Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Overheard at Tunnel to Towers



The full race recap is on the NYDailyNews Running Dialogue. You can find it here.

The race was a memorable one and there were a few things I didn't mention on the guest post for lack of space. One of my favorite details from the race was a conversation I overheard while waiting to be herded to the starting line.

Him, telling her, both of them wearing sneakers with still sparkly white soles: "So when you run a lot, you have to be careful with your skin. If you watch a marathon you see guys with red streaks down their shirts from their nipples bleeding. So there's this thing that runners use. It's called GU and they put it all over themselves to keep from chafing. They smear it all over!"

No wonder I haven't been able to tolerate GU. I've been doing it WRONG!

But beyond that, I found this exchange both cute and funny. They were speaking of half marathons and marathons as these wild things they've heard of on par with alligators in sewers and flesh eating bananas. It wasn't really that long ago that I'd lived blissfully unaware of GU, Body Glide, and the shower test.

Though part of my was laughing at this, it was also a good reminder that we're all experts and newbies and that the distance between both is small. Where you stand on that line is not only relative, but is also always changing which is why it's good to be nice to those just getting started.

I hope they had a good race.