A Whole New World

Wow – I haven’t been here to write anything since February. A whole lot has changed in the last three months. Most notably, due to COVID-19, all of my Ragnar relays have been cancelled up through to the end of August (so far). Therefore, I will not be getting the Immortal Medal in 2020. I plan to make another run in 2021 if it is safe to travel, gather in large groups, and live in a van with five other people for a weekend.

On a happier note, I received a charity bib to run the Boston Marathon. But of course that has been postponed to September. I’m hopeful that it will go ahead as planned on the new date, but I can’t deny that there is a strong possibility that it could be cancelled outright.

My plan for Boston was to squeeze in my first marathon before I turned 40 near the end of April. When the race was postponed, I decided to not waste all of my training. I ran my own personal pandemic marathon on April 19th instead.

I mapped out a 26.2 mile route around town that started and ended near my place. I even included a brutal hill around 20 miles into the run to simulate a Heartbreak Hill moment. Somehow, I managed to PR that particular hill climb. I was shooting to run it in 4:40 - So, I am very happy with my final result.

My girlfriend drove along the course to serve as my race-day pit crew. I also had many friends and neighbors all along my route providing some socially distant cheering and motivation. They made signs and everything! Their support really was invaluable, and I don’t think I could have run as well as I did without all of them. There may have been some socially distant responsible day drinking in my front yard shortly after I finished running.

Halfway through the run and looking strong!

The first half of this marathon was the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp Virtual Half Marathon, which Camp set up for all of their charity Boston runners. I am waiting to receive what looks to be a pretty sweet-looking medal from that.

One downside to running your own marathon in your neighborhood is that you don’t get a finishers medal…. That is, unless you find someone on Etsy who sells medals that you can add custom artwork to, and you happen to know a talented artist who can craft said artwork.

Yeah…. I got a medal for myself. It is absolutely amazing!

The “Big Cheese” thing is related to my running the Ragnar Leg in the Great Midwest Ragnar last year. You get a special “Big Cheese” medal for doing that leg. I also an irresponsible amount of cheese that weekend…. We were in Wisconsin, I didn’t have a choice.

Yet Another Change in Plans

It appears that the Napa Valley race has been changed to a sprint and moved to an earlier point in the year.

I have now made The Bourbon Chase the final race in my schedule and added the Appalachians race pack into my plan. Hopefully, this will be the last major change to the schedule.

Magnets!!!

I received my magnets for tagging vans in the road race! Keep an eye out for them at any of my listed races! If you were tagged with one, I would love to hear from you in the comments section or via email.

I really hope that the magnets can attract more attention to the website and to Camp in general. Most importantly, I hope that they can help us get some donations to help send kids to Camp. I encourage you to post pictures of your magnets to social media and let people know about the website and what we are doing.

More Race Updates

I have tentatively agreed to run The Bourbon Chase with a team registered by Randall Ryan Sr, the person who has earned the most immortal medals ever! I am excited about having the opportunity to run with him and his team.

To make room for this race, I have dropped the Appalachians trail race from my schedule.

There is a chance that this race could conflict with the Napa race. If so, I will drop it from the plan and reinstate Appalachians.

I have also officially registered my team for Trail New Jersey (the race formerly known as Wawayanda). I will be joined by a few runners from camp and several of my Fast and the Fouriers friends.

Race Updates

So, remember when I said that I was dropping the Great Midwest race to run Niagara?

Well, someone from my So Cal team registered for Great Midwest and asked me to join them. So, I did! That means I will run three Ragnar relays in May. It’s probably a terrible idea, and when I’m exhausted and running my final leg into Niagara Falls, I will only have myself to blame.

Speaking of joining other races — Someone from my So Cal & Great Midwest crew also registered for the Minnesota road Ragnar. I joined them too! Doing so has resulted in me dropping Richmond from my schedule for now. Since I prefer road running, that is probably a good thing.

About a month and a half our from the first race! This is getting all the more real…

Big Developments in Race Plan

After much debate, it appears that the powers that be at Ragnar have decided to allow international races to count towards connector medals in general and the Immortal Medal specifically!

Therefore, I have added the Niagara race to my schedule — I get to run back in Canada and it is relatively close to Massachusetts. Plus, running along the lake and finishing right at Niagara Falls sounds like something I can’t pass up.

As a result of adding Niagara, I have dropped Great Midwest from my plan. Doing that race would mean running three weekends in May. That might be a little much.

Also, I have officially decided to make Napa Valley my final race (keeping Tennessee as a back-up race in case anything falls through with any other race).

Otherwise, planning and registering teams continues…. The logistics of this whole endeavor might be the hardest part.

Sharing a Little Something to Brighten Your Day

So, my dad started off the donations for this whole thing with enough money to send one kid to Camp. He’s awesome like that.

The other day, he received the following thank-you card in the mail from a camper mom! It absolutely made his day!

Every philanthropic and community-focused bone in my body is a direct result of the influence of my parents, who gave selflessly for 40+ years to many causes in my small home town. It makes me very happy to have had dad make a donation and to see that he got this awesome card in return.

You too can feel some of this happiness by clicking the Donate button and making a contribution to this little adventure of mine. You don’t have to give enough to send a kid to Camp, but every little bit helps!

First Ever Trail Race

Since I’m going to have to run a few trail Ragnars, which funnily enough include trail running, I figured that I should actually get some trail miles in.

With that in mind, I ran my first ever trail race this past weekend. Aside from stubbing my toe and almost rolling my ankle, it went quite well. The only real issue was the abundance of leaves on the ground, which obscured potentially dangerous footing underneath. Alas, such is life in New England.

Going forward, I’ll be putting more trail running into my training plan, including some late night trails.

A Different Kind of Training

For awhile now, I have felt like I plateaued pace-wise. I just haven’t put in the effort to increase my pace, particularly for longer runs.

Now that I have committed to run all of these relays next year, I figured that I should step up my training. I want to increase my mileage such that running Ragnars two weeks in a row would not destroy me.

When I am not ramping up to a Ragnar or half-marathon, I typically run anywhere from 15-20 miles a week. I definitely want to increase that number by a decent amount.

Last month, I ran Reach the Beach with an ultra-marathon runner who typically runs anywhere from 40-50 hours a week. He suggested increasing my weekly mileage by running to and from work. So, I looked into it and started planning the logistics (running routes, pacing, pre-delivering work clothes to my office, etc).

A couple days ago, I did my first work commute day…. Six miles in the morning and six miles in the evening. It’s like my own little mini-Ragnar (but on a Tuesday and without sleeping in a van). Overall, I kept a reasonable pace (just over 10:00/mile) and didn’t set out to break any 10K PRs. It went rather well, even after doing a bunch of squats and lunges at the gym the day before.

I think that I will keep this up on a weekly or bi-weekly basis as long as the New England weather will allow.

Race #1 Locked In!

Well, that was relatively easy — Apparently, you just hop onto the Ragnar Event page, say you have a van of people, and you find another van with which to form a team.

That’s right, folks! The first race is officially registered. Our crew from Massachusetts will be joining a van of ladies running out of Colorado. Together, we will traverse the 200ish miles from Wickenburg to Mesa in Arizona.

I’ve negotiated running in Van #2 for this race. Mainly, I did this so that I can run the 11+ mile Ragnar Leg. I want to start things off with a bang and jump right in.