Two Boston (about 4 hours one way) flip/flops Monday and today, with probably at least one more in the offing is making this old boy feel rather old, but they are being done for the right reasons. So I will smile, suck it up and do what I can. 🙂

It does mean that I have to really think about what gives and on Monday, by the time I got home, I was toast and didn’t even think about running. Today, I wanted to get a run in and knew if I waited until I got home that I wouldn’t run again, so I planned to run Back Cove in Portland on the way home.

This is one of my all-time favorite runs and one that I look forward to doing whenever I can. I figured that by that time I would be pretty crispy and ready to get out of the Transit after driving for around 7 hours.

Once I got down to Boston, I even thought about running along the Charles River (another of my all-time favorite places), but parking is so difficult and I was stressing about figuring out how to get out of there, I didn’t even try to find someplace to park and got to hell out of Boston.

Even though traffic in Boston wasn’t totally terrible today, it was still bad enough that I hate dealing with it anymore. Getting out of the city again was a pain, so I was ready for a run, but it would have to wait until I got up North again.

By the time I got back up to Portland, I was definitely ready for a run.

I was already dressed for running and just had to stow my pants and change my shoes and was ready to go.

Running Log

Day: Tuesday

Date: 9/26/19

Time of Day: 3:16 PM

Time of Run: 30:38

Distance: 3.61

Pace: 8:30

Course: Back Cove Loop

Location: Portland, ME

Weather: Overcast, 68*F, Humidity 79%, Wind 7 mph – South,

Shoes Worn: Altra Impulse

Variables that impacted the run: Tired and stressed from Boston flip/flop

Comments: The run itself was pretty routine, I wasn’t going for any course records, this was simply a get the stress out kind of run. There was a bit of breeze coming back from the bridge to the parking lot, with a few sprinkles, but it was a lot cooler than it was earlier in the day, so I was thankful for that.

How did this run move me towards my goal(s)?

I ran, when I easily could have bagged the run, so that in itself was a big deal. Running an 8:30 pace under these circumstances was pretty encouraging and I even copped a bunch of 3rd best personal Strava segments, without trying to do that.

Other Comments:

This one of those TMI things, but it one of those things that happen to us runners – all too often. Speaking of ready to go, before I ran I had to walk down to one of the blue boxes and as I walking down the Port-a-Potty clean-up crew showed up to clean. I might have been hopping around a little, when I asked if I could use one and they asked 1 or 2, when I replied 1 they said the one on the right. Yeah, I know – TMI, but I thought you might understand why I chuckled.

The rest of the drive home (another hour was in the pouring rain), was heavy traffic until Brunswick then it thinned out and I was able to relax a little while driving. I do know that I was happy to get home.

I had thought about racing this weekend, but with all these trips to Boston and back and the reasons for it, I am not in the best space mentally to run a hard 5K right now, so I probably will skip it.