#mv20

Passed my first test on the road to Boston!

I raced the MV20 last weekend as part of my prep for the Boston Marathon. I've wanted to do this race for a number of years, but the timing just hasn't always worked out, but this year I'm all in for Boston and registered early for this and for the Eastern States 20 Miler at the end of March. Going into this race I was feeling good, my long runs the past 4 weeks were up to 20 miles and I was getting either speedwork or tempo runs in each week as well as some sweet-spot work on the bike. My goal was to hold a sub-3 hour marathon pace for the 20 miles and if I crashed I wanted to at least stay under 7 minutes per mile for the duration.

The race starts at 11am and there is a ferry ride to get over to the island for the start so the usual breakfast routine is thrown off a little. I had my normal weekday breakfast and then packed some pre-race pop-tarts to have on the boat riding over. My wife gave me a ride to the terminal in Wood's Hole and we picked up our friend Mike who was running his 1st 20 miler ever (he's prepping for the Newport Marathon in April). The ride over was uneventful, I got my pop-tarts in and got mentally focused on the race

After landing on the island we made our way over the the check-in table, got our number bibs and swag before heading back to the Steamship Authority terminal to stay warm before the start. I met up with my friend Kass and we talked about a few different things. I decided to skip a warm-up and treat the 1st mile of the race as my warm-up. Early in the race I ran in a group with some guys from the Somerville Road Runners before getting spit out the back of the group.

Early on my heart-rate monitor was unreliable, probably due to the combination of colder temps and static electricity from the tech shirt I was wearing. It also could have been the "cadence lock" issue that has been described for the 920xt at times, but anyways it was reading a steady 195 until 4 miles in so it's a good thing I can pace accurately off of perceived exertion and am not limited to being a slave to the monitor. The run along the water and over the "Jaws" bridge was great, it reminded me of the walk we did from Edgartown to Oak Bluffs a couple years ago for my son's birthday and how we jumped off the bridge with the GoPro.

At the half-way point there is an exchange zone for the relay racers. As is typical during these types of races there is a little mental challenge to hold the effort level you want to race at and not get caught up in the excitement of fresh runners coming on course and going faster. I did well with this and held the steady effort as the race moved into the State Forest and worked its way back to Oak Bluffs.

Around mile 17 I started to catch some people who were blowing up after going out too hard. By mile 19 I had caught two of the Somerville guys I ran with early in the race but let get away from me. When we made the turn off County Road to Tradewinds Road to come into the finish at the elementary school I felt an exhilarating rush when I realized how well I ran! I came across the line in 2 hours and 15 minutes holding a 6:46 per mile pace for 20 miles with basically no taper going into the race. A great indicator that if I keep the training up, stay healthy and catch good conditions in Boston, going under 3 hours is a very real possibility.

The Cape Cod Athletic Club had the most participants in the race so we won the "Island Runner Cup" this year!

Click here to see on Strava