"my Boston Half"

FINISHED “MY BOSTON HALF” this morning.
A personal best was recorded for the 13.1mile distance…yay!
I had planned to start at the same time as the elite women were to set off in the Boston Marathon, but I started early, at 7am. I wanted to see them cross the finish line on TV in real time as well as the elite men’s finish.  Also, there is road construction messing up part of the course, and I wanted to pass the spot where back-hoes and cement trucks would be moving in and out of the area before the workers arrived.

The picture (below) was taken from the top of the small hill that leads down to my race ”start” at about 6:59am. I held to the pace I had planned for most of the race, and then picked it up for the last two miles. A full 2 minutes faster than my previous finish over the nearly same course in 2013!  The several training changes that may have contributed to my success were 1) the addition of waking stretches each morning, 2) more MYRTLS + dynamic stretch sessions (at least 4 times/week), 3) foam rolling BEFORE and after long runs, 4) one HIIT session/week and  5) adding down-hills to my hill repeat days.  I feel great (writing this about 3 hours later) afterwards! So far I am sticking to the schedule mapped out for 2016 but do not expect to run a 25K in May. Instead I’ll concentrate on running fun 5K races for the summer.
 
RUN HAPPY!