Last Long Run before the Marathon

I have officially begun to taper for the marathon, so today was the last endurance run for a while. I did 160 minutes for a 19-miler. This is not my best effort, but fine, it is good enough.

It was warmer than usual, so it was a good day to make a hydration plan: It turns out that you can over as well as under hydrate. So what you do is weigh yourself before and after a run to get a fix on your water usage. I lost 4 lbs over the course of 160 minutes, which means I should consume 8 oz of fluid every 20 minutes. This is not practical while running a marathon, but at least I don't have to worry about over-hydration.

This week I also got my marathon # and there is some way of using that to have progress texts sent to your phone. I am 9899--yeah! I just made it under the 5-digits. It turns out that your # directly corresponds to your qualifying position. Seems a bit Darwinian to me, but that is how they run it. It is a little daunting; my last marathon only had around 2,000 entrants, this one has about 10,000 people who are all faster than me! Yikes!

Update: I reviewed the numbers and there are 34 times as many entrants to the Boston Marathon who are faster than I am--as compared to the 288 people who beat me in the Bay State Marathon. There are more than 8-fold more fast runners than the total finishers from the Bay State! It is going to be a zoo.

Playing a teacher--A swan song and a debut

Ray Walston was in a ton of motion pictures and television before he played the teacher, Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). But that role was the first and only memorable one for me until fairly recently, when I saw him on a classic channel in Kiss Me, Stupid with Dean Martin and Kim Novak (1964). He was insane and insanely funny in his role as Orville Jeremiah Spooner--piano teacher, aspiring songwriter and jealous husband of an improbably beautiful wife. He was in lots of stuff after playing Mr. Hand, but it was this role that stuck in my mind and I suspect, in the minds of people from my generation. Meanwhile, around the same time (1986) a man mostly known as an economist and author would play a small role as a teacher and it would launch his career in acting.

Update: According to the Oracle...

Ray Walston was in House Arrest (1996) with Ben Stein (I)

Where is your fiscal restraint now Moses?

The Foundry

A Marathon of Chores

While I was wasting the day on a long run and the just as long recovery period, my wife did and enormous amount of cooking...

First she went shopping, then she made:

• A huge batch of meatballs
• A pork roast plus roasted root vegetables
• Taco meat for another meal
• Some kind of raspberry bar dessert thing
• A few other things I can't remember now

Reminds me of those old Geritol commercials. I think I'll keep her!

Sunday Marathon Training

I just never hit my stride today. I pushed a little bit on the first nine miles and hit that mark 3 minutes late. I figured this was okay since last time I ran it in the opposite direction and lost 5 minutes in that stretch. Of course that was the last 9 miles of 19 rather than the first, so it probably wasn't okay after-all.

Today was supposed to be warm and it was pretty nice while the sun was out, but when the clouds came it became downright chilly. This is what happened when I made my turn at the 9 mile point. I didn't have the energy, or perhaps the will, to pick-up the pace to a level where I would be warm. So the rest of the run was more of an 'endure the unpleasantness of it' than 'push hard and make a good training of it' kind of thing.

At around the 18.5 mile point I even stopped and walked the rest. My time at that point was about 2:42, while the last couple of times I did it in 2:37 for the whole thing.

I will probably do the thing one more time before the Boston marathon and then begin to taper-off after that. It would be nice if the final run had a decent time as this would be a bit of a confidence-booster for me.

The 9-mile point is where I make a Right turn from Lowell Road onto Barretts Mill Road down at the South end of the map.