The Manhattan Half Marathon was yesterday (19 degrees at the start!), and the adjective ‘crowded’ was an understatement. There were 4397 finishers, all squeezing through one lane of Central Park Drive. The first 15 minutes looked like the 5AM ‘opening of the doors’ at a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Insane!
Well, to the NY Road Runners credit, we were warned. In her pre-race speech, Mary Wittenberg informed us that they would be experimenting with corrals and separate starts to relieve congestion in future races. That was very good news to get right before the elbowfest for which we were about to receive. Of course, the usual suspects of slow runners with iPods got right up front, so it was the usual delightful traffic jam. Hey, come to think of it, here’s a way of relieving congestion: how about corralling the runners wearing headphones?
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UGH! The last time I ran the Manhatten 1/2 it was in August so in addition to the elbowfest we got 1000 deg temps and 100% humidity. Good to know at least some things are changing for the better!
Well, it certainly felt like it was 981 degrees colder than the one in August! Bambi knows when the glass is half full... they moved July's Bronx Half to next month, so there's going to be frozen gatorade there, too (and it does freeze, we had gatorade slushies the other day)...
I can vouch for those gatorade slushies. I ran the Hyannis 1/2 in Cape Cod last Feb in single digits, it seemed. It had snowed several inches the night before and they had to plow out the route. And yes, there was one idiot there wearing shorts. I grabbed a gatorade at one stop and there was a sheet of ice on the top! Who knew?
You know, I figured out why it's so surprising that Gatorade freezes up. It looks like car anti-freeze! If you've ever had to pour energency shots of anti-freeze into your car radiator (old-school, I know), then you know what I mean.
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