Of Fenway and Fartleks

We’ve survived the Boston portion of the vacation, or perhaps more accurately Boston has survived the Southerner invasion. The highlights of the Boston stop were the Duck-boat Tour, where we had a genuinely funny and engaging guide rather than the usual cornball guides who bombard you with painfully overdone puns for an hour+, and the Fenway tour. I’m not even really much of a baseball fan, but you can almost touch the history when you walk through Fenway. Both of my kids are self-proclaimed Red Sox fans because their grandfather has been a lifelong Sox fan, and said grandfather was on the tour with us, which he had never done before. It was a beautiful day and a really interesting way to see the ballpark. A sampling of the sights:

We’re currently in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, enjoying the comparatively frigid conditions versus back home in NC. Overnight lows in the 50s, daytime high today of around 70. Zero humidity. Much love.

I’ve managed to stick to my training plan pretty closely despite the travel. Week 3 was a successful step-back week.

Can’t say my travel diet has been equally successful. Enjoyable …. But not very successful.

Got in 3 runs along the Charles River while in Boston, and really enjoyed the change of scenery. Lots of early-morning crew team practices going on while I was running, which was really fun to watch while knocking out the miles. I don’t think my wife has been terribly amused with my alarm going off at 5AM most mornings, but I’m trying to keep up the running without interfering with the planned activities. By the end of the day I closely resemble a zombie, but that’s not necessarily much different than my non-vacation days.

At the advice of Chris K I googled Fartleks as an addition/alternative to my newfound love of tempo runs, and tried a version of a Fartlek run on our last day in Boston. After about a half-mile warmup I tried to really push the pace for as much as a half-mile at a time, then drop back to my normal pace until my breathing was back to normal, then stepped up the pace, then recovery …. Wash, rinse, and repeat. New approach in a new setting – all good. Here’s what the pace data looked like.

Will definitely be doing some variations of this again once I get back to the homeland.

Internet access is hard to come by here in the mountains, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, it has meant that I’ve hardly had a chance to read any blog entries, so I’m feeling a bit isolated from the bloggy goodness that has become such a part of my morning routine. Looking forward to catching up next weekend.