VS. the Road: What I've Been Doing

It's been a while since I've written on the blog. Riley has been picking up my slack like a champ. I wanted to check in and let you know how training is going and how a few of the races I've done were.

First, this summer was pretty rough fro training. I felt like if I was not injured then I was sick, but that did not keep me from doing some running throughout the summer. I did do enough training to feel prepared for The Hartford Marathon, which was the goal when this blog was started. As part of the training, I have run my furthest distance which was about 15 miles. In my preparation for the marathon, I have learned that while 20 mile long runs may be productive, they are not completely necessary. If you can complete a 16 mile run heading into the marathon you should be okay. this is an opinion that was shared in more than a few articles.

I've, also, managed to get in some fun races as well. Riley wrote the review for the Harvard Pilgrim Finish at the 50 so I won''t go into too much detail about that. I will say that it was an awesome event and was slightly more difficult than when I ran it last year.

The week before the Finish at the 50 race, I ran the Warrior Dash in Barre, MA with my friends Nick and Danielle. This was a 5k obstacle race. All in all, I think it was a pretty fun race to run too. As far as obstacle races go, it was not the most difficult one that I've run. I'll get to that one in a minute. It was, however, challenging enough where someone with experience running them may still have a challenge, but it is not too daunting for new runners. Some of the obstacles were a barbwire crawl, cargo net climb, wall climb, and up & overs. One of the coolest things about it is that the finisher's medal doubles as a bottle opener.

The Finisher's Medal

Posing after the Warrior Dash

On September 7th I ran the Super Spartan Race in Vernon, NJ. This race was hardest race I've ever done. It is 8+ miles and 15+ obstacles. The terrain was probably the biggest obstacle of the entire race. It was on a ski resort. For about the first two miles we had to go up the mountain. this was brutal. The obstacles were many of the usual ones including a barbwire crawl, up and overs, rope climb, sand bag carry, and spear toss. One of the unique twists was that their cargo net was a vertical cargo net as opposed to the angled ones that make a pyramid. This was the biggest test of will I have done to date. The sense of accomplishment after was indescribable.