This past Friday night, I set my alarm for an ungodly hour, fed myself a carbohydrate-rich meal and closed my eyes earlier than a 45 year old man should.
Why?
Well, for the seventh year in a row, I was signed up for the Brooklyn Half, the largest 13.1 in the United States!
I love this race, it’s essentially a run down memory lane for me in that, as a young child, my grandparents and uncle still lived in the borough. Not to mention, nine years ago when I officially got my shit together, got healthy and started running, I lived in Park Slope, with Prospect Park as my home turf.
So when my alarm went off at 4AM, I jumped out of bed and got ready for one of my favorite race courses.
If you read this space, you know that my running this year isn’t what it has been in the past. The addition of our son has changed my life in ways I never could have imagined. 99.99999999% of those changes are good, in fact great. That one microscopic change that isn’t great and that I’m trying to work around is my running schedule. It’s only been 6.5 months and I’m still trying to find my routine. I know it’s out there, I just need to grab it.
But I digress. I mean, how can I not, look at those faces?
I nervously watch and wait for the race to begin. My goals are not lofty for the 2015 running of the BK Half. I want to cross the finish line and I want to get some good footage so I can create a good video. And I had a lot to live up to as I really think the video I created from last year’s race is my best one to date.I run and check my baggage so I have a dry shirt to put on after the race and run to get into my corral and into the bathroom line. Luckily, I see my buddy Dan who is already on line and jump in with him and his friend Sam. We chat it up for a while and Dan, who has his sights set on a specific time leaves us to go find his pace group.
This was also a special race in that Mary Wittenberg, who for the past 10 years served as president and CEO of the New York Road Runners announced her resignation earlier in the week. She would be leaving the organization after the Brooklyn Half. Saturday was the last time we’d hear her pep talk before the race and her cheerleading on the course as we closed in on or passed the finish line.
The Race
I won’t comment on Mary’s impact on the running community in NYC and the world, or her impact on me personally (I’m working on a full post dedicated to that). Suffice it to say that it has been game changing and that is no exaggeration.
At 7AM the final race instructions are given and the gun goes off. It’s with not just a little anticipation that I wait for the 4,000 runners in front of me to start their race so I can get going.
When I first started running the BK Half, it was two loops inside Prospect Park followed by a 5.5 mile run down Ocean Parkway to Surf Avenue where we run up onto the Coney Island Boardwalk and through to the finish line.
In my opinion, one of the better ideas the NYRR has had for this race was to make that first loop of Prospect Park a circumnavigation of the OUTSIDE of the park followed by a loop IN and then on to Ocean Parkway and Coney Island.
Now, the bummer for me about Ocean Parkway is that, while flat, I need to work to stay out of my head. As you run south, runners pass streets that follow the alphabet from A to Z. So, unless I work at it, I can easily get stuck in my head and concentrate on which letter I’m on and how much time I have left. Not the best way to get through a race.There is really only one hill along this course and it comes at around mile 5. Once you’re out of the park, it’s almost flat as a pancake, with one downhill and a tiny bump getting from Surf Avenue to the Boardwalk. It’s really the perfect race to go for a PR (that is, if you’re trained well, eat right and don’t have a 6.5 month old at home).
Add to that, the mantra that got stuck in my head this year wasn’t helping to get me to the finish line. Repeating “Over Fed and Under Trained” is not the best motivation – at least it isn’t for me.
That said, this year Ocean Parkway had a special surprise in store for us. The weather all morning had been humid. Not like “swimming in soup” humid but enough to make me uncomfortable. Right as I reached mile 10, the sky opened up and poured down on us for almost 20 minutes.
For me, this couldn’t have come at a better time. I love running in the rain and it was exactly what I needed to cool off and finish the race.
I was happy to cross the line, grab my medal, eat a few hot dogs from Nathan’s Famous (another throw back from my childhood – in fact, my parents’ childhood) and get on the train for the hour and 30 minute ride home, where I got to see . . . you guessed it, these faces.
As I said, my goal this year was to finish the race. And I did it. Was it my best race? Far from it. Was it my worst? Again, far from it.
