Move out to the coastline, the beaches say you'll be fine

Earlier today, Julie and I signed up for yet another race: The Seacoast Half Marathon in Portsmouth, NH. The race is November 9th -- just 57 days away. I think the best part of this is that we signed up together even though Julie was sitting in Downtown Crossing and I was in Cambridge. Actually, the best part of this is that we're going to PORTSMOUTH! I love this town. I will love running along the seacoast of New Hampshire. I'm not sure if this will affect my training plans (other than, uh, running the wrong training schedule has), but I'm thoroughly excited.

15 steps, then a sheer drop

Last night, I went to bed expecting to feel positively abominable this morning. Positively atrocious. So I stretched it out and prepared my mind for the worst. I woke up at 10 a.m. feeling just fine. Well, fine except for the fact that I had just endured a painfully realistic dream that one of my favorite guitarists died (turns out he's still alive and well). Absolutely no part of my body was sore. Not my legs, my arms, my neck, my anything.

This came as a shock because Cait and I worked it pretty hard last night. We ran from Northeastern, up Huntington Avenue and then up Massachusetts Avenue to the Mass Ave bridge where we stretched it out. Despite the brevity of this warm up, my heart rate was still all over the place. I blame the music. Remind me in the future to create a playlist with consistent upbeat jams. We then polished off a run to and from Harvard that clocked in at just under 8 miles total. This is the longest run I have done in quite some time and I paced us for such. I spaced out pretty hard to all of "Kid A" - OK, I skipped "Morning Bell," "Treefingers" and "How to Disappear Completely" - then tapped into the beginning of "In Rainbows." Maybe it's strange that I listen to Radiohead while running, but their music is exactly what I want to hear always so it only makes sense. And "Kid A" has this hypnotizing quality that makes it well-suited for longer runs. It was lovely.

And none of this is to say that I was not exhausted after the run. I certainly was. Cait and I downed some Vitamin Water like it was Jesus, while discussing our workout plan for the week. My legs felt like lead, but most of me was pretty excited to get my exercise on really hard over the next six days. Today is a rest day, despite both of us feeling totally fine after last night. Tomorrow we're going to do a shorter, quicker run and a lot of track exercises. Then I'm going to get up bright and early to see what kind of registration I can do on the marathon's website. I'm not sure if Wednesday's registration is strictly for qualified runners or if it includes those partaking in charity. Regardless, the applications for most of the charities will be released on or around that day so that should start getting exciting.

In other running news, Cait and I are hoping to partake in Northeastern's first "Big Dog 5K" along the Esplanade on September 20. I don't plan to be remotely competetive, since I'm sure there are tons of runners who have been running a lot more frequently and for a lot longer than I have, but I think it should be fun. It's considerably shorter than I'm used to running, which could be interesting or terrible. We'll see.

drove through ghosts to get here

The 8 mile run last night felt surprisingly good. In all honesty, I was expecting a struggle to make it any mile past mile number 4, but the run felt easy. Julie and I met up on campus, although there was some meet up location confusion. I should also mention that we met up for our run after 10 p.m. On a Sunday night. That's dedication right there.

We ran up to the Mass Ave bridge, which was about a mile out from out starting point and stopped to stretch it out. I always feel terrible while running the first mile. I had started getting into what I call the "warm zone." It's the point at which I finally feel like a runner and find my rhythm because my muscles are warm and loose. Once I got to that point last night, I went into autopilot mode and just kept the same pace the entire run. I felt like a running machine.

For the duration of the run, I listened to 65daysofstatic's One Time for All Time. I don't what it is about 65, but whenever I listen to them, my focus increases by a factor of at least 5. I usually listen to something upbeat (i.e. Girl Talk, almost exclusively), but I knew I needed to pace myself for this run. Turns out I chose correctly.

The last surprising thing about this run is that I'm not sore this morning. I have no doubt I will feel it tomorrow morning though. It's always the day after the day after.