Still a lot of unhighlighted streets…but believe it or not that’s a lot of progress.

(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 35)

As of this writing, I am two-thirds of the way through training for the Chicago Marathon.

I’ve completed 12 weeks of training, and I have six weeks to go.

Completing 12 weeks of training also means that I’ve completed 12 weeks of my Running Every Street in Framingham project.

And I thought this week would be a good time to do a little update.

I don’t think I’ll run every street in Framingham before the end of Chicago Marathon training.

Which is perfectly OK.

I don’t know if I ever exactly set the goal of running every street before the Chicago Marathon happened (if only there was a way to check on something like that…), but it’s OK to re-evaluate and reset goals.

And after the past couple of weeks, when I covered a lot of miles exclusively in Framingham but didn’t exactly see a whole lot of progress on the map, it feels like a good re-evaluation time.

For a while there were a lot of streets that I could run from my house and tick off the list without repeating streets. As I pile up the streets, though, it’s getting harder to do that, which makes sense, since the streets I have to cover are farther and farther away from where I live. (Or the trusty old places where I leave my car when I go for runs in different areas of the city.)

So there is more planning involved - I need to think about routes, I need to think about parking the car somewhere that I don’t end up a lengthy distance from the parking spot…

Which leads me to a couple of missteps this week - I did park the car in a spot where I ended up running to a few streets that left me finishing my run more than a mile from the car…and I still had to go back to that area and get more streets later in the week.

And on Friday I ran in the rain in a confusing little neighborhood that I knew was confusing and took a picture to remind myself where to go….and then it rained so hard I couldn’t take out my phone and I didn’t get them all. So I have to go back to that neighborhood to finish up the map.

So what I’m saying is, it’s not a fast process, running all of these streets…but it is a satisfying one.

I still look forward to every run because it means I’ll be highlighting more streets on my map and I like that a lot.

It’s a great carrot-and-stick method for me.

I read about other people who collect stones and fill a jar with a stone for every mile they run while training for something like a marathon.

I like these little incentives, even if they do nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I’ll be running a pretty good split of miles between Framingham and the Esplanade in Boston over the next six weeks. I’ll continue to put a pretty good dent in the Framingham streets…but I doubt I’ll finish the map before October 8th.

Which is OK.

I’ll get to it maybe in November and December. Because I’ll probably need another incentive to run once the marathon is over anyway.

(Spoiler alert if you didn’t click that link above: I did say “there’s no reason this challenge has to end before the marathon” and “I bet I’ll come pretty close to covering the entirety of Framingham.”)

What I’ve Been Enjoying

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. For a while I’d heard how funny it was and dragged my feet on watching it as I tend to do with certain shows and finally I’ve gotten around to starting it and I’m halfway through the third season and they’re short episodes so I’ll throw one on while I’m folding laundry and laugh my butt off. Very silly, very funny.

Notes

*Saturday’s long run - to much less fanfare than a few weeks ago - was another half marathon distance. This time I tried to tire my legs out early and power through on tired legs as I’d have late in the marathon, which, I guess mission accomplished? Because I had some fast early miles and the ending was a slog. I was better than 2 and a half hours for the half distance…but I’m still not convinced I can maintain that pace for the second half of a marathon. We’ll find out in October.

*What’s October? Oh, glad you asked. I’m running the Chicago Marathon with Team RMHC, raising money for Ronald McDonald House Charities. I am less than $200 from my fundraising goal! If you’d like to help me get there, you can do so at this link.

*I don’t think I’ve ever sweat as much as I have this summer. I get really sweaty in my feet now. (When I’m running. Not, like, in everyday life.) That seems like a new thing. But I spent probably the final eight miles of my run Saturday just sloshing down the road because my feet were puddles. I think the sweat on Saturday was worse than the rain on Friday.

*I’m attending my final Mets game of the season in person this week. I’ll probably recap that whole venture next week.

*In case you missed the reel I spent way too long editing the other day when I should have been working on other things, you can see that and much more by following the social media feeds below. (Mostly the Instagram, but I haven’t forgotten about the others.)