Finally, I got a chance to test myself out on a long run. We’re in the middle of a nor’easter with heavy rain and heavy winds at 47 degrees F. Perfect weather for this type of run.

I did this along the north county trailway which is an off street paved path going all through Westchester. I did this as an out and back starting at the Briarcliff library and turning around at the Yorktown firehouse.

The path is one of my favorites for this type of run, or any run where measuring pace is important. There are half mile markers along the whole way. For the most part, there are no steep hills like the Rockies, but there are steady inclined and declines that go on for a few miles. I ran this path many time preparing for the NY marathon and I’m pretty sure this was my first time back since.

Starting out, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this but with March being the last month left for hard training I decided to find a comfortable quick pace. After half a mile I checked the garmin and it was a 7:19 pace. I wondered if I’d be able to keep it. Well, my avg pace after 20.22 miles was 7:11. I even had quite a few sub 7:00 splits on the return.

I was quite surprised things felt so good the whole way. It was just a good day for me. First time being able to go out long with good footing and perfect weather. At one point I saw some animals is the near distance and wasn’t able to tell if they were african wild dogs or deer. I’ll assume they were deer.

It was unfortunate though, to see so many trees busted up and still freshly broken from the snowstorm we got at the end of february. You simply couldn’t look anywhere where there were trees without seeing a bunch of broken ones split in half or knocked over. There were even quite a few posted mile makers that were missing. fortunately, there are still the solid white lines on the floor which accompany those missing half mile markers.

I think I’m in better shape for Boston than I realized. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’m in better shape than I was for NY. It’s quite gratifying to know that considering how things have gone the past few months. I think ill try to PR in Boston. Let’s just hope I have a good day on april 19th too. And if not, that’s ok too since I don’t feel I’ve invested so much in my training for this, so no big loss if there’s a mediocre performance that day. I got nothing to lose either way and that’s a great feeling.