NYC Half 2012

It would be like hopping out the van on the third leg of Ragnar is what I told myself. Running a half-marathon on zero training and pretty much no running. My last run had been Coogan's, two weeks before. That was a 5k and though I did pretty well, it felt like a tremendous effort for such a short distance and no personal record to show for it. Just to give you a sense of things, a 5k is 3.1 miles, a half-marathon is 13.1 miles.

I did it because I had a spot and had paid for it. It's an expensive race and it's difficult to get in. Plus I'd worked hard to get a spot this year. I got in through guaranteed entry: run four out of five half-marathons in the five borough series. I ran three and had one cancelled on me, so I got my spot. The no training was a combination of plantar fascia issues and winter funk.

Going into it I knew it would be hard, but the route was sweet and I wanted to give it a try. It's not everyday you get to run through Times Square with 7th Ave closed to traffic and fans lined-up to cheer for you.

Plus: I had a a plan. I knew I could run 6-7 miles before things started getting rough. I'd start with a friend from PPTC and hang on to her for as long as possible, that would take me to Times Square. Then there was a fast downhill heading towards the West Side Highway which I'd use to recover. That would take me up to mile 8. Then I'd just have to promise myself I could do two more miles. By then I'd be so close to Canal Street I'd be in awe of what I'd already done and refuse to quit. Plus, once you've done 10 miles, what's 3 more?

It sort of went like that. I held on to my fellow PPTCer for almost five miles. We went out kind of fast and  she went on to finish in 2:09. I was glad I didn't stick by her since that would have been a record for me and yesterday was not a day for records for me.

Shortly after we said goodbye, I connected with a woman who was wearing a Colombian shirt. Turns out she lives near Prospect Park. I found a new running buddy (my first Spanish speaking one!) and a work connection. On 7th Ave I got to see some PPTC teammates cheering. Go team!

Times Square was even more surreal than usual. It's no Verrazano, but the thrill of running through it made me forget my aches for a moment. But it was just a moment. The boost I hoped to get from the downhill recovery didn't come.

Cars on the left, cool people on the right.

I said good-bye to my new friend at the entrance to the West Side Highway, slowed down even more, and cranked up the music. Mile 8 was mostly The Grates telling me that Science is Golden, which I took to mean that I could force my mind to get me to the finish line, and that I was on The Biggest And Largest Adventure Ever. Then by mile 9 Justin Timberlake was whispering all kinds of delicious things in my ear and telling me that I was bringing sexy back. By mile 10 Adele was running in the deep. And it was deep. So deep I had to take a moment to take a picture just for you.

Not sure how I got through the next mile and a half. There was some shuffling, some walking. There might have been some quiet inner whimpering. And then I felt a hand on my back. I didn't know her but she was wearing the same shirt I was.

"Come on, PPTC, you can do it!"she said as she passed me. So I turned my music off and I caught up with her. She is a new member, and her company kept me going all the way until we were within view of the last 800meters sign. By then my quads were cramping and all sorts of things felt like they were going to fall off.

It told her to go. She still had enough juice for a strong finish, while I felt I needed to walk if I didn't want to get hurt. I crossed the finish line shuffling, got my medal, and continued on. I felt like I was just going to topple over while walking on the cobbled streets of the South Street Seaport in the post-finish line area. I wasn't meeting anyone after the race. Everyone else I had knew had finished earlier and I had no close friends who had come just to cheer for me. I was starting to feel a little lost and lonely when I saw the PPTC banners and headed towards them.

Belonging to a club as warm and friendly as PPTC has had a big impact in my running. Speed training with Coach Tony has made me faster and stronger. On days like yesterday when I was struggling so much, being part of PPTC made all the difference. In a sea of thousands of nameless faces, I was part of something, and they were there for me. Couldn't have done it without you, PTTC. Thank you!

Staten Island Half Marathon

Sunrise over Manhattan

This was the view at the start. Something faraway you could see only if you squinted through the fog. Like my PR.

I'd been training for what I knew was an ambitious PR - I was looking to knock twenty minutes off my half-marathon time. Between my first and my second half marathons I chewed up thirteen minutes and spit them out nonchalantly by the side of the road. I figured if I worked hard enough I could get close to a two-hour half. I'd worked hard and gotten faster; the weekend before the Staten Island Half I ran a 5k and bested my time by two minutes.

As I walked into the corral last Sunday I was listening to the muppets playing Mahna Mahna and was excited to run my best half to date. I was missing my training partner Lindsay who had gotten hurt and Samantha who had a ferry difficult time making it to Staten Island but when the corrals collapsed and we started to move, I was ready to roll.

Pacing is not my strong suit and I have a tendency to get carried away so I was trying to focus on not going faster than a 9:14min/mi pace, but also no slower than 9:30min/mi. I managed to sort of stick to that and was having a great time until about mile 8 when my stomach decided the race was over.

