Aire Blog

It’s Tuesday morning after race day and Jen and I are about to head out for a little brunch before making our way to the airport. If you’ve seen the twitter or FB feeds you already know yesterday was a tough day for me. I’ve been fighting the same lower back issues for about 9 months now and the flight over on Saturday saw me waking up with a serious pinched nerve (for lack of better terminology) on the lower left very similar to what I experienced coming home from Seattle over the holidays. Having been through it before I had a feeling what was in store. I was able to run but it was pretty painful from the first step. I ran a little mantra over and over in my head all day to try and keep the focus on the stride and not my back – “light, easy, smooth…what the hands do the feet do”. It helped to keep me together better than expected for quite some time. Coming into Boston I was pretty excited because I had been able to put together a solid 7 weeks of running and felt like I was striding better than ever thanks to the work Adam and Caitlin have been doing on me. I felt that on a good day I was in form to go somewhere between 3:12 and 3:18. Waking up Monday morning my focus shifted to making sure I finished the race ….period. That being said I moved through the first 10K in about 46 min and the half at 1:40 with a vague shot of 3:20 or better still lingering in my head. My form really started to degrade from their on in. I believe my last two 10 segments were 52 min and 57 min. That last 3 miles was the most painful of any race for me yet, including Ironman. Hopefully Adam and Caitlin can work some magic on me and get me back up and running (literally) soon. Half Ironman and Ironman are going to get here fast.
That aside Boston is always a great place to visit. We had a fantastic pre race dinner at Sportello, a little diner style restaurant with a fairly high concept menu that delivered. Wine and cocktails before hand were at Drink below in the basement. A great spot with a focus on old school, hand made cocktails. Post race dinner was at Eastern Standard, sort of a Ocean Aire/steak house kind of joint which was bustling with post race activity. I was adventurous and tried bone marrow for the first time. Reminded me a lot of escargot…..
I will keep you posted on the recovery progress in the near term. Thanks to everyone for their support and good wishes.