Heartbreak Hill Half Festival – 5K & 10K

Friday afternoon after I left Ohio, it was time to head to Boston for the Runner’s World Heartbreak Hill Half Festival! I arrived in Boston around 4:30pm, and my friend Loretta picked me up at the airport. From there, we stopped for some seafood with a view of the city.

I got some tasty shrimp for dinner.

Loretta had kindly already picked up our bibs and swag. We were both running the Hat Trick, which meant we were running the 5K and 10K on Saturday, for a total of 9.3 miles, followed by the half marathon, 13.1 miles, on Sunday! We got two shirts and a finishers’ hat!

We stayed in Friday night to rest up for the upcoming weekend. I was a bit nervous since I only ran once in the past 17 days or so. Before we knew it, our alarms were going off at 5:30AM. The races began at 7:15 and we had a 20 minute drive to the nearby Boston College in Newton.

It was so exciting to be a part of the Runner’s World event! Running the Hat Trick had been one of my goals since I first heard about it.

There were pace corals, which was nice. Everything was organized well and there were signs for everything! The only thing that was annoying was that the bathrooms were really far from the starting line!

We lined up near the back, we had no time goals for these races, we just wanted to have fun and finish!

First up, the 5K!

Happily I finished the 5K under at 10 minute mile, but I knew I couldn’t keep that up for the 10K.

I took the 10K much slower, and the second half got pretty hot (and hilly) since it was up the famous Heartbreak Hill.

The 10K was an out and back, which was cool because we got to see the faster runners come back. I saw Shalane Flanigan, one of the top American female elite runners, run right by me! It was so awesome.

5K and 10K, done! We got some pretty nice medals for both, too.

After the race, we went back to the hotel to shower and change. Then we went back to the College to check out the expo and some seminars. The one Loretta and I most wanted to see was Nancy Clark’s seminar on nutrition for endurance runners. Nancy wrote the sports nutrition bible, the Guidebook for Sports Nutrition.   We got to chat with Nancy before the seminar  (she was taking our questions) which was really cool! Her talk was really helpful and informative, even for someone like me, studying nutrition! She was awesome.

Loretta and I also got to be on the cover of Runner’s World! (Just kidding, it’s fake!) but really cool.

After the expo, we grabbed dinner in Davis Square and then crashed early. We had another 13.1 miles to run the next day!