With a high sun on course with no shade, temperatures creeping up near 80 and my stomach being squeezed from the inside out, I decided to slow down for a couple of miles. I thought if I rested from miles 8-10 by going down to my easy pace I'd cool down, recover, then race the last 5k of the course and still get about a 2:05 for a fifteen minute PR.

Slowing down didn't do the trick. I felt my body was either going to explode or I was going to pass out if I kept running. So I started run/walking hoping I'd start feeling better and be able to go back to running. At around mile 10 Samantha passed me and urged me to join her, I waved her on and wished her luck (she went on to an amazing breakthrough PR). Later, a fellow PPTC member from my speed group joined me. I tried to keep up with her but after a few yards I knew that would not be possible.

Please let me get out of here before I puke.

For the first eight miles I'd managed to stay on target for the PR I wanted and had even managed be about a minute and half under. As I shuffled along I kept re-calculating and trying to make deals with myself. I was done racing, but if I could stick to my easy pace I could still finish with a decent time. C'mon! You can still shave 10min! You can do five! But doing the old lady shuffle was all I could handle without turning into sludge and even then I had to take walk breaks. By the time I approached the finish line and heard Jenn, another PPTC member, cheering for me I was starting to feel disoriented enough not to understand why she was calling me.

It took me two days to recover from the wicked race hangover I got from this.

My final time was 2:19:09 for a not too glorious 51second personal record.

It's a bittersweet new personal record. It's not the one I wanted but getting so sick in a race feels like a sort of accomplishment. Maybe it's a rite of passage, or maybe it's the knowledge that I gave it everything I could give it that day.

It also means I still have a huge record ahead of me.  I'm looking forward to my next half-marathon and I plan to get to the starting line with the same Mahna Mahna energy.

Ready for the worst, hoping for the best

As most of you know, there was a hurricane on track to become the worst natural disaster ever to hit NYC. It was due to hit us on Sunday morning and the city swiftly went into a state of high alarm, all permits were canceled including the one for the NYRR Bronx Half Marathon.

I was ready to run the Bronx Half. Sort of. I'd made plans to stay at Tracy's the night before - two stops away from the starting line - so I wouldn't have commuting problems. In order to make it fit into my Runner's World Sub 2:00 plan, I'd taken miles here and there throughout the week so my long run could add up to 13.1. I was planning on running it at the 10:30 pace the program dictated for my easy runs on that week. I was not going to race it, but just run it as a long training run.

The thing is that though that pace is now an "easy" pace for me, if I had run the Bronx Half like that, it would've been a PR.

But I since I'd been having a lot of minor and not so minor problems running lately, I was also preparing for the worst. I was fearing having to quit mid-race, ending up in a medical tent, or ending up so beaten up that I wouldn't be able to continue with my ten-week plan.

That didn't happen, but neither did the best. The best would've been having an amazing race.

What I got instead was a lost weekend. It didn't have the drama of catastrophe, but neither did I manage to make it an amazing weekend.

Kind of like Irene. A lot of people are joking and even complaining about how lame it was, or how much of an overreaction all the preparation was. I was prepared (see hottie in the poncho pictured above - I got him to keep me company during the storm) and the relative mildness of the storm left me restless.

The hype, combined with the all the preparation had left us all expecting something. When that didn't come, most of us expressed it as disappointment. The storm was a let down. But I don't think anyone is really sorry it didn't hit NYC hard. It's just that we all lost this weekend and didn't get much in return.

Including those of us who signed up for NYRR races this weekend. No returns, no refunds. But not having to live through a major disaster, and not having gotten injured running a half-marathon - I think that's pretty good.

Halving Marathons

Time moves more slowly for some. For me, it's time to go public on my New Year's resolutions. I have noticed it's February, but I figured it was time set my running goals on blog.

I'm not running any marathons this year.

I loved training and running the NYC marathon last year. I loved the excitement of having such a big project ahead of me and I loved giving Hal Higdon a run of my schedule. I basked in the sweet tyranny of early mornings and enforced soberness combined with the weekend night camaraderie of twit-runners preparing for long runs.

And the long runs! On Friday nights I had a standing date with myself at my favorite restaurant to carb up. It freed me from social commitments and it gave me an excuse a reason for a quiet evening with great food and a good book. The long runs gave me views of New York and of myself I'd never seen and it was intoxicating. Running from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back to Brooklyn I felt strong. I felt I could do anything.

Which is why I'm taking that I-can-do-anything feeling and applying it elsewhere.

I'm still going to run, but I want to apply elsewhere the focus and determination required for training for a marathon. I want to put that focus back into my writing.

So this year instead of running marathons, I'll run half-marathons. Five of them. One in each borough. Plus Ragnar, of course. The gang is getting back together and going Woodstalking.

One half-marathon down: Manhattan. It was fourteen degrees. The windchill was four degrees and it was sunny with a chance of awesomeness. With spotty winter training slowed down by a lung that's giving me trouble, I had no idea what to expect of this half. My longest run in a while had been my easy five-ish miler on my birthday and though I'd been running five miles regularly, I'd gone on no long runs for this.

It was fine. It was better than fine. It was so much fun I might even write a race report.