I have to say its a little strange to me to write a report about a training run. The Paul Revere run wasn’t a race that I did, but instead it was a themed training run that we did at the Davis Square Runners. The plan was to follow the route that Paul Revere took on this famous “midnight ride,” on April 18, 1775.
Our course started at the Paul Revere house in Boston, bright and early at 8 am on April 18, 2015—240 years after Revere did it. Though he didn’t start at 8 in the morning. The route would take us through Boston, Charlestown, Somerville, Medford, Arlington, and Lexington.
Variables:
I was quite nervous about doing this type of event. There were a lot of variables that made me nervous. The first being, was anyone going to come? Having set up the event a few months in advance, and constantly telling people about it, we were going into the beginning of the week with only 5 or 6 people. In organizing previous events with 5 people, I can usually guarantee that 2 of them won’t come—so that left just 3 or 4 people.
Second variable was my ability to speak to a group and have it be interesting. Along the route we had a number of stops of an historical nature where I would say a little blurb about what had happened during the Midnight Ride. That meant speaking to a group of people about a subject I studied as a hobby. Many of the “facts,” of the events of that day are still in dispute, so there was the worry that I would be wrong in some of the things I said—or rather disputed.
Third variable—timing. I had listed on our event page that we would be at certain intersections at certain times. So there was a stress of keeping that schedule, but not keeping such a fast pace that the people in our group couldn’t keep up.
Finally, there was my knee—having fallen on it on the previous Monday, I knew it wasn’t feeling 100%. Even doing a little trail run on Thursday, the knee was hurting enough that I had to stop at 7 km. I was icing, and doing daily rounds of foam roller therapy, and self massage. But the knee did hold up, over then entire route!
The actual run:
Our event started just after 8:00 am on April 18, 2015. Everyone got there on time. We started with six people, and my starting blurb about Paul Revere, what he did here in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and where we would be going.
During our run, we kept a steady pace as we made our way to City Park in Charlestown, and eventually to the top of Winter Hill. Both were points of additional historical information. Charlestown was also our first bathroom break, and a point just past Winter Hill was our second.
Around the Winter Hill Point I realized we were about 30 min behind our estimated schedule, and our second pit stop put us behind farther, but there wasn’t much to be done about that.
Upon hitting Arlington Center, we met up with 2 more people from our group, and we continued on towards Lexington. About half way to Lexington one person dropped out, and we lost another one earlier in Arlington.
As we approached Lexington, the number of people increased. Lexington is tourist central during Patriot’s Day weekend. As we got closer to the Lexington Green, we stopped at the Visitor’s Center for pit stop #3. It was at this point we decided to not go all the way to the Hancock-Clarke house, as we didn’t want to be dodging pedestrians trying to enjoy the sights. I spoke my last 3 historical blurbs from the grounds of the Visitor’s Center.
Now we started our trip back, which followed the retreat path of the Regulars—the British Troops. There were fewer stops on the way back for historical points of interest. As we approached Prospect Hill I opted on stopping us in Union Square, instead of climbing the last hill. I was fairly sure many of us wouldn’t make it up there anyways.
Afterwards we walked to the Independent and had lunch.
Reflections and changes:
Everyone said the enjoyed the day, and hopes that we’ll do another one in the future. Any issues with historical inaccuracies were dealt with with the understanding that events in history were not always recorded properly, and there can be slight variations on the story.
In terms of logistics, I think having prearranged meeting points was a good idea for those who wanted to meet us enroute, and run a shorter distance. However in the future I would designate someone to live update our event page with changes to our schedule. If we had a larger group, I may even designate someone to keep a head count of our runners during any of our regrouping points.
Overall the event was a fun one, and I’m trying to figure out our next one!
Overall distance: 36.4 km/22.6 miles.
