Race Report: New York City Half Marathon

Whether or not any runners had a good or a bad day (including CR here), you had to say that the race here Sunday morning was well organized. This is only the second year of this race and course, and it’s kind of surprising how smoothly it went. The New York Road Runners organization has turned this race into a smaller version of the marathon, with similar number pick-up, corrals, post-race amenities, etc., but on a more manageable scale. It must be something of a dry run/rehearsal for the marathon in early November, and that’s just fine.

The best part, at least for me, was the corral system; it was loose enough to not make you feel like you were part of a Nazi regime, yet well-enough enforced so that the 12-minute milers I usually rail about did not try to sneak up front to hang with the Kenyans and Ethiopians. And that was the other aspect of this race that made it remarkable, world-class runners from around the world flew in just for this race. Overall, ten thousand runners, including some of the best in the world, were to make their way once around Central Park and south to Times Square and the West Side Highway.

And the weather was beautiful. The humidity dropped Saturday night, just in time for the 7AM start, and it was clear and gorgeous. As I’ve said before, I’m glad Jesus took time out from his busy schedule to make life a little more bearable for running fools. Thank you, Mr. C.; peace out.

So with a bib number below 3000, I was able to get close enough to the front of the pack to not feel like the first mile would be slow enough to kill my finish time (whatever that would be, though I wanted to beat my time last year). The gun went off, and though it took me about a minute to cross the start line, I knew the crowd ahead would slow me down anyway. I knew to just relax, there’s more than 13 miles to go, get over it. It was indeed a little slow (why people have to wear headphones blasting tunes into their heads in a race is beyond me, especially on a beautiful and one-of-a-kind course), but not too slow, because the corral system had gotten the faster folks up front, and the slower folks further back… imagine that. Refreshing. So I pass the first mile marker, and my watch says 7:18. Wow, I was kind of hoping to run a 7:10-7:15 pace today, so that first mile time is pretty good under the circumstances. But six more miles of hills lurk ahead, and I pull back, especially knowing I have about an hour and a half of running left to do. So I start doing that mental ‘pace yourself, concentrate’ stuff we all end up boring ourselves with sooner or later. Gotta save something for those final miles in the second half.

So rounding the park, and finishing most of the northern hills (I don’t mind hills, I’m lucky that way), I settle into a fairly even pace while going down the east side. The first 10K chip mats go off, and the clock says 44 minutes. Had my brain been able to complete metric conversion at that point, I would’ve known that meant a 7:10 mile, and I was getting faster. But I felt like I was, and once I was out of the park, onto 7th Avenue, the course opened wide, and cheering crowds appeared. I have to admit here, that despite my reliably cranky worldview and cynical outlook, cheering crowds often turn my race experiences into mushy lovefests. Unless I’m having a really bad day, and it’s happened, if you want to yell ‘you look great’ at me as I ran by, you’re getting a smile and a ‘thank you’ back. And sometimes crowd support makes me run faster.

And I did, with 9500 runners behind me, I booked down 7th and into Times Square, past the rock bands and DJs blasting tunes along the course. Rounding the corner onto 42nd Street, I found myself running with the crowd I knew I’d finish with, more or less, and their/our pace made me want to never let up. So onto the blessedly flat riverfront we went, and I got faster. Three or four miles to go, and I’m relatively fine. At around mile eleven, a spectator saw me coming, picked me out, and yelled out my bib number with a ‘you look great, you’re going to do it!’. Since stopping to write this guy a check would’ve meant ending the ‘you look great’ aspect of my race, I decided to… pick it up. And I did, and I knew I was a little faster when the mile marker race officials started telling us we were at a 7-minute pace.

After mentally texting the requisite ‘where is that %&^# finish line?’ e-mail to my brain’s inbox, there it was ahead. The race announcers are telling us we’re clocking in at 1:31, holy shit. I pick up the pace even more, and see the wristwatch staring back at me with my chip time: 1:30:29. Holy shit!, Part 2. Not my fastest time, but my second fastest, and best in six years. It wasn’t until later that I realized I actually averaged less than a 7-minute mile over the course (25th out of 500 in my age group). Of course, it didn’t take long for mental health issues to mix with the endorphins, as I began to wonder if I could keep that pace for a full marathon. Sorry, Tarzan, that’s a whole different ball of wax.

So I basked in the post-race inner glow of knowing I ran better than I dreamed I could on a warm morning in August (plus 8 minutes faster than last year’s Half) and also in the knowledge that the damn thing was over. No matter how I do, I’m always immediately relieved to be done with races, knowing I didn’t injure myself, didn’t hurl Gatorade, and that my pants didn’t fall down. Everything’s going to be OK, Junior.

Of course, the crowds started rolling in bigtime, and finding Susie-on-the-mend among the thousands was much harder than either of us thought, but we finally did meet up by chance. She didn’t do too badly either, she came in 30th in her age group, and considering she had been turned into biker roadkill exactly one week earlier, her performance was better than either of us would’ve predicted.

Well, I’ll be back to my old cranky self soon, it’s just a nice change to be part of a well-run race and finish in a time, which at least for me, was better than usual. Today, we’re back to humidity and unhappy weather, and that dreary ‘end-of-summer’ vibe building up, but I know yesterday I had a fine time on one of the last, and possibly one of the best race days of the New York season.

- (C) R

P.S. Oh yeah, the winner was Haile Gebrsalassie from Ethiopia, with an amazing finish time of 59:24. I saw an interview with him later, and he was very cool, he laughed about his superfast comrades who had ‘started on the park hills too fast’. He said he thought they were kind of crazy to do that, but in the end that pacing helped him finish over a minute ahead of the second place runner. I found it refreshing that he referred to his competition as ‘crazy’, because sometimes I think the runners around me are crazy, too…