Race Notes: The NYC Half Marathon

I ran the NYC Half Marathon for the first time on Sunday!  I'd been putting it off in past years because the registration fee is well over a hundred dollars, and the all-Manhattan layout of the course never really gave it the same kind of epic sweep as touching all five boroughs in the full marathon.  I'm always curious to try new courses though, and I figured this one was worth trying at least once.

So how did it go?  First of all it was cold.  And dark: the race started at 7:30, and the sun didn't come up until after 7.  There was still a bit of slushy ice in the water they were handing out along the course.  Also, they were funneling several thousand people through five metal detectors before we got to the starting corrals, which certainly isn't my ideal way to start a day.

But what about the race itself?  It started off fairly quiet, since the first six miles were in Central Park (which still had a fair amount of snow and ice left over from everything that got dumped on us in February).  That stretch was a lot like most of the other NYRR races, actually, with the exception of a part on 110th Street where we went out to a turnaround in the plaza at the northwest corner and came back.

When we exited the park down 7th Avenue at the 10K mark, things started to get more interesting.  There were a lot more people cheering as we got to Times Square, and they had some bands playing.  I wouldn't quite put it on the same level as the marathon in terms of excitement and energy, but it was a definite boost.  That continued as we went along 42nd Street to the west side, with more bands and crowds along the way.

One of the most interesting parts of the race came in the last mile, when we went underground into the tunnel beneath Battery Park where cars usually turn around to go up the FDR Drive.  I always enjoy running in places that aren't normally open to foot traffic, and there was a fun, dark eeriness to that place.

When I crossed the finish line at Wall Street I came in about a minute and a half behind my PR, which I thought was pretty good considering that I haven't been out running much in this frigid, snowy winter, and I had a bad cold a few weeks ago.  The field was a little over 20,000 people.  Overall I'd say it was an interesting and worthwhile experience, but the price tag will probably keep me from making this a yearly habit.

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...

Marathon Training: Week 5

I've been spending so much of my time running lately that it's started taking over my thoughts.  I think about how I can go faster, hold out longer, chafe less, and ignore the intense heat that I feel whenever I'm out running in the humidity and sweating all over the place.  I hear the Pace Lady, as I've taken to calling her, in my head, telling me that my pace is at 11 minutes per mile, or seven and a half minutes per mile, constantly fluctuating as if to mock me, and still it's probably the most accurate running app I've used so far (including the watch I used to use with the foot attachment).

At least I'm pretty sure I can rely on my legs.  My upper body might be doing all kinds of crazy things with the sweating, and the heart racing, and the constant need for more air than it seems possible to glean from the air around me, but I've hardly felt anything at all that's worried me about my legs.  Occasionally my calves or my knees will make themselves known more than they should, but it hasn't really gotten to the point of what I'd call pain.  I think that could serve me well if I ever worked up the nerve to try an ultramarathon, but I'm not there yet.  I still haven't gotten through a regular marathon without hitting a point where my legs made themselves known quite vociferously, though I'm hoping that'll change if I can get my time down far enough under 4 hours.  My best so far is around 4:15, but last year was the first time I got really serious about sticking to an official training schedule, and the one I'm on this year is more intense than that one.  It's been working out pretty well: I'm on week 5, and I've actually been running more miles than I've been scheduled to.  It can be hard to fit the runs into my schedule sometimes, but the only time I've outright skipped one was last night when a thunderstorm was raging outside.  Even then I took the opportunity to get back to P90X and do some plyometrics.  I definitely felt that it my calves this morning, which I hope is for the better.

In three days I'm doing the second NYRR Long Training Run in Central Park.  I'm either going to go 16 or 20 miles, depending on how my legs are feeling.  I've gotten to 20 before, but I'm not even sure it's a good idea to be running that many miles so long before the marathon, when I haven't been running anywhere close to that distance yet, nor do I need to in order to ramp up to where I need to be.  I've got 11 weeks still, and a number of long races to run before then.  I actually feel bad that I've scheduled so many races, since it leaves only a few weekends when my wife and I are free to get out of the city for a couple of days.  Even when we do get away I'll still have to keep up with my runs, since my schedule has me running 6 or 7 days out of practically every week.

Running has also become a major part of my Tuesday nights now, since that's when I'm taking my running class.  Including the warm ups and cool downs, each class has racked up nearly 7 miles for me, and some of them are the most intense miles of my whole week.  I've done three classes so far, and two of them have had us running loops in the north end of the park, where the most punishing hills are.  I've run some of my fastest miles there, but I can't keep up that kind of pace, and by the third of the three laps I've been dropping back a pace group to keep myself from keeling over.  The other week the course took place along what are roughly the last three miles of the New York City marathon, which helped remind me what I'm in for in November.  There were two minute breaks between miles during the class, which helped my pace tremendously.  Lord knows I won't be running nearly as fast after I've put 23 miles behind me, but it still felt good to know that I can keep up with everybody else when the hills and the humidity are a little less intense than they were on the nights when we were in the north end of the park.  I'd have to say that, from my two experiences with the NYC marathon so far, the mile coming up to Central Park has to be the most dispiriting mile I've ever run, since it's uphill pretty much the whole way.  It's not even a steep uphill, but it's constant, and it comes at a time when most runners don't have a whole lot left to give.  I'm not looking forward to that mile this year, but hopefully I'll be better prepared for it than I've ever been before.