Yesterday, mum and I ran the 43rd Boston 10k for women – currently sponsored by Reebok but originally the Bonne Bell race circa 1977.

When it started all those years ago, it was one of the only all-women races in the country, and today it still holds the title of the longest running one on the east coast. Last year we saw a woman with a “42 years” sticker and were impressed – then we discovered that she started the race and was its first organizer! Yesterday we found and thanked her again – you rock, Dusty Rhodes!

This was my 4th year running it and mom’s 8th – we missed 7 years because my work retreat at my last job was always on this weekend, but now we are BACK and were ready to rock. We trained this summer and especially this fall, as our hiking season waned – exploring new parts of the rail trail, doing interval workouts, and running more days a week than I have in a long time. I also learned how much I need a warmup to really do my best – 10 mins is enough and makes such a difference in terms of how easy that first mile is!

Race day was beautiful – the sky was clear blue during our warm-up yoga, the temps were rising, and the puddles from last week had all evaporated.

We were so happy to be out on the course – we weren’t even worried about mom’s cell phone which was lost, because we had convinced ourselves it was just forgotten in the car (mega thanks to Kat for coordinating its safe return and being so helpful when we did realize it was missing hours later!). We ran with a similar pack for most of the race, and had hundreds of people behind us (reducing the risk that a cop would dare ask us to move to the sidewalk like last year, though we had our enthusiastic “no thank you”s planned again). The water stops were plentiful (1 per mile!) and operated by very enthusiastic college and high school students. On the bridge, we passed the winners and wheelchair racer coming back the other way – such amazing athletes! Molly Huddle, who won, is 35 to second place’s 22. So impressive!

Also impressive: our pace! Our goal was to beat last year’s time and we were pacing way ahead of that (no splits – see phone issue…). We knew if we kept it up we would crush our goal and that powered us through the last .2 miles.

In the end, we cut 4 minutes off our 2018 time – down to 1:28:41! Such a great ending to such a solid training season and fall in general.

Bonus points for good food from the tents, finding mom’s phone, and my first-year roommate Jill finding ME while stretching. 15 years after we first moved into North Rocky together and we’re still friends!

Mom and I were so happy to be in the sunshine together and fit enough for this and whatever other challenge may come our way.

In summary – get back on that course, set a goal for yourself, and run until your heart sings!