Everyday is Halloween

…on the New York City subway. I’m on it enough, I know.
Scary.

And today is the day parents show off the little monsters so they can all go insane with late-night sugar attacks. If their children are anything like some of the trust fund kids in my neighborhood, it is indeed a frightening day.

Ministry – Everyday is Halloween

Tonight: NOVA Marathon Challenge

If you’ve got the time to watch TV tonight, NOVA (PBS, 8PM DST, and re-run ‘til the end of time) is devoting an hour to following a group of folks as they train for a marathon. I can’t have an opinion on the documentary since I haven’t seen it, but hopefully it won’t end up being public TV’s answer to a reality show (dysfunctional people complaining, whining, crying on-camera, etc.), nor an overly sentimental take on ‘the triumph of the human spirit’. Sure, there’s a little bit of all of that in any training and race coverage, but I hope the NOVA team has the good sense to be, well, honest about marathon training without resorting to the usual TV clichés.

Link to ‘NOVA: Marathon Challenge’

Race Report: Poland Springs Marathon Kickoff

I’m getting so blasé about races, I’m forgetting to bring my camera. So no funny pictures of people from behind, which always happens, right? And pretty soon all the race pictures start to look the same. It’s like sports highlight footage on the news, they could show five seconds of somebody catching a ball from last year and it would look exactly the same as the footage that was taken this afternoon. And it’s also like that generic video of obese people from the neck down, walking down the street, always shown when there’s some study published about overweight America… they could reuse those pictures for years, and we’d never know. So you know the one I plopped in (above) is from some other race this year. Hey, at least I’m honest.

Today’s race was a 5-miler, and it was a preview of the last couple of miles of the NYC Marathon next Sunday. Thousands come out for it, and the Central Park drives are jammed beyond belief, so the first two miles end up being a slow jog for practically everyone. It’s a big pain in the ass, especially because at least a fifth of the runners are wearing headphones and blasting the Theme to ‘Rocky’ between their ears and can’t and don’t want to hear anybody else. Unlike Chicago, here headphones aren’t outlawed, just ‘strongly discouraged’, so we can only hope those iPod batteries die sooner than normal on the NYC Marathon course.

My 5-mile time was OK, but it felt like it was about an hour off my PR. Then again, as NYRR prez Mary Wittenberg said before the starting gun, ‘if you’re running the marathon, you shouldn’t be racing today’. True enough.

So we finished at Tavern on the Green, and got our Poland Springs water and bagel and that was that. It had started at 8AM, so getting home by 9:30 was rather nice; unlike the marathon, it didn’t feel like we’d spent the whole day traipsing all over kingdom come.

This all came on the heels of this week’s marathon organizers’ e-mail to participants ‘strongly advising’ them to find alternate travel methods to get to the upcoming marathon start. That means an alternative to the bus diaspora from midtown. Taking the bus costs an extra $20, and most runners already bought their ticket when they registered, and now they tell us not to take their very own buses if we actually want to get to the start in Staten Island on time. The delay is caused by ongoing construction on the Verrazano Bridge that won’t be finished in time, so everybody is mildly screwed.

As for me, it will all work out, this week’s foreign policy is all about being blasé. Like the weather, I refuse to get angry about something I have no control over. I’ll always get cranky about certain things, but after running the Chicago Marathon, I feel like every race is a fun run anyway.

iPod Friday 21

Today’s recording is kind of appropriate for this time of the year, though it’s a bit too old school for most, I guess.

But I like how the Martians end up in Central Park only to drop right near the location of the New York City Marathon finish line. That’s even more appropriate.

Orson Welles & The Mercury Theatre on the Air – The War of the Worlds

Runner Profile: The Mummy

Just in time for Halloween, here’s a picture of the first known runner, pre-Marathon, even.

He was an Egyptian athlete, and after getting all mean and nasty to other runners, he was wrapped in non-wicking gauze and doomed to an eternity of slow, and that means very slow, power-walking.



OK, I’m in a trough between races. Gimme a break, they can’t all be winners.

