So I Ran a 60K This Morning...

Today I ran my first ultra marathon: a 60K, which worked out to about 37.2 miles.  It was fun, then less fun, then excruciating, as endurance tests often are.  It's funny how quickly one can go from finding climbing hills uncomfortable, to finding descending hills uncomfortable, to finding walking uncomfortable, to finding standing uncomfortable, as happened to me during the final twelve miles.  The race was a 1.2-mile warmup followed by nine laps around Central Park.  The scenery got repetitive pretty quickly, which I've heard isn't the case with the better ultras out there, but knowing the terrain as well as I do certainly helped me pace myself better.  The whole course took me about six hours and twenty-three minutes, which I guess was pretty good for my first time (60K is such an unusual distance that there really aren't metrics for it).

When I was in my seventh lap I saw a guy pass me going backwards, which first made me think, "Jesus what a fucking showoff!"  After a bit of reflection, however, I realized that he was doing it to switch up which muscle groups he was using, so that he could wear them out more evenly.  I ended up adopting this tactic myself a little further down the course, and I found it to be quite a relief.

The weather was pretty nice---a bit cold, but quite sunny.  I ran the first seven laps with my backpack, where I'd stored the sweatshirt I wore to the race, the souvenir shirt I got that morning as a part of my race entry, and other various race-related odds and ends.  After seven laps of carting it around (it was fairly light), I finally stowed it near everyone else's backpacks at the start.  It was actually more to get people to stop saying, "Wow, you're going all that way with that heavy backpack?" than it was for actual ease of running.

At the end of the race I was given a very nice lucite plaque to commemorate my finish.  I promptly dropped it while trying to put it in my pocket, my coordination not being all that great after running more miles than I ever have in my life.  The damage was minimal though---I didn't even notice it until I got home.

Epilogue:

While riding the G train home from the race, I met a man that I feel very sorry for.  He was trying to get to Coney Island to visit his mother, and I had to explain to him that in order to do so he would have to switch to another G train at Bedford-Nostrand (it's running in two sections this weekend), then take that G train to Hoyt-Schermerhorn (which is where it's being cut off this weekend), then take an A train one stop to Jay Street (maybe on a different platform, maybe not; I didn't even know how the MTA was handling it), then go upstairs and take a shuttle bus (the limited shuttle bus, not the local one, which doesn't go far enough) to the F train at 18th Avenue, because that was the closest stop that the F was running to this weekend.  For those of you not familiar with these particular trains, the trip in question usually involves making ONE transfer, to a train that runs on the same track.  As if Coney Islanders hadn't suffered enough in recent weeks...

On top of all that, the man I was talking to---although he didn't appear to be much older than me---walked with a cane.  There's never a good story behind a situation like that.  I really hope he made it to his mother's house all right...

The Marathon That Wasn't

Today was supposed to be the day I ran my marathon, after 16 weeks and almost 600 miles of training.  I guess it wasn't as big a deal for me as it would've been for other people: it wasn't my first marathon, and it wouldn't have been my last.  I also didn't have to travel to get here, and it'd be just as easy for me to try again next year (I heard we're all getting automatic entry into next year's race after this, but that might involve paying the entry fee all over again).  I was hoping to improve on my last official time for the NYC Marathon by about an hour, bit it's not like all the gains I've made during my training are just going to disappear overnight.

There were some people thinking that we could just get the marathon postponed, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen---the money's already been spent, and the work's already been done.  At least it's good to know that NYRR is planning on donating all the water and supplies that would've been given to runners to people who could use it a lot more right now.

Instead of running 26.2 miles today I ran about 14 and a third, tracing the marathon route up to the Queensboro Bridge, then heading back along Third Avenue in Manhattan to make a loop.  I remember Bloomberg saying at one point that running the marathon would be a morale booster, a sign that New York City was back and open for business, like when they ran the marathon back in 2001 after the September 11th attacks.  Running the route today, it was pretty clear that we were NOT back.  Endless lines of cars on Bedford Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard were still waiting for gas.  If the marathon were happening those streets would have been closed off, and I have no idea where those cars would've had to go.

I did see a number of runners along the route wearing the long-sleeve marathon t-shirts that they were giving out at the marathon expo this weekend to people who'd registered.  One of them even had her race number pinned to it.  I smiled and gave them a thumbs-up.  Even though their plans were dashed they were still out there working at it.  Of course that got me to wondering whether all the energy we were spending on this running could be better used to help in the recovery efforts somewhere...