The Joe Nation 2007 NYC Marathon Log

On Saturday mornings I listen to a program on NPR called, I believe, "It's Only A Game." It comes out of WBUR in Boston.
A lady named Karen Givens (sp?) reports periodically and yesterday she was talking to runners in NYC. I half expected to hear from Joe(is that a microphone)Nation.
After a couple of twists and turns in the story the subject turned to "the half-marathon." At 13 miles, the half is quite an event, but the name, the half part, diminishes it.
They, yall, need to come up with a better name for it.
(You can probably still find the story at NPR.org)

Dunno, johnboy, a half marathon is only about a half a mile longer than a 20Km, but I know you could stop fifty people on the street where you live and ask them how far 20Km is and get you'd a lot a of blank looks, so calling a half marathon a "20K and a skosh" is probably out because we'd have to explain BOTH 20K and Skosh.

Perhaps we need to use some peculiarly American measure for it.
How many hoots and hollers are there in a mile?
Can we call it a far piece? As in "We come a far piece today."
Or we could go Medieval, shorten the race by a bit and call it the Race of 100 Furlongs (about 12.5 miles) or do the exact measurement calling it
"The NYC One Hundred and Four Furlongs and Thirty-Two Rod Run"
Be hell getting that on the official teeshirt though.


I don't know if calling it a Half diminishs it. The conversations I have go like this:

"....and last Sunday I did the NYC Half Marathon."
"How far is that?"
"Thirteen point one miles."
"Thirteen? ****!"

Joe(and that was with the Sisters of Mercy)Nation

So here is the finish:


Please note the number of very skinny people in this picture.

Joe(winner of the light truck division)Nation

Woo-hoo!

Great job, Joe!

Cool picture too, did you do that?

What was your time? (The times at the top seem to be records... is the one in the middle your time?)

Official time was 2:13:47.

Some odd things going on with me now.

From Window (my reserected blog)
I Can't Stop the Music or 20,000 Songs in All

There was a time when I could quiet my mind. I'd sit down in a corner of a room or lie flat on a mat and just listen to the silence in my head. It was easy to do after working on learning to do it for four or five years. Yoga is like that. You do something over and over and over and think about how you are doing it and where your feet are and where your elbow is resting and then one day as you begin the posture you don't have any thoughts about it, you are just flowing through it. It's a parallel to riding a bicycle, one moment you are trying so hard to balance, the next you are floating above the wheels in perfect harmony with them.

Yoga was a long time ago and I have gotten stiff and tight and I get red in the face as I try to remember where my elbow should be. (We do a little stretching before and after Running Class and I think that is what triggered the thought that I should listen to the silence again.) That and the fact that my headphones died in the middle of a fourteen mile run last Friday.

Wait a minute.

I am mixing all of this up. Starting from the beginning: I have been using headphones and a Zen player during all of my training runs and most of the races I have been in, I like the music and it distracts me. Coach Mindy at the Marathon Seminar two weeks ago said that could be a problem, the distraction part. I hated to hear that but I knew (kinda sorta) that she was right. So of course, I ignored her advice.

I don't use the headsets during the Running Classes with Coach Shellie because it's not allowed.
Two things happened semi-simultaneously: 1) I started actually hearing my breathing during class and 2) the next day the headset died in the middle of the long run. What happened then?
Well, my breathing, fairly important to running as you might imagine, improved 200 percent. Before I had had this little ragged rhythm going with the occasion gasp in the middle. Not good. Now I am as steady as the bellows of the old church pipe organ.

So now I have no music to listen to, right?

Wrong. The music has continued to play in my head.

Continuously.

All 20,000 songs that I have ever listened to or played or half-heard passing by a bar at midnight now burble up and unwind inside my mind at every moment of every waking or sleeping hour. I didn't really notice it until I tried to stop it. And, um, I couldn't. I woke up last Sunday with the last few bars of Mustang Sally, complete with sax backups, winding up to it's finish and while I fed the cats Don't stop thinking about tomorrow started rolling into town. These are the recordings of these songs, not just my brain's attempt to remember, they are chapter and verse the complete unabridged versions. They play through, a fact for which I am grateful. I do not want to fight my mind over a six bar repeat of the chorus from I'm bringing Sexy Back (yea!) for several hours.

Then I tried to meditate.

Just to see how bad it was.

It was bad. I ahoomhmed and ommmed and let my mind be, but Two Tickets to Paradise and Lungs don't fail me now kept right on playing, spinning on their own little internal discs.

It's only been a few days.

Maybe the batteries will run down.

Nope.

That's what happens to me continuously. I've accepted it. For a while it was a good joke to say that I had the misfortune to go deaf when 80's music was fresh in my head, but that era seems to be enjoying some kind of vogue now. (Thankfully, "Vogue" was just beyond my time.)