Anyway, as the old Hollywood saying goes, if you can’t outrun the Mummy, you deserve to die.

Race Report: Staten Island Half Marathon

Yeah, I’m a nut, I ran a half marathon a week after a marathon.
Sue me.

It was a ‘fun run’, OK, and that’s a phrase that’s loaded with way too much meaning for me to go into right now. Anyway, a nice part of it all was getting to the start of the race, which involved a subway ride on the Lexington Avenue line and a 25-minute trip on the SI Ferry. The ferry is still free, which means the terrorists haven’t won, and it’s a fun way to rid yourself of a half hour of your life.

However, on the way, the #4 train I was riding on stopped at 42nd St., as scheduled (you never know on the weekends, it’s travel roulette ‘round here). Since it was early Sunday morning, there was room to sit and fewer passengers getting on and off. And as I waited for the car doors to close, I noticed the biggest damn cockroach in midtown trying to board the train. I’m telling you, he was big, as in ‘Vs. Godzilla’ big. He stopped at the edge of the platform, looked in, and began to think about the feasibility of jumping onto the train. Since the doors stayed open for a few minutes, he had plenty of time to turn around, do a few laps, return, and think some more. Again and again. And I’m just sitting there watching this big-ass insect considering his options during his long run. So I started thinking about Kafka, European Lit’s Mr. Sunshine. And about turning into some running insect myself, and just then the doors slammed shut before Megalon could make another trip to Tokyo. I must say he did appear more intelligent in his decision-making abilities than some of the citizens I’ve come across in this fair city of ours.

So I got to Satan I-, uh, Staten Island, met up with running pal Susie, and she listened to me gab on and on and on about the Chicago Marathon for a full 13.1 miles. Poor thing.

Finished the race, ran to the noon ferry, and was back home before I sprouted antennae.

But that damn cockroach still haunts me. Better re-read
The Metamorphosis in time for Halloween.

Chicago Marathon Day 2.1: Afterparty

Now that even I’m getting bored with replaying race day through my head, I won’t make anybody suffer through a megapost about how I ate a protein bar at 3PM. But I will make a few comments about what went right and wrong after the show.

I can’t belabor the zombie analogy anymore, but I will say that after I crossed the finish line it was pretty much business as usual for the finishers. That usually means exhausted-looking, very quiet, sweaty people moving forward at a top speed of a quarter mile an hour. There was one guy in front of me, who was declining assistance, but then changed his mind. I watched him get carried off, and then it was my turn for volunteers to ask me if I was alright, too. I told one of them that yes, I was OK, and almost followed up with a remark that if I could hear you and answer you, I’m relatively fine.

I even had the wherewithal to stop and get my official finisher photograph. A very nice looking blonde girl, probably half my age, was in front of me in line. She was smiling, and so was I, and I said something obviously dumb like ‘I’m just glad that’s over’, and she agreed. So off we went through the lines of people telling us how wonderful we are and handing us provisions that nobody in their right mind would want to eat after a race like that. I would’ve liked a little bag to put all the crap in (juggling food, etc., takes more brain power than you think you have), but that was the least of anyone’s problems.

I made it to the baggage pickup, and after getting my checked bag, I realized I was the only one still standing up. I found a tree and stretched a little, and I was the only one doing that, too. I have to tell you, I may not feel like 100% after every marathon, but just ‘not running anymore’ makes me feel better, fast. As long as I keep walking or moving I don’t have time to let fatigue catch up, and I don’t let my legs freeze up, either.

I stopped again to look for the food I’d just put in my bag five minutes ago, and it reminded me of my mother’s lament ‘I can’t find anything in this purse’, and then another runner came over to where I was standing and dropped to the ground. He immediately started with the loudest session of dry heaves I’ve ever heard, and it was then that I realized a lot of people were having a bad day. A lot of people.

So after stepping away from Heave Prefontaine (sorry, I’ve used that one before), I left the runners at baggage check to enter the civilian world outside of the chain link fences around us. It was not quite noon, and I headed to the family reunion area around Buckingham Fountain, unshaded and bathed in blazing sunlight. One runner told me that he saw a bank temperature sign that read ’96 degrees’.

