el Poco Loco Boston – a Little Crazy Run Through and Around Beantown

This is my proposal, subject to change based on your feedback and ideas.

The Poco Loco would begin to the west of Boston, in the city of Newton, on the World Famous Boston Marathon course.  This would incorporate the major hills of that course, including (of course) Heart Break Hill. 

We would come into the city, run around Fenway Park, and then head out past the Boston Commons, State House, Government Center, Faneuil Hall and into the North End (and beyond).

Proposed Legs 1 through 3

So far, I have 3 four mile legs roughly defined (subject to change). 

Leg 1: Starts at the corner of Washington Street and Commonwealth Avenue, at the Fire Station in Newton Massachusetts.  It follows the Boston Marathon course all the way up past Heart Break Hill and ends at Boston College.

Proposed Leg 1

Leg 2: Starts at Boston College and follows the Boston Marathon course until we get to Friendly Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.

Leg 3: Starts at Fenway Park, loops around Lansdown Street routes back to Kenmore Square and the Boston Marathon course, and takes that famous right hand turn onto Hereford Street for the run down Boylston Street (and the finish line of the Boston Marathon).  Then we continue all the way to the Boston Common (where we’ll run through the park).  At this point I need to make some modifications to the map, as there’s a lot to see here…but generally speaking we’ll be passing by the State House, Government Center, Faneuil Hall and into the North End, with the leg ending somewhere in the North End.

So, that’s the first tentative 12 miles of the course. 

For this “Poco Loco” of 26.2 miles, we would split the run into 6.55 segments (round it to 6), giving a team of 12 runners 2 opportunities to run (minimum); one in the morning and the last one in the afternoon.

Anyone unable to attend the Poco Loco Boston would be welcome to join us at whatever pub or restaurant we end up at. 

I have A LOT more work to do on this, as this is VERY preliminary…so I’m open for ideas.  Send them to me: steve@steverunner.com or twitter.com/steverunner join me as I discuss this LIVE on my UStream Channel somewhere around 4:00 PM this evening (Wednesday December 22^nd).  I’ll also try to put together a Talkshoe conference call to get your ideas at a later day.

We need to keep this momentum going, there are ideas for Mojo Loco’s popping up all over the world, and it’s IMPORTANT that we help them to happen!

Viva el Mojo Loco!

- Steve

------------------------------ UPDATE ----------------------------------------
2:49 PM ET - Adam Tinkoff made a really good point in a tweet he sent over earlier:


"if you make it a POCO LOCO (26.2 miles) and segments of 10K you only need to find 4 transfer points. April is the right time."

I agree.  I'm going to revisit these maps to weave the course around some of Boston's most famous locations, and elongate the 3 legs I've depicted here by 2 miles each (for a total of 6 miles per segment, or more specifically 6.2 for a total of four 10K's.).


As for the date; my only concern with April is that there are alot of other races being run in that time frame; Easter is on the 24th and the Boston Marathon is being run on the 18th, leaving only the 2nd or 9th of April for potential dates.


I don't personally see a huge problem with the 2nd or 9th of April...but May seems like it's past all the scheduling issues.


Anyway, we'll talk about this more in the weeks to come.  I do think it's important that we set a date soon however, since we'll need to fix our schedules.