Last Week – Last week was our longest run of the training season for our Baystate runners, wile many others ran varied distances to prepare for races that are farther into the future. It was a great morning with support from A Lot of volunteers to get it done. Thank you, Thuy, Maria, Jose, Rowena, Andy, and Tom. And thank you to all the runners who have helped bring SLR back to life after a long break!! …time to taper!
This Week – Unless Manchester, NYC or Philly are in your future, it’s Race Month. October brings marathons and halfs everywhere and each week we’ll have people heading somewhere. The New Hampshire Marathon and Maine Marathon are this weekend, and Boston is just a week away! Good luck if you’re running any of those or any other races this month. For the rest of us, keep up the training and taper if its time! As this training focuses on Baystate, we’ll be winding down the miles. Over the next week or two we give our bodies a little recovery time as we head into our October races. I call this period “Don’t Do Anything Stupid” time. Your training is done and your legs got you this far. Human nature will be that you’re nervous that you didn’t do enough, you’ll think about that one long run that didn’t go right or you cut a few miles off and you’ll feel the need to cram in one last hard training run. Don’t do that! Recover instead. Your taper runs should be at the same intensity as your training runs, but the miles will be less and the toll they take on your body should be minimal. With that in mind we’ll all head through Swains Pond and the long runners will continue out to Farm Street.
Route maps on Strava:
Full 14.8M
Half 7.0M
Start – We’ll cross Main Street and head up East Foster to the Melrose Common where we’ll turn right at the Common onto 6th Street. This will turn into Swains Pond Ave and bring you up into a wooded section of Melrose. When you reach Swains Pond and Turners Pond there will be a stop sign, turn right here to stay on Swain’s Pond Ave. This will eventually bring you to Lebanon Street where you’ll take a sharp right. Lebanon will bring you to a set of lights where you’ll turn left on Forest Street which will lead you across to Main Street in Malden. Citizens Bank will be across Main Street with a water stop.
Section 2 – Leave the Citizens Bank parking lot onto Winter Street. Follow this past the Oak Grove T station to a five way intersection. Cross straight through the intersection on to Glenwood Street. Wind your way up to Highland Ave where you turn right with a very quick right onto the Fellsway East. Make your way through the hills down to Grimsby’s. If you’re running the half route you can turn right at Grimsby’s and head back to Brueggers for 7 miles along West Wyoming and left on Main Street. If you want a little longer of a run continue with the full route runners on to the LynnFells Parkway and keep going to you get to the knoll across from Melrose High School for a water stop. Half runners can then head up to a right on Melrose Street and a right on Main Street for an 8 mile run.
Full 3 – From the knoll, continue on the LynnFells Parkway until you reach the intersection with Main Street in Saugus. Turn left and follow Main Street, which will become Farm Street in Wakefield, and turn left onto Nahant Street. This will bring you across to Main Street in Wakefield where a water stop will be waiting for you at Nick’s Pizza… or maybe Dunkin Donuts.
Full Finish – Its taper time so we’re already heading back to the finish. Head south on Main Street from Wakefield to Melrose and finish up at Brueggers. That’s it, you’re done already.
Water Stops – There are three stops this week, Citizens Bank in Malden, The knoll across from Melrose High, and Nick’s pizza. Looking for at least two volunteers so please let me know if you want to help.
Roll Call – Who’s in?