difference between level 0 and level 1 is they increase the weekly running time by having only one day off rather than 2 days off.

When I ran the marathon last year I felt like I barely had enough time to recover and I was often pushing aside other aspects of my life to do my training. My main goal for this year was to find a better balance between my training and everything else in life! I figured that having an additional training day gave me a little extra wiggle room if I needed to skip a day here or there.

Training

The race date was May 25th, so with a 15-week training plan that I would start training on Feb 11. That meant I could do some general preparation through December and January... then I dropped a blender bottle on my toe:

"Nondisplaced slightly comminuted fracture of the distal phalanx of the fourth toe, with intra-articular extension."

The doctor said recovery would take 6-8 weeks. Luckily that was the exact amount of time I had before training started! Thankfully I was cleared to start some biking after only two weeks and that led to some fun projects. I grabbed a used Schwinn IC4 stationary bike for a good price and slapped some Garmin speed and cadence sensors on. The bike also does a very rough estimate of power that it broadcasts over bluetooth but not in any kind of standardized way. Thankfully I could then use qz zwift GitHub with a usb-ant+ stick to collect and rebroadcast the power information to my Garmin watch.

The bike can also be converted into an ERG trainer with SmartSpin2k. I bought all the parts and as ready to do it but then... I was healed and able to run again. Will definitely revisit this project.

Another positive that came out of this experience was being reminded about biking and how it can be mixed into my training. I had read a couple of Matt's books, and they talk about the benefits of cross-training. I do not have a background in sports medicine, so I'll defer to experts but cross-training is a nice way to lower impact/injury while still keeping volume up even if you lose a bit on the specificity side.

The training plan documentation has guidance on cross-training:

There are two basic approaches to replacing runs with cross-training: the programmatic approach and the as-needed approach. In the programmatic approach, you replace certain runs with cross-training sessions routinely. For example, you might replace your first Foundation Run of each week with an elliptical workout. In the as-needed approach, you replace runs with cross-training only when soreness or fatigue from prior running makes running again seem inadvisable. Note that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and indeed you should cross-train instead of running anytime it seems risky to run, regardless of whether you also practice the programmatic approach.

I subbed out 14 runs over the course of the 15 weeks with bikes rides.

Some other numbers: I went to Japan and skipped 13 days of training during weeks 6-8. Outside of that I only chose to skip 5 other training days as a part of balancing life. I'm very happy with that over all, I gave myself the grace to skip running, so I wouldn't miss out on important events, but I was also judicious with those decisions.

Another aspect that was different this year was weight lifting. Before my marathon last year I was lifting pretty frequently. I had been doing Jim Wendler's 531 framework and after a life of running I was starting to really enjoy 4 days a week in the gym. However, when I did my marathon training I did not have a principled process for strength training while running. Even though I knew strength training was essential I had enough difficulty recovering from the running that I basically dropped all lifting.

Matt Fitzgerald's books had some really nice framing about strength training. You really can only have one primary thing you are training for at any time, and you can lift but if you are training for a race the lifting is in support of your training, not the goal. So this season I aimed for only two days a week in the gym. That is the bare minimum that you can really do to make progress, but I wanted to have a realistic goal based on last season.

Additionally, I changed my strength training off of a split workout like 531 where certain days would focus the lower body to full body strength days. It made the logistics for how to line up strength days with running workout days easier and that planning flexibility was really useful.

So the numbers for lifting: 6 weeks where I lifted once, 5 where I lifted twice. Not quite my goal but certainly better than last year. Also, two weeks were missed due to my trip so that's 11 of 13 weeks where I went to the gym at least once.

As a side note I use TrainingPeaks for my structured workout planning. Typically, I use it to look forward into the future, but I'm realizing now it's nice for reviewing all these details!

Gear:

• 1 pair of the now discontinued Brooks Ghost Max I retired with 320 miles on them.
• 1 pair of Brooks Ghost Max 2 that I got just before the race and put ~20 miles on.
• Garmin Fenix 7 Pro + HRM Pro Plus chest strap
• A Whoop, a Pixel Watch 3, Polar Verity Sense, Polar 360, Scosche Rhythm24, etc. I've been tinkering with lots of random wearables to better understand the technology, but they are not an active part of my training.

Pre-race:

For the marathon I used my training to estimate a race pace and decided to aim for 10:15 pace. That was a very conservative pace because my main goal was to complete the race without injury or needing to take a long time off from training after the race.

I got the course map into Garmin and generated a PacePro Plan with a small negative split. For average time I ended up pretty much right on with 10:11, but my minute splits were all over the place. I had hoped to run with a pacer, but they ended up not being able to make it to that race.

For my half-marathon I went with a 9:05 pace seemed pretty reasonable given my training. Since the distance was so much shorter than a marathon I felt I could push the pace more without the injury risk.

After seeing the magic of a taper for the first time with my marathon I was excited to see it again. Once again it delivered, and I felt ready to race just as I got to race day.

Race:

So here are the official results and my splits for the race:

Some things to note:

• I did not follow my pacing plan
• I was able to go much faster than my plan
• I had a nice crisp negative split!

How it happened was weird though. There were ~8000 people in the race so it was a packed start. I began the race with my pacer, but they were going a little faster than my target pace. Around mile 4 they signaled to everyone to bathroom break if needed at an aid station. I didn't need to, so I decided to go ahead and regroup later.

Then I just felt like running. As I continued to feel good I continued to push the pace more. By the time I got to the end of the race I still had some gas in the tank and my old XC sprint to the finish ethos kicked in. In fact after the race a random person came up and said "you're the one that sprinted at the finish aren't you?".

Recording of me at the finish line:

Post-race:

So in retrospect I could have aimed for a much faster pace, kept a negative split, but not had as much wasted energy at the end. I was honestly surprised by how good the race felt.

When I ran the marathon I fueled constantly during the race with Cliff Bloks, a bit of Gu, Skratch and more Bloks. So many Bloks. For the half-marathon I had my running candy at a slightly faster rate, and I'm curious if that helped. There also the fact that they contain a lot of caffeine and I never have caffeine outside of races and a couple long runs before races to get my stomach used to it. Caffeinated candy is magic.

What's next?

I will rest this week, and then I have a DEXA scan and VO2 max test scheduled for a week after the race. I've always wanted to try those, and I'm curious how the VO2 max estimate from various apps match up to reality.

After that I have a second half-marathon scheduled, but I might push that race to next year. My friend was encouraged by his doctor to take his health more seriously, and he is aiming to do a tri-sprint this year. He invited me to join him, so I'm going to do the Hyannis 2 Sprint Triathlon. I'm pretty excited about it. My time off from running before my marathon taught me how nice it is to try out new types of physical activity. A tri-sprint will help me dip my toe into both biking and swimming. Also, there is an 80/20 training plan for tri-sprints that has a cool structure to it:

• running workouts are HR based
• biking workouts are power based
• swimming workouts are pace based

It sounds like a lot of new fun things to learn about!

Then when winter comes I'm looking forward to having a period where lifting can be my primary focus.

And for next season? I kind of want to try a 10K and a 5K as primary races rather than supporting races. That way I will have run the full breath of race distances so I can experience them all. Long term my goal is health running is a significant part of that, but you can also run too much and sacrifice other important contributors to good health.

I shouldn't plan too far out though because I could always have another blender related accident that leads to another epiphany.