Providence Long Run

Time: 139:45
Distance: 31.17k
Pace: 4:29
Map

Yesterday evening Meagan, Caitlin and I drove down to Providence for a get together at Kim Smith's house. It was in celebration of her recent engagement to Pat Tarpy and her 30th birthday. Happy days! There was a good crew in attendance which included former Brown captain Matt Emond and his wife Danielle, Pat Moulton, Molly Huddle, Roisin McGettigan, Jon (Andru)chow, and the legendary Keith Kelly.

It was a great evening of eating food filled with gluten, drinking pints and chatting with friends old and new. I stayed up way too late and didn't get to bed until around 2 AM when things wound down. As you can imagine, starting off in the morning was going to be slow and fortunately we had Kim to lead the way for the first 40 minutes. She is still in the regeneration phase since racing at New York and isn't putting in too much time on the feet.

We looped around the neighborhoods near Providence College which aren't anything to write home about. In fact, they are the same neighborhood where Jeff Gaudette and I were called out by guy yelling, "Man, look at 'dis. Ni**as be runnin' in daisy dukes!" Awesome. There was no yelling today even when we headed back out for much more distance as a group of three.

I took Meagan and Caitlin over to the nicer side of town and up onto College Hill. I showed them the Brown Stadium, the Blackstone Blvd., Brown's athletic fields behind the OMAC, Thayer Street, campus, Rhode Runner, downtown Providence, and the state capitol. I don't think there is anything else to see in all of Rhode Island that wasn't shared on the run.

I never felt great as my stomach was giving me issues. It could have been the gluten (probably not), the 15 beers (not literally), late night dessert, lack of sleep or the combination of all four. I had to stop multiple times as a result, but that just gave the girls an excuse to stop from the blistering pace I was laying down. I glad to have this run wrapped up as it's the longest run in quite some time.

Coffee, Kim, Ro, Meagan and the Blvd.

Time: 49:42
Distance: 6.87 miles
Pace: 7:14
Map

It was a relaxing morning here in Providence that had us over at Seven Stars Bakery to meet up with Ro McGettigan. I had a large cup of coffee as did Meagan while Kim destroyed a loaf of bread and a muffin. I guess that's what running a half marathon in 68 minutes will do to you. After spending time at the bakery chatting we headed over to Ro's house and suited up to run. The four of us hit up the Blackstone Boulevard for about 15 minutes and then dropped Meagan off at the house. Her form didn't look to screwy which was a good sign for her foot.

Flattering photo of Kim at the Seven Stars Bakery.

Even more flattering photo of me getting a nice caffeine buzz.

The rest of the run was calm as I don't think Kim or I felt particularly good from the prior day of racing. Ro is just coming back from injury and taking it nice and easy too. I can't tell you how many times or how many miles I've run along the Blvd. but essentially the Brown team runs on it 4 or 5 days a week at some point during the run. It was nice seeing that it hasn't changed since 5 years ago.