Caution: the Midnight Runners is a supportive group but it’s not the best for people who are novice runners. If you don’t care about making people wait or losing the crowd, though, you’ll probably be fine.

I attended the Midnight Runners (explained here) Run with Reebok and Runner’s World at Reebok’s newly opened store in South Boston, and it was another wake up call. I’ve been doing cardio fitness, but I haven’t been running regularly — and it showed. Hooray to being the last one to finish in the pack of fitness enthusiasts! It was cold enough to weed out the more casual runners perhaps.

Most people probably did a little over 5K, maybe up to 10K. I did 15K — 5K both to and from my parking spot (less hassle with traffic) in addition to the 5K run. My lungs and legs are fine, but I’m feeling sore in my lower back. That probably has to do with the two bootcamp stops we did — first, we held squats to the song of Bring Sally Up  and at the next stop we performed a lot of Russian twists (of course, being me, I held my feet up and halved the speed — to each her own).

Killing Time at the Reebok Store

First, I arrived at the store a little before 5:15 when the event started at 6. I was serious about being one of the first 50 to attend in order to receive a $25 gift certificate. In fact, I was the third person there. Because this was my first time here, I was intermittently checking in on when they reached the first 50. I’d say they had about 30 people signed up by 5:35 and then reached their quota for gift cards after 5:45.

While waiting, I found some unique items, in part because I haven’t shopped at an athletic store since… forever. I’ve learned that after running several races, you’ll never need to buy another technical shirt or long-sleeved fleece or hoodie again. Maybe you’ll still need a sports bra and pants, but how many pairs do you really need? If you have high quality clothes, they should last for a while. Anyhow, the idea of foam roller water bottles (care of MOBOT) seems novel enough. I don’t know if it’d fit my needs, but I can see it coming in handy when nothing else is available. At the same time, at that point  anything goes, right?.

In any case, since the hat I wanted wasn’t at the store, I left with the gift card for later usage. No impulse buying? Check. Even with the 20% discount all runners received, the prices are pretty steep. $16 for a sweat band is a challenge to create my own from a technical shirt I can part with. For now, I’ll archive what I call quests here.

For those of you who’re curious about the extra perks, here’s what we had been looking forward to:

Pretzels and beer / water

Swag bag

I’ve since signed up for Strava to see what the online running world was all about. We’ll see how I fare with it.

Part of the Fun Yet Missing Out

I loved running with music playing in the open air, but I definitely lost the music for a while because I was so far back. I loved the seeing Boston lit up from across the water, but I didn’t get to enjoy it fully because I was already falling behind.  So long as I practice, I’m sure I can turn this around next time.

I have an end goal to work towards, and I’m ready to crush it.

It’s winter in Boston, so I’ll need to get my game face on.

We are always the same age inside.
— Gertrude Stein