New job, Boston changes, 5K race

I have not blogged in a while so I am combining three blog post topics into one. 

New Job
After 7 years of fully remote work, I accepted a new job which has me going into the office three days a week. While I enjoyed the flexibility of working from home, I missed the collaboration that happened in-person. That's not the reason I switched jobs, but it's the point that is most relevant to my running life, which is the focus of this blog.

First day of the new job

Here is the "TLDR" version of my professional career over the past few years. I was the Chief Marketing Officer of a private-equity backed company from 2019-2024. That job started out as an in-office job, but went fully remote in 2020. In October 2024, that company was acquired by a larger global business (based in France), and I was appointed Chief Marketing Officer of the acquiring company. Last May, a different private equity firm started recruiting me for the CMO role of a SaaS company (software-as-a-service) and the opportunity was a much better fit for me on multiple levels. 

I started the job on August 3rd and so far I am really loving it. The biggest reason I made the switch was the opportunity to make a real impact on the business and its growth. I also liked the people and was ready to move into a different industry. The job involves more travel and as I said above, three days a week in-office. It's been an adjustment for me, but worth it to have a more fulfilling work experience.

The commute is short (12 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening), but having to do my hair and makeup is the real time suck. Instead of getting out of the shower and immediately hopping on a meeting at 9:00am, I have to make myself look presentable and then drive to work. It's manageable, but definitely an adjustment that has left me feeling abnormally tired on some days. I'm glad we moved in 2025, because otherwise the commute would be over 40 minutes each way.

Instead of working a corporate job, I could be a full-time running coach and content creator, but I enjoy being part of a team and building relationships. I generally just like to achieve stuff, no matter what it is. And this job lets me do that.

Boston Changes
Shifting gears completely, Boston has a new "lottery" for qualifiers that don't make the cut-off. If you aren't familiar with the Boston qualifying process, the cut-off, and everything that goes along with it, it gets more and more complicated every year. They have an imperfect process (more people qualify than they can accept due to space limitations), so they are continually adding new elements that complicate it even further. 

My Boston bib in 2018

First they introduced the "cut-off" which essentially means if you qualify, you can register, but they are only taking the fastest qualifiers. So if you didn't qualifying by at least "x minutes and y seconds" then you aren't accepted. That's also known as the buffer. In my case, my qualifying target is 3:45 as a 47-year old woman. In Houston I ran 3:24. So I ran about 21 minutes faster than I needed to, giving me a 21 minute buffer. To make it more complicated (but also more fair), this year they are penalizing runners for running downhill races by adding 5 or 10 minutes to their finish times, depending on how steep the elevation drop was.

On top of all of that, this year they decided to add a random drawing for 1,000 runners. If you qualified and didn't make the cut-off, then you could get in through this special lottery. Instead of simply accepting the next fastest 1,000 runners and making the cut-off lower, they decided to be random about it. So you could qualify by 3 minutes, and not get in, while someone else could qualify by 3 seconds and they would get in.  The intent is to give an element of hope to those qualifiers who qualified by a marginal amount, but then those who barely missed the cut-off would be shut out. So it's mostly done by merit, but partially done by luck. I'm not complaining, but it is convoluted and confusing. Their rules, their race. Let's see how it plays out!

5K Race
I ran the Donut Dash 5K on the Sunday before Labor Day. I'm training for the Marine Corps Marathon, but I like to throw in the occasional short race because it's fun and to practice pushing really hard.

Headed for the finish

I had run this race last year, and the weather had been ideal: mid 50s with low humidity. This year, the weather was more seasonable for early September: around 67 degrees, sunny, with a dew point of 63. My goal was to beat my time from last year, figuring that if I could beat that time in worse weather conditions, it would be a true confidence booster. 

The result? I ran almost the exact same race. My splits were almost identical to last year, but I faded a little bit more on the final hill, costing me one second. My time was 20:48 compared to last year's 20:47. Technically you could say this was a performance improvement, given the extra 10 degrees we had this year, but I don't know if the weather was that much of a factor. That final hill was just hard! I won my age group, and was pleased with that.

On the one hand, it's good to be consistent as I age. I'm currently 47 and last year I was 46. I only lost one second year over year. But at the same time, I feel like age hasn't really limited me yet, and there's more speed in me to unlock. How do I get myself to a level where I am consistently running 20:15 on that course? I would love a breakthrough. 

Marine Corps Marathon
Next up is the Army 10-miler followed by the Marine Corps Marathon. It will be my 20-year anniversary of running it. Training has been going relatively well considering the job switch, the summer humidity, and the fact that I got a minor head cold last week. I ran my slowest long run in over 5 years because my body was fighting off a bug, but I felt fine doing it and didn't dig myself into a hole by overdoing it. I've been running 55-65 miles per week for the past 10 weeks (with two cutback weeks), and I think that consistency and volume will pay off.

Okay, I guess it was hot!