The Joe Nation 2007 NYC Marathon Log

Two years ago, in a rainstorm, you were in a cab while Noddy and I were trudging reluctantly along

Ah!

Joe(the best of times, the worst of time and the New York Times)Nation

Here's a sample.
The idea is that you jog real easy as a warm-up (13 minutes in this case)
Then you run a series of running hard for a while followed by a recovery jog
(in this case a 1-minute sprint followed by two minutes of recovery, six times).
Finish up with a cool-down jog (in this case 13 minutes).

The idea is to crank it up for a short period and then give yourself time to
"get your wind back".

I came into work today to see signs everywhere expressing the regret of
our facilities dept. that there was no hot water available. Bummer. I was
planning on a run at lunchtime followed by a nice hot shower. I decided
to go ahead and run anyway and then take a less than hot shower. It
was very much less than hot. It was frigid. Aiya!

You are one tough son of a gun, George.

I'm scheduled for a seven tomorrow and I am going to shove a few sprints in the middle here and there to shake things up.

Sunday (April Fool's) is the Scotland 10K. If I win the raffle we will all go to Scotland to attempt to see the Loch Ness Monster.

Joe(cloudy in the east, looks like rain, spent my last nickel on a subway train)Nation

Watch out for that tsunami.
One little tidal wave can ruin your whole run.

The "No Parking" signs went up on West Main Street today in front of my store. No parking after midnight tonight at the meters in preparation for tomorrow's 30-something annual running of the Charlottesville 10-miler. They are expecting something like 2200 runners this year.

There should be fine weather, with a low temp of 40 degrees. But by the time the starting gun fires at 7:00 am the sun will be shining brightly and there is projected to be no wind.

The course runs through UVA grounds, commerical districts and old residential areas. The trees are budding, so it should be visually attractive for the runners and draw a good crowd of spectators.

The course, I am told, at first glance appears to be pretty easy. But there are some hills that are challenging. Up and down.

The race attracts some pretty talented runners. Apparently it is scheduled to be a tune up for the Marine Corp marathon later in the spring in DC/VA. The record time on the current course for men is right around 50 minutes.

My store is at the 8-mile mark.

After several years of trying, myself and several other have convinced the New York Road Runners to have a HeavyWeight Division for runners who happen to be over two hundred pounds. Prizes will be awarded to the whippets, pardon me, the regular runners, and additional prizes will be awarded to those finishing 1st 2nd or 3rd as Men's or Women's HeavyWeight Runners. It's been a long struggle which I began when I was over 250 pounds and saw the discrepancy between the light-weight flyweight runners and persons such as myself.

The effort that I have to expend in order to complete the same distance far exceeds any amounts that the lighter weighted people do. Basing the prizes solely on time elasped was, at the very least, short-sighted and, at most, discriminatory.

The news came down just last Friday and I had to eat a whole white pizza with Italian sausage last night just to get myself up over the 200 mark for today's race. (I have been floating at 197 for months now.) Anyway, there was a protest and the officials at NYRR insisted that in order to prevent someone from using heavy clothing to make the cut and then dis-robing that anyone wishing to be in the HeavyWeight Division weight in naked just before the start.

So we all lined up, shucked off our jerseys and shorts and waited patiently in the freezing cold for each man or woman to step onto the scales. The two women in front of me both had the same rosebud tatoo on their left buttocks and I asked them about it. It turns out they were sorority sisters about ten years ago and a group of them had gone, very drunk, to a little place in Provincetown, Cape Cod and had them done. Then we talked about about whale watching.
Then we talked about how cold it was.
They said looking around that all the men were wearing rosebuds too.
We all laughed.
And then we got weighed and then we got dressed and then we ran.

10k 1 hour flat plus 54 seconds.

Joe(Ms Aprile Pazzo sends her regards)Nation

Thanks for visual, Joe...

NORTON ROADAPPLE
I am quite impressed. My recent battle began when I realized that size 34's were on the top shelf of the closet and size 36's were getting tight. By the time I noticed I tipped out almost at 230 and should be around 185 so my hats off there Joe .

It's been pretty good running weather here for a while, but our luck has
just run out. Today it's going to be in the mid-thirties with rain and sleet.
Tomorrow will be about the same. Rats. Looks like I'll be doing some
cross-training. Indoor cross-training.

does that involve cross-dressing?

Do these shorts make my butt look fat?

This has been a lousy week despite a really good start.

We trotted through six miles of drizzle then ate bagels

and waited for the results.

Got our picture taken (Not me.)
and then walked to the subway past the blooming daffodils.


Yes, that's right, the blooming idiots walked by the blooming daffodils.

