Thursday night I attended my first weekly Crossroads run. I had been working in Westborough in the afternoon and with traffic I was not able to make it to the pub until about 20 minutes after the group had left for various runs. I made a quiet graceful entrance into Crossroads literally falling up the stairs when I misplaced my footing on the first step. Great start to the night, but no injuries.
After dusting myself off, I dropped off my stuff upstairs and I took off for a run around the river and crossed paths with some of the other groups. I seemed to have run my river loop counter to the other groups. It was windy and I wanted to run the 1st half of the loop into the wind and save the tail wind for the run back. I thought this would keep me from running to large of a loop out only to find I couldn’t finish it with the wind. This strategy worked well for me, but I did even up with some wind burn on my face L. I ran the loop from the Mass Ave Bridge to the J.F.K Street bridge and then a few blocks out and back down Beacon St. As I have done all of my training to date on a treadmill, I wasn’t sure how well I was running and I didn’t have a sense of how far I ran.
After arriving back at Crossroads, wary of that first step on the way upstairs, I still managed to stumble a little, but didn’t face plant this time thankfully since there were witnesses this time around (I think the padded carpet does not like me). Upstairs I talked to a few DFMC team mates I had met previously as well as talking to Steph who I had only spoken to previously through our respective blogs. It was great to finally meet in person as Steph is also on her 5th DFMC team but like me had not been much involved with the DFMC group runs / meetings before, so we are experienced rookies in some ways. I enjoyed a beer along with the free pizza provided by the pub. I could certainly get used to this.
Curious about my run, I asked Tyler if he knew off hand how far that river loop was and he had indicated about 6 miles. I was pretty excited about that . . . apparently I wasn’t being as pokey as I thought. I thought the loop was about 4 -4.5 miles. I then repaid Tyler for his information by mistaking his beer for mine when I put them next to eachother . . .whoops my graceful streak of the evening continued. Definitely have to buy his drink next week!
When I got home I wanted to verify my mileage on some of the online Charles River Maps. Tyler was pretty close, the data I saw indicated the loop is 5.6 miles. It took a bit of hard work to figure that out since the Mass Ave bridge is apparently called the Harvard bridge even though it leads to MIT and is several miles from Harvard . . .go figure. With the out and back section I ran along Beacon Street my run totaled 6.5 miles. My longest run of the season . . .not bad for my first Crossroads run! I’m glad I was able to run this far comfortably so early in the training season. It bodes well for when much of the group will start taking the T out to Woodland and running the last 9 miles of the marathon course back to the pub after the winter holidays. Some runners tackled the hills last night, but I’m planning on waiting to reintroduce myself to the “Newton Flats” on January 7th.
After arriving back at Crossroads, wary of that first step on the way upstairs, I still managed to stumble a little, but didn’t face plant this time thankfully since there were witnesses this time around (I think the padded carpet does not like me). Upstairs I talked to a few DFMC team mates I had met previously as well as talking to Steph who I had only spoken to previously through our respective blogs. It was great to finally meet in person as Steph is also on her 5th DFMC team but like me had not been much involved with the DFMC group runs / meetings before, so we are experienced rookies in some ways. I enjoyed a beer along with the free pizza provided by the pub. I could certainly get used to this.
Curious about my run, I asked Tyler if he knew off hand how far that river loop was and he had indicated about 6 miles. I was pretty excited about that . . . apparently I wasn’t being as pokey as I thought. I thought the loop was about 4 -4.5 miles. I then repaid Tyler for his information by mistaking his beer for mine when I put them next to eachother . . .whoops my graceful streak of the evening continued. Definitely have to buy his drink next week!
When I got home I wanted to verify my mileage on some of the online Charles River Maps. Tyler was pretty close, the data I saw indicated the loop is 5.6 miles. It took a bit of hard work to figure that out since the Mass Ave bridge is apparently called the Harvard bridge even though it leads to MIT and is several miles from Harvard . . .go figure. With the out and back section I ran along Beacon Street my run totaled 6.5 miles. My longest run of the season . . .not bad for my first Crossroads run! I’m glad I was able to run this far comfortably so early in the training season. It bodes well for when much of the group will start taking the T out to Woodland and running the last 9 miles of the marathon course back to the pub after the winter holidays. Some runners tackled the hills last night, but I’m planning on waiting to reintroduce myself to the “Newton Flats” on January 7th.
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