As I say it's pretty much always there, but especially when I'm running or working out. I decided that I like it because it means that there is always something with the "right" beat going on. (I just get bored when the same one "plays" over and over and over and over... I have to change up my stride sometimes to get some new material.)

I see you got a 14-miler in. Outstanding!

I have been out of it for a while, but managed to get some slow
sightseeing jogs run in Montreal. The best one took me to the top of "The
Mountain." There's a glorious view from what's called the Belvedere
Kondiaronk. I also took a jog from our hotel down to Old Montreal and
along the river for a bit.

Now to get back on track.

Twas a good month for running. Just clocked in at 90 miles with a lot of those doing more than just bobbling along the roadway. This late in the game I am finally learning a little bit about pacing and effort.

We had an interesting class on Thursday night. We ran around the Haarlen Meer and then up Fifth Avenue. That Fifth Avenue hill comes at the 23 mile point in the Marathon and staggers many, Thursday no one staggered, but we were only about three miles into our workout. Friday, I went down the river and for the first time got to see Riverbank State Park.

There is a full quarter mile track and a soccer field and ballfields built on top of a sewage plant. It's beautiful but the residents say that some days the smells are pretty bad.



The view is incredible. You can see all the way down the river to the Verrazano and the Statue of Liberty. I ran a lap on the track. Then trotted down to Central Park at 59th Street. I guessed it was 10 mile plus but a remeasurement this morning put it at just short of 10.

Joe(It was just fun)Nation

Before you just dismiss it like some putz, think about it.


JOG THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL


Ok ok ok, Heres the deal. We set up food stations with volunteers who have your schedule planned and you try to be the first THROUGH JOGGER on the AT, Youll be famous , and, of course, so will I , for having thought this up.

My skills in massive drilling project logistics will help because we have to constantly lay drill pipes out in areas where we espect to be in a few months or even a year, (and we also provision thee remote areas in sequence so that the foods stay unstolen).

I can see it all now. You could do the AT in record time, wed need to think about the shoes though. Youd need something a bit more supportive and wed need knee pads. WAIT A MINIT, Ill get back to you on this, its gonna take a little more planning than I gave it in the last 3 minits.

Inspired by Joe Nation, I did a 14-miler. I was walking like Grampa
McCoy for the rest of the day. The rest of the day was shorter than usual
as I hit the sack early. The good news is that after a recovery day, I felt
pretty good. I think I may have hit my limit at 14, though.

Way to go, George!! I've been working up to doing a bit longer this Friday. Thinking about running down the river to the park (7 miles) once around the five mile loops and then back up the river. The problem is there isn't much water in the upper areas (above 125th Street) and.... it is all uphill including the complete ball buster of the biggest hill on Manhattan up the hill by the George Washington Bridge then up the hill to the pedestrian crossing then uphill to 181st Street. (whew)

But then I tell myself that when I get to to the hill of Fifth Ave at mile 23 of the Marathon I will say,,,

Joe(Hill? What Hill?)Nation

I just noticed yesterday that I am about to cross the 1000 mile mark of training. That's 1000 miles of recorded runs in about 100 hours of running.
That's a lot of zeros.

The question is should I carry a bottle of champagne with me this morning and stop at the eight mile mark and down it then or have I developed any ability to delay gratification making me be able to wait until I arrive back home?

Joe(I think I will celebrate with a long shower and a nap)Nation

Waiting with bated breath to see how you did... that would be quite a run.

Today started off weird. I got off at 110th because I wanted to start with some hills. It's not a nice neighborhood and at 5:30AM it was not a nice neighborhood that was pitch black.
The street lights were not on in the park. Just the traffic signals. How dark was it? Try shutting your eyes AND putting hands over them, then imagine a teeny green light in the distance up that hill. Okay, run, now don't trip, and try not to imagine that there are a hundred crackheads in the bushs right next to your elbow.

There.

That improved your speed up that hill, didn't it?

It was very unsettling, but once you are in the park, you are pretty much committed to running until you get to a lighted area which I did very fast.
=======
There's nothing to think about on long runs. It's not like you are in a race where you are trying to hit mile posts at a certain time nor do you have to spend any brainpower in avoiding hazards.

Races are full of hazards,
horizontal lines of best friend runners loping along and blocking half the roadway,
stuff - shirts, water cups, water bottles, hats, armbands, kneebands, headbands, gloves, unidentified hair holding thingies and more shirts- that have been tossed or fallen off other runners,
walkers- those who are proudly walking~good for them~ at ONE THIRD the pace of all the others in the middle of the road ,
great masses of runners who have suddenly thought "Hey, maybe I will stop at that water table." and who then enmasse attempt to cut a tangent across the thousands who are not stopping,
and finally, the guy who had to stop at the portapottie at the two mile mark and who now is trying to catch his friends who are three miles ahead, who comes barreling through the runners like that that idiot on the Jersey Turnpike who tries to speed his way through the beach traffic back-up.

