Off-the-Couch Race

(Disclaimer: I am not in any of the pictures below - I copied them from Google. Don't waste time looking for me. Ed was a wonderful support crew, but he was not a photographer.) 

I've been a bit burned out on running since the "marathon" in November. All those months of hitting the same running trails over and over again added up to make me pretty blasé about the prospect of going out there yet again. I've been taking an interval class at the gym, but the workouts are short and fast instead of long. This is perhaps why I like it, but it was doing little to prepare me for the upcoming NYC Half-Marathon. 

See how these fans are dressed? It was that cold.

 This is one of the most fun races of the year, and it has extra significance to me because it's the race that got me back into running regularly when I first did it a few years ago. It's very tough to get into, but Ed and I both entered the lottery last year. In January, we found out that I'd gotten in and he hadn't. Having a race looming ahead is usually all the motivation I need to get training, but it didn't happen that way this year. I put it off and put it off, attending my sprinting class but not really putting in any distance. Finally, two weeks before the race, I did in a ten-mile run. Because I spent the next weekend skiing, that would end up being the longest, and last, training run for me.

The starting corral

Sunday morning, Ed, bless him, got up at 5:30 with me. I groaned as he read me the forecast: It would be 27 degrees when the gun went off at 7:30. I actually like running in the cold, but waiting for a race to start in the cold is another matter. We headed to Central Park and Ed waited with me next to the starting corrals which were filling with runners. We were supposed to go into the corrals by 7:00, but I didn't manage to do it until 7:10 because I didn't want to take off my down coat. (I even did a warm-up jog wearing it, fur hood bouncing all the way.) Finally, though, I could put it off any longer and reluctantly handed my coat to Ed and joined my fellow runners. I was shivering within moments but felt lucky that I had Ed to take my coat at the last minute; others had to check their baggage all the way on the other side of the park and then make their way over to the corrals without outer layers. Oh, and you know how the super-fast runners in these races are always wearing shorts and singlets when everyone else behind them is bundled up? Do not be fooled - the rest of us are not wimps. Ed saw a bunch of them piling out of a heated trailer minutes before the race began! Cream puffs.


We stood around for 20 minutes until, finally, the race began. The course makes a counter-clockwise loop around Central Park (6 miles), then turns onto 7th Avenue. We headed south to 42nd Street (right through Times Square!) where we turned west until we hit the Hudson River. Then there was one more turn, south, so that we were headed toward the tip of Manhattan. The last bit of the race is a stretch through a long tunnel, and the finish line is near Battery Park. Not only did we run through Central Park and Times Square, we ran through the theater district and by the Freedom Tower and the 9/11 memorial, and ended up with a view of the Statue of Liberty. Pretty cool sights, plus I got the added thrill of running down the middle of the West Side Highway, a move that can only be repeated once a year if one is interested in living to blog about it later.

I felt pretty warm by the time I hit mile 2, though I had to stop for a bathroom break and lost a few minutes. (Curse you, pre-race cranberry juice!) My feet, however, did not thaw out until mile 5! Running on numb toes is very strange. I resolved to hit the water/Gatorade tables every 3 miles and settled into a comfortable pace. I felt pretty good until about mile 10, which is right around when I would have started to feel really tired even if I'd trained - though, of course, I'd have reached mile 10 a lot earlier if that had been the case. At mile 6, I slowed to grab a cup of water and tilted it back. And back. And...back. Nothing happened. Sure I'd seen water in the cup when I grabbed it, I peered inside. Solid ice. The water had completely frozen. I pointed this out to the volunteer at the table, and she and I started examining more cups, searching frantically for one that was not solid. At last, I found one that broke up into icy slivers when I compressed the cup in my hand and made do with that. At least it was...refreshing.

Running through the theater district

Luckily, there was a lot of distraction along the course to keep my thoughts away from my protesting body. There were the usual fans and supporters, and their numbers were bolstered by all the people who managed to be in midtown early in the morning who stopped to cheer us on (or be really annoyed that they couldn't cross the street). There was also musical entertainment in the form of blues and rock bands, individual musicians playing guitars or steel drums, DJs pumping loud beats, one traditional Irish dance group, and my personal favorite, a duet formed by a pink penguin on a xylophone accompanied by a pink gorilla playing the upright base. Since the race was on St. Patrick's Day, there was lots of wearin' o' the green and some green tutus, tights covered with shamrocks, etc. I wore green myself, but I should confess that my winter running jacket is green throughout the season and not just on St. Paddy's Day. And Ed popped up halfway through the race and then again near the end to cheer for me. It was nice of him to bother, considering I had no plans to be impressive.

Around mile 11, I started to feel sharp pains in my left achilles tendon. Oh boy... I pulled over to rub it for a second, and a middle-aged man behind me immediately yelled, "Come on, love! You're so close - you can do it!" as he jogged past. A bit of stretching and prodding seemed to help some, and I made it the rest of the way with more pangs but without major incident. I was immensely relieved to see the finish line, and I crossed it at (I think) 1:54. A far cry from my PR of 1:42, but still not too shabby for someone who's done a single productive training run in the last four months. (My official time is slower than that, but that's because the official time does not take into account the line I had to stand in at the port-a-potty.)

I collected a medal, a disposable thermal heat sheet, and a recovery bag containing water, Gatorade, an apple, and pretzels and then managed to find Ed in the throng. I'm sore today, but really not too bad, incredibly. All in all, it was a really fun race, and I hope I get in again next year. If I do, I just may train for it.