And I waited and waited for comrade runners R.B. and Bambi, and started getting worried after another half hour went by and no sign of either. I started to need water, and the race organizers had none beyond the finish line, and now that I was out of the finisher’s area, I couldn’t get back in. That should’ve told me something, but I was still unaware of what was going on out on the course. So I went to the area near the start that had water before the race. I didn’t see a damn thing, but something else kind of strange. Runners were coming in to the finish line from the opposite direction, slowly; another finisher behind me asked me what was going on, and we concluded there was some other 5- or 10-K going on along with the marathon. Of course, no one had said a word about another race, but when the heat starts to fry your brain you can convince yourself of anything. Just as we chalked it up to some concurrent ‘fun run’, a spectator walks by and informs me that ‘they’ve cancelled it’. I didn’t really believe her, but I didn’t say so. What do non-runners know?

I went back to the meet-up area, no sign of friends, but by 12:40 R.B.’s Husband/Patient Spouse found me. Long story short, she shows up about 20 minutes later, and Bambi shows up another half hour or so later. Despite the heat, and because of it, both decided to do the smart thing and take it easy and finish the race when they were good and ready. Bambi had been told to stop at Mile 24, but managed to quietly finish the race anyway despite the stern warnings of organizers, and now, police. Both finished between 4 and 5 hours, and under the circumstances that day, that’s pretty darn good. They even looked better than I did after all that, and that just pisses me off (!). But we were all fine, and damn glad it was over, especially since we kept seeing overcome runners in wheelchairs going by.

That night I watched the local news and saw frightening scenes of runners in convenience store lines buying their own Gatorade and water. Talk about pissed off. And of course, coverage of the guy who collapsed and died. The media was all over the other racing death of the day, too, in the Army 10-Miler in Washington, D.C. Same old story, crazy runners in the heat, what were they thinking….

Well, they trained for months, and didn’t want to stop. Some of them had raised thousands of dollars for charity and had been taken out mid-race. In hindsight, stopping the race was probably the right thing to do, but I have to say I don’t know what I would’ve done had I made it to the halfway point and been told to get on a bus or walk back home. For me, running faster has its benefits, and in this case, not running out of water. But those folks not running as fast? They were screwed by bad weather and poor management. One you can’t control, but the other you can, so I’m not heading back to the Chicago Marathon anytime soon. The race management STILL hasn’t admitted any mistakes were made.

OK, I’ll try to end with some constructive advice. After you finish a long race, keep moving. Resist the urge to plop down. If you keep moving, your legs won’t stiffen up as much and you’ll feel better in the long run (no pun intended there, my puns are more obvious than that). After the race, I kept moving for a couple of hours and felt better that night because of it.

Eat a protein bar or something soon after you finish, as long as it won’t make you sick. You need fuel whether you know it or not. And keep drinking water, that helps for recovery, too. You knew that already, but your brain does funny things with the on/off switch after a race sometimes.

And here’s the strangest advice, this may or may not work for you, but here goes. Try a brief run the next day. I ran for 20 minutes or so the next morning; sure, I was somewhat sore, but a little leg exercise (of any kind, really) helps get rid of the lactic acid that accumulates in your legs. And by Tuesday/Wednesday, I was starting to feel pretty good. Most marathon trainers would probably say I’m crazy, but it works for me.

Thus ends my Chicago ’07 saga, and I’m happy to write that I’m lucky enough to have had a generally good time. Next up: New York City.


P.S. Upon my return to NYC and e-mail, running pal Mindy informed me that I had qualified for Boston. Shit! I’ve done it now…


The number pickup area at the expo, usually staffed by the AARP. Just kidding, I made that up.


A view of downtown, around 6AM. Before the deluge.


One of the departure areas after the finish line, around noon. Those are family members and friends pressed against the chain link fence, waiting for runners. Notice how many runners are coming through. Yeah, not many.