So anyway, I was on the long run this morning and I was thinking: Are you going to run back up the river and up the hills? And this committee in my brain considered this week this way-- one short run on Monday and two even shorter runs later in the week, followed by this long run and then there is a RACE tomorrow. Yes, a qualifying race which I must do for next year's marathon, so maybe not so smart to go too far.

(That started another thought about how I always say this is my first marathon with the implication in my mind that it will be the first of many.)

So at the end of the second loop with a little side trip and some extra tenths at the south end of the park I stopped at just over 13 miles and felt really good about it.

I also figured out a route in my neighborhood that is a circle that is all uphill.

Joe(there's an elevator involved)Nation
57 days to go. Oh, I now have 1005 miles logged.

Yeoooow, regarding the uphill run in the dark. I figure the crackheads think you're crazy...

Good luck tomorrow.

There were other runners out there with me, but you could only see about five feet in front of you. (No moon, black pavement) Luckily, no one was coming down the hill in the same lane. You could hear the footsteps of someone coming up behind you (How's that for inspiration?) and I was passed by a guy on bike who had a rear flashing light and a little headlamp that gave him about ten feet of vision.

I was very glad to reach the other side of the hill and the first working streetlamp.

I miss-spoke before. I have 1005 miles logged in about 175 hours, this year I have something over 500 miles in a little over 100 hours.

Joe(Not as poetic or numeric)Nation

I had planned to get in a 12 mile run this morning before going into work at
eleven. I overslept and so had to settle for 9 miles. It's just as well, I guess. The morning was hot and humid.

I've got a bunion the size of Portugal and it seems to be bothering me more
and more. I may need to look into some special padding.

Let's hear about the race, Joe!

Okay.

It turned out to have it's interesting points. This was going to be a loafer for me. Run the four miles and then take a cab to the gym and go to work. Get a qualifying race in for next year and use the short distance to recover from the 13 miler the day before.
Good.
Get to the site on time, get my shirt, my number, tie on my chip and I am ready to run with the bulls. This (the Fitness Run) is the only race of the year that I run in that is all men. No ladies. No bobbing ponytails. No added attractions, I mean, distractions.

We get an announcement that the wheelchair race is about to begin and would we please applaud the wheelchair racer, Dave. Just one guy is going to race in his chair? Wow, we all said to each other, that would be tough. Then we went back to stretching and talking. Still ten more minutes before we would start.

This was a chattier bunch then last year when no one spoke a word. We were talking about the US Open and getting ready for the marathon and whether we would be doing the half-marathons in Queens and Staten Island. (I'm doing both.)

Off we went at 8:30.

I am puttering along listening to a guy explain frame by frame the new John McEnroe commercial to another guy. Several other chime in and we are laughing and puffing through the second of the four miles. We make the turn at 2.5 and there is a little upgrade to the reserviour which I don't even think about anymore as a hill, but this fellow to my left is straining and pushing and says "Boy, I'm going to love the next downhill!" And "Man, this is getting to me." Stuff like that. And saying it out loud. And he is really slowing down. Losing it.

That's when we see Dave.

Dave is in his wheelchair. A regular wheelchair. No fancy wheels. No low slung carriage. Just a chair. Like you see at the ER entrance of the hospital. And he is pushing it backwards up the hill with his right foot because, as we can see now, his arms don't really work. He is almost three miles into his race and working very hard. Very.

I have been loafing. Why should I be loafing when Dave isn't loafing? The guy with the complaints looks at me like "****. What the hell do I have to complain about?" and we both take off running.

I ran the last mile as fast as I could go and was only fifty seconds off of last year's personal record.

Joe(no more loafing)Nation

It's been a good week for getting ready. 50 days to go, but who is counting? After the race last Saturday I took Sunday off but then got in some good miles on Monday and Wednesday morning, did some one mile intervals in class on Tuesday and then headed out this morning to do a long run.

I packed a powerbar and an orange gel, carried a bottle of Gatorade around the first of three six mile loops. Yes, you read that right.

18 miles.

I felt really good all the way through it. No speed work just steady up the hills and tried not to pound myself in the downhills. I purposely ran the last three miles on the Marathon Route so I could visualized what it will be like on November Fourth. As I came around the final turn to see the three little hills to the finish a real sense of power came over me and I just breezed up the slope to the Tavern on the Green.

31.5 miles for the week

Joe(can't wait to get going again on Sunday.)Nation