Race Report: USA 8K Championships

Here’s something rare, a race report about some event I didn’t even run in. I could’ve signed up for the ‘normal person’ 8K held before the championships, but since I had a long run on the schedule for today, I decided racing the day before was not a great idea. Plus sometimes it’s better to just sit one out and watch other people run hard enough to vomit all over themselves. Good times!

I had no excuse to not lug around the camera, so I showed up at sunup on a chilly, misty Saturday morning to take some pictures. The race for everyday folks started at 7:30, so right as it started I managed to dash off to the west side of Central Park to cheer on the folks at the 1-mile mark. I was the only one there, and since it was at the top of a hill, the runners were generally happy to see anybody with a pulse telling them they’re doing well and everything will be OK, because ‘at least it’s not a marathon’. I made it back to the east side in time to see all the runners, again, rounding back up near the 4-mile mark. A participant asked me if he was ‘almost there’ and I told him in the nicest way possible that I don’t announce that information unless I’m staring at the finish line. Another runner laughed, they knew what I meant.

After the 1,780 ‘normal’ runners finished, the super-fast men’s invitational was held at 9AM. These guys are faster than I’ll ever be, but I was also reminded that most of them look like they stopped growing at 16 (even though some of them are well into their 20s and even 30s), and have that short, lean, bony, sinewy body type. Which sometimes makes their heads look huge. Oh, I ain’t hatin’ on the playas, it’s just there’s a body type going on, and we all know it. They could kick my ass in any race, and that’s all there is to that, and if 6% bodyfat is what it takes, so be it. Same goes for the women, although there’s even less bodyfat going on there, those ladies have upper arms that look like sticks.

And after Jorge Torres won the 8K in 22:41, the ladies turned out for their race, and Shalane Flanigan won that in a time of 25:40. With both events taking about a half hour for everyone to finish, there wasn’t a lot of standing around and waiting for it to be over, that was a nice change for the average spectator standing out in the cold.

As for me, my running mileage for the day was a lowly 3-4 miles accumulated as I shuttled around the park to snap pictures. Like I said, I saved most of my energy for today’s long run, which turned into a trip through four boroughs (with running pals Susie and Denise in the first half, and later a trip past the site of yesterday’s crane accident in midtown) and two times across the Queensborough Bridge. Amazingly, I had 22-23 miles in me, or 3 hours plus. I’ll take it, my long runs haven’t been so long lately, I think I broke out of that today. Hopefully, I’ll have enough leg strength for tomorrow morning’s swim training session and won’t look like I’ve forgotten everything.

So below are some chronological images of the three 8Ks I watched, and award pictures of the top ten runners in the men’s and women’s races. At least you get the idea of what it looks like to run in Central Park in the winter.