Week Three Training Wrap-Up
It’s been a pretty good week overall. Like last week, I went gentle and long, completing my mileage in three longish runs. Fortunately, this has been a gorgeous week in New York, with temperatures in the warm, but not hot, range and humidities down. And, like last week, my final run of the week took me back to the Durand-Eastman Park in Irondequoit, which always feels good to me.
Lake Ontario looking across Irondequoit Bay from Durand-Eastman Park
Week Two Training Wrap-Up
After running hard at the Boilermaker, I figured I would start the week gently, so I didn’t run run until Wednesday. Then I went long and slow on a very humid Saturday–one of my favorite routes through Durand-Eastman Park and Arboretum in Irondequoit–and made up the rest of my 20 miles on an even more humid Sunday. Nice and easy does it this week. There’s lots of hard work ahead. Continue reading
At the end of the Vermont City Marathon, I had one package of Chocolate Outrage GU left in my fanny pack. It stayed there for a couple of weeks until, one morning, Tessa decided to head out for a bicycle ride. As she thought she would be out for a while, I offered her the GU, which she readily accepted and stashed in the frame bag on her bike.
And there it stayed until the morning of the Boilermaker. Almost as an afterthought, as we were getting in the car to leave for the race, I asked her if she still had it. She did, so I got it out of her bag and put it back in my fanny pack. Though I didn’t think I’d need it, I thought I would bring it just in case.
In the car on the way, Team Love Nugget (in the form of my daughters Carolyn and Hannah) jokingly started to chastise me once again about the fanny pack. “It’s just not cool, Dad,” they repeated over and over again, to the point that I decided I would go minimal for the race, and ditch the pack, my phone, my water bottle–the whole kit and kaboodle.
But as they dropped me off at the start line, I grabbed the gel packet from my pack and stuffed it in my pocket.
Just in case. Continue reading
Week One Training Wrap-Up
Only one week in, and already I’m going off script! But there’s a method to my madness. Continue reading
What does semper currens mean?
On October 25, I will be running in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC. This will be my seventh marathon and the biggest competitive marathon I have run to date. It will also be the fourth of my annual fall marathon fundraisers for Team Fox, the grassroots fundraising program of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
To commemorate the occasion, I thought I would do something special and a little different, so I came up with the idea of writing a series of running blogs that would chronicle the events leading up to the big day as well as the run itself. The name is a play on the Marine Corps motto semper fidelis, Latin for “always faithful.” Basically, semper currens means “always running,” which is how I feel when I am undergoing another 16-week, 800-mile-plus training program.
What is Semper Currens?
Simply put, this blog will be a virtual trainer that consists of a weekly progress report, recapping the events of the previous week and preparing for the week ahead. Each week, there will also be an additional feature where I might share advice, talk about gear, discuss general marathon training strategy or the Marine Corps Marathon in particular. Each blog with end with an update on my fundraising efforts for Team Fox, and the whole series will culminate with a detailed (possibly even a visual) account of running the Marine Corps Marathon.
But Semper Currens is a virtual trainer with a twist.
I was late getting to the start line. Very late. Tables and chairs had already been stacked up underneath tents. The last empty gel packets and banana peels had been picked up and thrown into the garbage bags, which were already at the curbside ready for the cleaning crew to pick up. There were still a couple of course stewards milling around, though. Yes, I could run, they said, but the course would be closing soon.
Very quickly, the light started to go and dusk started to set in. At the side of the road, a crying woman, who had apparently lost her dog down a hole, implored me to stop and help, which of course I did. But by the time the dog came out, it was night.
I pressed on, now in total darkness, knowing that the course was closed and wondering whether I would ever get to the finish line. Continue reading
Last night, I dreamed that a skinny Englishman with long, lank hair, nerd glasses and an awkward stage presence took every riff I ever loved from every band I worshipped as a teenager and seamlessly wove them together into an evening of extraordinary power and beauty, leaving me artistically awestruck and emotionally exhausted without once feeling nostalgic, old or musically irrelevant
When I woke up, I realized I had just seen Steven Wilson, one of the greatest musical bloody geniuses of our time.
If Montgomery Burns designed a half marathon course, I imagine it would look a little like the Flower City Half Marathon: two nasty hills a little past the halfway point with a short section of cobblestones on the second to mess with runners’ footfalls, all ironically set against the backdrop of a cemetery with a hospital just outside the graveyard exit to rub it in.
Bruce Pegg 