I turned my ankle last week, and it's just killing me. I'll give it some thought though.

Get the ice on that ankle...Bay State awaits.

Funny you should mention that. I absolutely HATE icing anything, but my left foot spent an hour in an ice bath tonight during the Sox blowout. I'm even going to break down and take some ibuprofen, and I never take any drugs* other than Benadryl. Scrapped my run tonight, this SUCKS. *I know, I know it's hard to believe I'm not on drugs. Yes, I'm this way naturally.

Tom, there is a hill that you will not believe at the turn around.

My ankle held up for 26 miles today, so I should have a pretty good idea tomorrow whether running next Sunday is realistic. It's turning blue at the moment, does that mean I'm done icing it?

I have to back out of this one My daughter's birthday party is on Sunday. She's turning 10, can't miss that. .

Hey Tom, just wanted to say thanks for bringing this clusterf*ck to my attention. Without your post, I would have missed my all-time most aggravating experience as a runner. My legs were pretty dead from a ten miler with some hill work the day before, so I was hoping I could hold a 6:30 pace. Before the race I heard from a couple of runners that the course did NOT include the hill you mentioned, so I thought it was pretty odd that there was no pre-race announcement with course details. After some Irish tenor wannabe sang the national anthem we were off. Our Kenyan friends Titus and Ben settled into their spot behind two Lawrence auxiliary cruisers at an easy pace. It wasn't exactly an elite field, as I approached the two mile point I was in fourth place just behind the lead woman. Titus, Ben and their cruisers were long gone and nowhere to be seen. We came to a T intersection, and there was no indication AT ALL which way we should turn. No arrow on the pavement, no sign, and no volunteer. I looked at Naomi, she looked at me and we stopped. WTF. I looked to the left, and saw a cruiser on the side of the road so that's where I headed. She followed, along with three or four others. When I got to the cruiser and realized it was from Andover (or maybe North Andover) I figured it was a mistake. By now, some of the other runners (who had apparently run the course before) had come the intersection and looking back I could see them turning right. I had now been passed by about a dozen runners, and was incredibly pissed and completely demoralized. I wound up catching a couple, and wound up 9th overall. Not bad considering they ran four miles and I ran four and a quarter. Any significant turn on a course MUST be marked or manned by a race volunteer. At the very least they could have said this is an unmarked course and announced the turns. I was going to demand my money back, but it was going to fund a St Patty's parade so I bit my tongue and drowned my sorrows. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Why didn't you just keep up with Titus and Ben and follow them?

Believe it or not, I did for a while. They went out at a really easy pace, I'm guessing around 6:15 or so. They obviously picked it up as they warmed up, they finished together at 20:34. Nothing like a nice Sunday afternoon jog at 5:09 average pace.