Race Report(s): Mother’s Day 4-Miler & 10-Miler; Healthy Kidney 10K

Not much newsworthy from 87th and Fifth, a.k.a. Cranky HQ. No real excitement beyond two speed and strength workouts a week, and regular trips to the pool. Haven’t bought anything bike-related yet. I have to get my act together on that, admittedly.

Well, I did get to watch a race or two on May 11th, a ‘Mother’s Day’ 4-miler, and a women-only 10-miler. So I stood near the start and cheered runners on, and then went to the other side of Central Park and, all alone, cheered on those making the return trip down the other side of the loop. I wore my t-shirt with ‘Cranky’ emblazoned on the front, and received a few amusing shout-outs. I’m starting to get a little bolder when I’m spectating, saying things like ‘pick it up, use the downhill’, ‘I hate this hill, too!’, ‘that was my evil twin on the other side of the park’ and crap like that. You get tired screaming ‘nice job’ all the time. The slower runners laugh at my dumb jokes, which makes me like them even more.

So after a couple of hours of spotting friends and yelling out dumb stuff, I headed home relieved I hadn’t raced that tiresome course again. My last 4-miler was a PR, and I’d already decided I’d let that stand for a few more weeks before I ended the 4-miler winning streak.

Tuesday night I completed a progressive speed workout that left me, guess what, tired, and then followed that on Thursday with a 5K time trial on the Central Park reservoir. Actually, it was about a 5.3K, so my finish time (20:40) was pretty good for me. That night’s running trainer (who happens to be my swimming trainer from a few weeks back) timed several of us, all running at about 90% effort. Want to get faster? Want to kick your own ass? Try a ‘run-as-fast-as-you-can’ trial once in a while just to get used to running at that pace.

And then Saturday was another monster 10K in the park. And my legs had not recuperated from Thursday. Kids, don’t do a hard workout 36 hours before a race.

So my finish time was OK (42:10) but not very near my PR from several weeks ago. No real regrets, though. I knew about 2 miles in that a personal record wasn’t happening. As for the race, we were put into pace corrals that kind of worked and kind of didn’t since slower guys wearing heavy, polyester basketball shorts still try to sneak into the faster corrals so they can impress their friends. But overall, it was evenly paced, if a bit of a slow start. Over 7000 runners were there, and that’s a lot for a two-lane asphalt road. The race, the Healthy Kidney 10K for kidney research, was sponsored by the United Arab Emirates (not your typical sponsor); that meant a little more money put into it than usual, which translated to each runner receiving a technical tee. Oh, and some guy flew here from Nigeria or Kenya to run it in 28 minutes or so, it was his first trip to the U.S. Yeah, it was a fast crowd.

After that race, I was spent, but not enough that I couldn’t run long for a couple of hours with pals Susie and Denise down to and across the Brooklyn Bridge Sunday morning. I am happy to report I took today (Monday) off. Mainly because I have a 5K tomorrow.

If anyone is aware of a 12-step program for runners, let me know.