Yet another night where neck and shoulder pain kept me awake. The massage may have helped a little, because I did find a reasonably comfortable position laying on my left side a certain way. The relief never lasted long. Whenever I moved into position, inevitably Felix would investigate and then decide to settle in, purring happily with his furry nose in my face.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Cape Cod Marathon is the last race in the USATF-NE Grand Prix series. The Grand Prix is more competitive than the Pub Series, with team competition in addition to individual awards.
Through no fault of mine, the SRR Men’s 50+ team is tied for second place going into Cape Cod. There’s no chance we’ll catch Whirlaway for first place, but finishing second would be a big achievement. This is the first time in years our Seniors team has done more than stumble across a few points almost by accident.
The top three runners score for each team in the marathon. We’ve only got four Senior Men running Cape Cod, so we don’t have much margin for error.
Robert finishing at Paddy’s
Our ace is Robert Cipriano, the top Senior runner in New England. He won the Pub Series for our age group, is leading the Grand Prix, and regularly beats runners in their 20’s to score for SRR in the Open division. Robert is coming off a lifetime PR at the Kerouac 5K, a 2:48 at Chicago on October 7th, and an age-group win (5th overall) last Sunday at Paddy’s. He was also second in our age group in the oven at Boston this year. When I look at his results, I’m left vacillating between awe and jealousy.
Robert is backed up by Jeff Silveira, another sub-3 marathoner who ran 17:51 at the Kerouac and 17:04 at Paddy’s, and Sean McDonough, who’s aiming to go under 3:20 in his 43rd marathon (and his 3rd Cape Cod).
With those guys on the team I’m unlikely to score, but marathons don’t always go as planned. My job is to have a good day so I’m there to pick up the pieces if anything goes wrong. As much as I’d like to score for the team, the best possible result would be for me to run well and have Robert, Jeff, and Sean waiting at the finish to cheer me in.
Ruth has a real good chance of joining with Liz Cooney and Ruthanne Waite to score for the SRR Senior Women for the first time ever in the marathon. Liz is fourth in the individual competition and the Ruths are both on their third marathons and primed for big improvements.
(147#)
It was almost “The Streak”.