April 16, 2010
1000 Miles to Boylston Street
3 days to go…
Its go time! Well, go to Boston time. We leave today. Of course, I will be posting up until race time with more thoughts and live on the scene photos from Boston, the expo, and more. But we have a little more business to attend to here first. Your last graph in the series. Ready? All that training since January 1st shown a big lump representing the fitness level that I have achieved.
I zoomed out so you can see how things are trending. The darker purple area represents the fitness level. You can see that its starting to drop off as the days go on. I am not working as hard daily hence the drop because of the tapering effect. The goal of this was to produce a positive training stress balance. For this race, I just need to shoot up into positive territory. For Leadville, I will want to be living in positive error for a week in advance. The raw numbers:
Today: CTL = 106 / ATL = 108 / TSB = -2
Race Morning: TSB = 12
The progression to that 12 is -2 today, 3 tomorrow, then 8, then 12. I don’t feel totally rested right now. Maybe a little sluggish — like you feel when you need to go get an easy run in to loosen up. But I hope by Monday I am feeling like I am ready to go.
Boylston Street is where the finish line is for the race. Coincidentally, I will pass a milestone for the year as I turn on to that famous road during the race. 1000 miles for the year! I have never hit this mark so early on the calendar. I think I got there in July last year. Pretty nice improvement. That had me thinking…what if I had run from somewhere further west straight to this location. How far back would I have started? An easy address to pop in and check was where I grew up and the home of my parents. So Fort Wayne, Indiana to Boston’s Boylston Street:
Google maps says 845 miles in 13 hours 39 minutes. Ah, a little shy. But that’s what my parents are in the middle of driving today. To get the 1000, its more like running Chicago to Boston.
As for my time to run the route of 1000 miles, it totals 6 days, 7 hours, and 23 minutes — plus about 3 more hours to go on Monday! The finish line is in sight.
From the poll, the showdown winner. Of course, this is my blog so I have a biased audience.
