Running in Woburn, MA

Last week, Monday, March 7th, thru Friday, the 11th, I was on a business trip in Woburn, MA, north of Boston. I drove up on Sunday and then back home Friday night. From my home to the hotel, I think I took like 4 or 5 turns. As I live just off of Rt 690, I was able to jump right on 690 to 90 all the way to 95. The hotel is about a mile directly off of 95. Talk about easy driving.

Tuesday, I asked some folks, who are from the area, if they knew of any decent place to run after work. Someone suggested running around Spot Pond, in Stoneham, a short drive from my hotel. The weatherman was forecasting the 'typical' winter storm warnings. Since I've been running all winter, I didn't really pay much attention to the warnings. After all, I just drove in from freakin' Syracuse, New York. Home of the lake effect snow! In spite of the dire predictions of the weather forecasters, I decided to run the perimeter of the pond. I was driving over to the Stoneham area as the crap was really starting to hit the fan. As I drove through the storm, I briefly considered heading back to the hotel. But I was determined to get in an outside run and not succumb to the hotel treadmills. As I finally made it to the zoo that is next to the pond and parked in a lot, it was dark.

So here I am, in a strange location, getting dark, and a big storm has rolled in. If you know me, I'm pretty much a big dummy. Most folks would consider the attempt a strike out.

Strange Location? Strike one.

Getting Dark? Strike two.

Fierce wind, blowing snow, ice and freezing rain? Strike three (four, five AND six, by the way)

Most smart people probably wouldn't even have packed their outside running gear and would have planned and ran on the treadmill and therefore wouldn't be in this situation.

Other smart people may have ran about a half a mile or so and, realizing how stupid it was to endure those conditions, turned around, ran back to the car and headed back to the hotel.

Another set of smart people would be able to finish this blog entry with a sentence something like this: "After seeing how quickly the darkness and the storm hit, I got back in the car, drove back to the hotel and did my five pleasant miles on the treadmill watching Entertainment Tonight".

But, like I said, I'm not the brightest tool in the tool shed.

So I took off in the dark, in a strange area, in a bad winter storm and headed out on the sidewalk around the pond. I was dressed appropriately, so everything was going great. I could still distinguish (for the most part) the sidewalk from the road from the grass. Every once in a while, when there were no trees to stop the wind off of the pond, I got a brief taste of how bad it was getting. But based on the direction I was running, the trees and the direction of the wind, I still felt pretty good as I got past the one mile mark and started to get up towards the two mile mark. I ran past an indoor hockey rink and turned to the right. The sidewalk still roughly followed the perimeter of the pond, but with some real estate between the shore and the sidewalk. So, around the two, two and a half mile mark, I was in some residential neighborhoods for the first time in the run. Then I lost the sidewalk and ran right into a crap-load of bushes and small trees. A branch grabbed the fabric of my running jacket and put a nice "L" shaped rip into it at the elbow. Swearing to myself, I crossed the road and continued along on the sidewalk on the other side. Then, when I could see the sidewalk over on the other side, I crossed back over. For some reason, I wanted to be on that side of the road.

As I continued in the residential areas, I went around a bend in the road and saw an interstate highway ahead through the snow. That shook me up a little cuz I didn't expect to see a major highway at that point. I should have driven the route first but in my ignorant excitement to get the run in, I didn't. I also could have studied a map that would have clearly shown me that the highway was right where it belonged. I didn't really want to head down to the highway and under any bridges or exit ramps. I don't know why, the neighborhood seemed nice enough and any gang members would have long ago given up on account of the weather. So, I turned around and followed my path back towards the starting point. I use the term "followed my path" figuratively because, after a couple of steps, I did not see my prints in the snow for the rest of the return trip. The snowfall was too rapid and the wind too fast for any foot prints to remain visible.

The wind. Oh, yea, the wind. Must not forget about the wind. Will not ever forget about that wind. It was strong. No, fierce. Nope. Biblical. That's what it was. It was biblical. As I headed back, the wind was in my face almost constantly. My ears, nose, cheeks, lips, chin and neck were well protected. But notice I didn't mention my eyes. Ever get pelted in the eye with a driving snow flake? How about a driving rain drop? Driving ice particle? Yea, you got that right. It freakin' hurts. I think I sustained about a hundred dents on my eyeballs. And then the eyelashes start to collect the frozen precipitation and coating over with ice. Good news: that protected my eyes from all the crap that the wind was blowing. Bad news: you can't see when your eyelashes are frozen together.

Somehow, running with my eyes mostly closed, I finally made it back to the car and was able to log just over 5 miles during a really bad New England storm. And that was just Tuesday.

On Wednesday evening, the weather was much better. So I hurried back over to the park about an hour earlier than Tuesday. I was so excited to get a daylight/evening run and see the area. I was so excited that I forgot a very important piece of my running equipment. Let’s just say that I have a chafing issue. On two upper body/chest area body parts. And those two parts get rubbed raw if I don’t wear some protection. Wednesday I forgot. But I didn’t find out till later. In the shower. With soap and running water. It stings. Alot. That’s all I got to say about that. So, back to the run. I got to the same parking lot and started out on the same path as Tuesday. When I got to the sidewalk, I knew there was gonna be trouble. The sidewalk was buried in snow from the plows clearing the streets. And where the sidewalk was far enough from the road, it was buried in drifts. After about three quarters of a mile running and walking and digging through the snow, I had enough. I turned around and went back to the car and drove back to the hotel. But I just couldn’t bring myself to go inside and run on those damn treadmills. Pride is an ugly characteristic, isn’t it? Combine that with stupid and ya got yourself a wicked combo.

When I got back to the hotel, I decided to see what I could do in the surrounding area. So, I knocked off three and a half miles in the hotel parking lot and the parking lots of the neighboring businesses. It wasn’t as bad as running on the treadmill, but it did suck. Each time I came around a corner of a building, I half expected to see the police with their guns drawn, yelling at me to hit the deck. But, thankfully, that never happened.

So, Thursday rolls around. I’m on the hook for a seven miler. I’m thinking of the experiences of the previous two days. And I’m thinking that the running gods are really gunning for me and my outside runs. So I do it. I give in. I go over to the dark side. The treadmills. Yep, I know. It’s a sad thing. But, I figure that I’ve tempted the fates too often over the past several days. So I put on my running shorts and shirt, grab a water bottle, ride the elevator down to the gym and hop on the open treadmill. The other two were taken by a man and a women, who where not together.

I started on a walking pace and gradually built up the speed until I was running at a comfortable pace. I was about two tenths of a mile into the run when all three treadmills powered off. WTF?!?!?!? I can’t buy a freakin’ run. What do I have to do to get in a good run? I walked over to the front desk and tell them the power is out. He tells me it will be 15 to 20 minutes for the ‘engineer’ to reset a circuit breaker. I almost crapped my pants when I heard that it takes that long for an alleged engineer to reset a circuit breaker. Hell, my kids could do that in my home in about 15 to 20 seconds. Long story short: I waited till the power came back, jumped back on my mill and knocked out the 7 miles. Running the parking lots would have been better.

Now I’m back in town and back in the familiar routine of running at lunch on the weekdays and around my home on the weekends. Everything is progressing on the training for Buffalo. I’m up to 16 miles on my long run but I still don’t feel like I have the eating and drinking figured out. I tried gels (again) and figs. I thought that was gonna work. But after thirteen or fourteen miles, I wasn’t feeling all that great. I’ll just have to keep at it and see what I see.

I'll meet you further on up the road.