Nova Scotia had a huge day on Marathon Monday. Huge. Actually, to be more specific, Cliff’s training group (tentatively called Cliff’s Antiques) had a huge day at Boston. How’s this for huge:
Denise Robson (2:43:16) – 1st Masters (40+) woman, which carries a purse of $10,000; 24th woman overall; first Canadian woman; 8th Canadian overall.
Rami Bardeesy (2:27:22) – 3rd Masters men, which carries a purse of $2,500; 47th overall; 45th male overall; first Canadian overall.
Leah Jabbour (2:59:48) – 76th woman overall; 5th Canadian woman.
Rami and Leah ran PB times, while Denise ran her fastest Boston. It was amazing to witness their journeys all through the winter and spring. I can’t wait to hear all their stories.
But just as Boston ends, another RNS race gears up. This Sunday is the Greenwood 10k, the first Timex series race on the calendar. My own training has kind of stunk over the past few weeks. The long hours of editing, the poor eating, and the lack of full sleeps has taken some of the jump out of my legs. On Saturday, we were doing 5x1mile @ 5:30/mile (3:25/km), and I just couldn’t keep up. By the end of each interval, I was (as they say) “going to face” – you know, when you’re working so hard that your face gets all screwed up – that’s going to face, and it means you’re in trouble.
But I’m not going to worry too much about it. My goal for the race is “simply” to run under 36min, so I “only” need to average 3:35/km (about 5:45/mile). Not too long ago that was a solid 5k race pace for me, so we’ll see if I can actually pull it off. From what I hear, the course only has one real hill, but the conditions will have to be good if I’m going to knock 30s off my PB.
Happy trails – hope to have some stories to share soon that aren’t about me!