The three girls I started next to in last Sunday's 10k spoke German. I was always a little ahead or a little behind them for the first three miles, then, after we had climbed Great Hill, we passed the Haarlem Meer on our left and started up the only hill of any size in Central Park. I've run up it many times, usually with Mick Jagger screaming in my ear about introducing himself as "a man of wealth and taste" or Eminem growling how "you only got one shot, do not miss this chance and blow this opportunity... ." The hill, I'm sure it has a name of it's own -I need to look it up-, is deceptive. It undulates itself into a tight left turn right at the bottom, if you are foolish enough to glance to the left at that point you are treated to a view of the thousands of runners ahead of you staggering and puffing away with the occasional knot of people walking, then you make the left.

Remember how hard it was to run up the slide at the park? Yeah, well, you get the picture. The girls disappeared at that point. I don't if I left them in the dust (what dust??) or if they zoomed ahead of me singing "Yah, yah, yah." All I know is that at the top of that hill I was ready for the next three miles to zoom by and they did. I came within a hair of breaking an hour and I was very happy.

Then the week got weird. Something blew in one of the circuits in our apartment and I could not figure it out. I got a friend to find a couple of new breakers for the box (the ones in there are thirty years old), changed the chief suspect but nothing happened.

Meanwhile, the weather got mean and I was having to depend on the cats to wake me up. so I got two short runs in and that was that. I had to wait most of the day on Friday for another friend-electrician to come over and figure out that one of the neutrals had gotten loose. (what!!?) So I lost that whole day and today.

I am going to do a long run tomorrow morning. I don't care if I have to wear sweat pants and a parka.

Onward

Joe(where is the freaking Spring??!!)Nation

Parka?

brrrrrrrr


Almost broke the hour? excellent!

Wind chill this morning is 22F. Note to self: don't look at the frigging windchill, just run.

I went out this am prepared for the cold. I had a hat. I had my little running gloves. I had on my old wool tights and my shorts. I had on two shirts and my favorite big fluffy sweatshirt from Anna Maria Island AND my Adidas windbreaker. Take that, weather!!

It did.

It chewed me up and spit me out.

I decided to do my old running trail in Ft. Tryon park. It's a long loop through a really hilly park with a lungbuster of a hill about halfway round.



I call it my Rocky Hill. Remember Rocky climbing the staircase ?? Yeah. Got to fly now. Yeah. The thing curves up and around like that for about another 500 yards and just when you think you have hit the top there is another 25 yards of up to climb before a little flat place lets you breathe.
Then the park path just climbs, just a little climb, but always up for another half a mile or so, all the way up to the top of Fort Tryon right by the heather garden. I think they must have flattened the hill out a little since last year because I wasn't breathing hard. The skin on my wrists was frozen, but I was just toddling along watching people try to convince their dogs that it was as cold as all that.

I went back to look at my last three 10Ks

December 11, 2005 1:11:41
December 10, 2006 1:08:59
--------April 1, 2007 1:00:54

Joe(jetboy)Nation

Oh and PS: The other day I was looking for a flashlight in my tee-shirt drawer and I found this silverfoil packaged thing. It took me a long time to remember what it was.

It was one of my spare, and now unneeded, asthma inhalers.

Good to see you back, JetBoy!
I was wonnerin wha happened to ya.

Ft. Tryon sounds like a real buster.
We've got a place like that around my way called Breakheart Reservation.
There's a point where the road goes up and up and then seems to peak,
but just as you get there, you see that there's another uphill beyond. So
you groan and slog up that to find - yup - another uphill. Mercy!

Keep on keepin' on.

8 minutes in 4 months!

Congrats, jetboy.

It took me 5 months to lower my time a measly 30 seconds.

I must say I am impressed by the meteorological aspect of this thread. Tells a lot about determination.
And THAT may make a difference.

Weather is about the most uncontrollable aspect of this running sport. You can control, at least to some extent, almost everything else - your health, your conditioning, your violent mood swings.... your diet, your running gear, your sense that the world is out to crush you like a bug. (The other night I was sure some idiot on a bicycle was going to run me down as the rider gaped at some girl's behind. I actually moved over a lane and laughed at my own paranoia......but I stayed in that lane until the bicycle traffic tapered off.)

The weather these past two weeks has been really awful. Cold raw days with spritzy rain and gusty winds.....I was puffing up the hills the other day and thought "Hey, this feels a lot like an early November day,, so maybe if I am running the marathon next November and the weather is like this, I won't give a damn.

I am running the Brooklyn Half Marathon on Saturday. It's my 60th birthday so I get to have a cool running shirt with my birthday date written on it. The weather is predicted to be in the upper 40's at race time with mostly cloudy skies which is exactly what the weather was in the last two half marathons I've run. Route Map pfd. Even the NYC Half last August happened on a rainy, windy Sunday morning and we about froze waiting for the start of the October Staten Island Half.

The rumor is that this race is flat. There isn't a flat place on this earth that I've ever found to be as flat as I wanted it.

Joe(All rumors are lies.)Nation