Run to Home Base

This is a 5K or 9K race at Fenway Park that raises money for mental health services for veterans. It is a really cool event that goes to a great cause. However you do need to raise $500 to participate so if you aren’t great at fundraising you may be paying a lot for the race. There was good pre-race communication with a good number of emails. There was packet pick-up either Friday or Saturday. I would have loved more options for packet pick-up as I would have been able to pick it up Wednesday or Thursday but was not available Friday but as they had race day packet pick-up it was not a big deal. For the race I parked on the outskirts of Boston and took the subway to to Fenway since I didn’t feel like dealing with parking at Fenway. This worked fine but then you have to either carry or wear the swag since there is no bag check. Everything race day morning was very organized. I got my bib and swag. Swag includes a very nice tech shirt and a baseball hat. Since there was no bag check I just wore them for the race. One thing kind of annoying is the race starts at 8am but there is an hour long pre-race ceremony and bib pick-up needs to be done before the ceremony so unless you live in Boston you need to wake up really early. After bib pick-up we sat in the stands for the ceremony. Don’t get me wrong it was a very nice and moving ceremony. It just meant an early morning. I did leave the ceremony a few minutes early to use the bathroom and stretch and walked to the start line and got a selfie with Wally the Red Sox mascot. The ceremony also went a bit long so the race started a bit late which is my only production complaint. There was a big start corral. The 9K went first, then 5K runners, then 5K walkers. It was a big but not huge race with a few thousand runners in each category. The course was very nice and mostly flat. It was a T-shaped with the first approximately 1 mile through Boston than you ran along a Bridge to Cambridge and ran about 1 mile out and back to the right and a little under a mile out and back to the left and then ran back to Fenway. The section in Cambridge had beautiful views of the city. The weather was perfect this morning. I was still extra slow from the lung issues I was having. I was do run-walk intervals at about 14 to 15 minute miles. One thing a bit disappointing for me is there were not a lot of 9Kers doing this pace. If you are around this pace you may want to do the 5K if you like to be around other participants. There were a lot of people doing my usual 12 to 13 minute mile pace so as long as air pollution isn’t the new normal this shouldn’t be an issue for me most years. There were plenty of aid stations. There was one just about every mile. Also very well-marked and streets were all closed off. You finish by running into Fenway and it is really cool to see Fenway from inside the field. My finishing time was slow but as I expected with my lungs and since 9K is a weird distance I did PR lol! I will admit the actual running through home base was a bit anticlimactic. After you finish the participants line up and walk over home base. Since there was a baseball game later the base was covered all around so it could be used for the game. They also gave out water and some snacks at the end. Overall I thought this was a really fun race and a cool way to see Boston and get a different perspective at Fenway. As long as you don’t mind raising the $500 and don’t mind getting up early I would recommend this race. I’m not sure I’d make it an annual race due to those 2 factors but I would definitely consider doing it again.