8/20 = 8.20 miles
COVID-19, “The Rona Era”
Finally Friday!! Thursday was my rest day and today I’m ready to run. It’s a foggy morning. This morning, I got up early because I thought about where I was going to run last night. I planned and mapped out my Friday run last night. That is how much I was thinking about running for this morning. My plan was to park across the street from the gardens. I would run by bunker hill community college, then run adjacent to the Zakim bridge, through cambridge port to the Museum of Science, then pick up the Charles Esplanade route on the Cambridge side and then cross over to the Boston side. That would make for a good 6 miler. Thou, today, I want to push myself to do 7 miles. I think I’m ready to see how my body will react to the extra mile.
When I drove to the Boston Gardens, there are multiple side streets across from it. I had to find the right street in which there was no towing and I wouldn’t have to worrying about getting a ticket or towed. That took a couple of extra minutes longer than I would have liked but I found a street.
In my rush of losing time to find parking I didn’t do a full stretch. Actually I didn’t stretch, I walked for a bit to the BOS heart with wings mural before I started running. Just when I started to run, it started to sprinkle a little bit.
At 5:45a.m. this side of the city is busy with folks going to work. The gardens is right next to the T and commuter rail, I saw a lot of that traffic.
Running along the Charles is always busy with runners and bike riders. I was trying to find my pace and groove in the foggy and muggy of the morning. When I hit the 3 mile mark, it was 6:20 a.m. I made the call to run across the BU bridge instead of crossing further down at the central street bridge because of time and to make my 7 mile goal.
Crossing the BU bridge is an awesome combination of bridge, boat, and train, all at one point. As I turned up to run on the bridge, I saw many of the runners, mostly men running across the bridge.
I crossed over the bridge, ran on BU’s campus before running on steps that lead to the Boston side of the Esplande. I ran for a bit before I stopped to take a picture of the stuff toy dog that was just hanging out by itself. So odd.
I continued with my run. Around mile 5 is when I saw my stalkers. I saw some of them on the BU bridge, then I saw the rest hanging out in the water.
This is when the rain started to come down again and it didn’t stop. I’m glad I was wearing my hat. While running I realized that this was going to be more than 7 miles because of where I parked. It was actually an 8 mile run which I wasn’t planning on. I did 8 miles. Then I had to run up and down the street for a while to get 8.20 miles for 8/20. This was a nice surprise. Around mile 7 I started to pick back up stream. If I wasn’t pressed for time and had a plan route, I could have done ten.
My body was getting tight and wasn’t used to this. The rain didn’t help the situation either. It’s mandatory that I stretch first before running.
This was how I started my Friday a.m.
8.20 miles, 1:30:06; 10:59 ave pace
Mile 1: 10:59
Mile 2: 10:36
Mile 3: 10:24
Mile 4: 11:31
Mile 5: 10:14
Mile 6: 10:11
Mile 7: 12:07 - walk and run
Mile 8:10:52
