Heading in to the BOSTON MARATHON
So tomorrow, I’ll leave sunny San Diego to race the famous Boston Marathon on Monday April 16th. I have mixed feelings heading into it. Of course, I’m super excited to be participating in such a wonderful, historic and iconic event. But I hate to admit, I haven’t prepared as well as I’d like.
It’s a sad excuse, but I’ve been working my full-time job and my part-time job a lot the last two months. This has left very little free time to train.
I am hoping that my ultramarathon training will carry me for this race. I have run a couple very hard and very fast 22 milers over the last few weeks. I’ve done three very high quality, high intensity track workouts in the last four weeks. Other than that, my training has consisted of my usual seven and 12 mile loops albeit at very high effort. Of course I’ve been doing my strength training which gets my heart rate up super high.
Now that I am four days out from the race, I am focusing on sharpening my mind. There’s nothing I can do to become more physically fit. It’s all mental now baby. Oh. And of course I’m trying to drop weight as much as possible. I know it’s a good sign when people at work have asked me “Hey, Dr. Reinbolt, have you lost weight?”
Anytime I do a big race, I set three goals: bronze medal, silver medal and gold medal. For me at Boston these equate to times of 3:10, 3:05 and 3 hours flat respectively. I’m always happy attaining any “medal performance” but of course the expectation is that I win GOLD! However the weather is supposed to be really cold and rainy on Monday. And, it’s a hilly course. Most people don’t set their personal record at this race. Finally, I’ve never done this race before so I don’t know the course. Those challenges are surmountable though.
I’ll have a post about my Boston experience next week. If you want to follow my progress during the race, I think you have to download the BAA/Boston Marathon app and look for runner tracking. My race number is 8427.
