Race Recap: Celebrate Israel 4-miler

By ellen on June 5, 2011

  • Date: Sunday, June 5
  • Start Time: 9:00 am
  • Location: Central Park. One loop from 72nd Street Transverse across 102nd Street Transverse and down the west side.

  • Conditions: 59 degrees at the start – beautiful, sunny, wonderful.
  • Pre-Race:
    • Just like the Brooklyn Half, I had some pizza (little homemade pita pizza) and tons of water. I talked about tummy issues during that race, and I am happy to report that I didn’t have any this time (I was worried I’d have to give up my pre-race pizza, but I guess not).
    • This race was going to be a little different. A bunch of students from our school were running. For a few girls, it was going to be their first race (exciting!) and their longest distance! Rather than go on my own, I was going to run at their pace and coach them through.
  • Race Morning:
    • The downside to doing the race with my school team, is that I have to ride the bus with them… which means I have to be at our school at 6:45. So there was that.
    • After picking up two other schools, we got the the park a little before 8. We all checked in, and sat around for a while.
    • Bumped into Emily – yay!
  • Race Time:
    • As I said, I was running with some students, so the pace was very, very slow. The girls were awesome, though, and it was really worth it.
    • I realized at a certain point, it is more difficult to run slowly. I feel like my form turns to garbage. Boo.
  • Official Time:

  • Overall:
    • Beautiful day for a run in the park. It was a great event that I hope becomes annual.
    • Coaching newbies through a race can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Whether it’s students (like today) or running some miles with a first-time marathoner, I highly recommend you do it at some point.

Congratulations to all who raced this weekend! Did you run?

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Have you checked out my running book club? Here’s my review of Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running by Rachel Toor. I’ll be reviewing What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami the first Friday in July, if you want to join in!

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Swim, Swam, Swum

By ellen on July 26, 2010

In preparation for my triathlon coming up, I entered an open-water ocean swim for Saturday night at the Jersey shore. While the race on Saturday was 1 mile, my tri swim is only half a mile. I figured if I could do the full mile in the ocean, I’d be able to swim the 1/2 mile in the bay no problem come tri time.

I was a little nervous.

I’d heard about how disorienting an ocean swim can be, how creeped out you can make yourself, and how cut-throat it can be entering the water and swimming past the breakers.

And?

I ROCKED it.

I’m the little orange swim cap on the far right running to the finish.

My unofficial time!

Post-race glow

And possibly the best part? That I placed SECOND in my age group! (Let’s ignore hte fact that there were only 2 people in my age-group, okay? I never place in anything).

So I LOVED it. I was scared, I was wasn’t freaked out or disoriented. I felt strong and comfortable the whole way. I was utterly spent at the end and it felt amazing. What’s even better (arguably) is that I didn’t feel like I prepared for this race at all. I haven’t even hit the water in maybe 2 months. (I really shouldn’t admit that, but whatevs). It made me think that with a bit more practice I could show a lot of improvement.

If there’s interest, I’ll post a bit about how I stayed on course without getting off track or having to stop… Anyone else find a new love for open-water swimming – or a new love for something that they just tried???

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Race Recap: Philly Turkey Trot

By ellen on November 30, 2009

In a word? Weird. That’s really the best way to describe this race… Details:

The race was slated to begin at 8:30. I had to get my race packet, so I planned to get there around 8. The weather was pretty perfect for a morning run: mid-50s, kinda dreary but no wind or rain. When I got to the Farimount Park start point, I parked and headed toward the Rec center where the packets were being given out.

There were plenty of people there already, and since I had registered and paid online already, I didn’t have to stand in the long registration line. When I gave my name, however, the woman said there was no number for me. I had registered and paid online two weeks ago, I explained. She asked me to fill out another registration form then gave me a number without having to pay again (I wouldn’t have done this anyhow). That certainly turned out fine, and was really only a minor bump in the road, but little did I know it was indicative of the rest of the race’s organization…

Once I finally got my number, people were moving toward the starting line. I hit the bathroom in the rec center to avoid porta-potties, and walked out toward the start. Now, generally, there’s someone over a megaphone at the start giving the course directions. No one usually listens as it’s never that important. In this case, however, it seemed vitally important. I’m never the front-runner, nor do I intend to be, but the crowd seemed thin enough (and Fairmount Park has MANY little roads in it) AND there was a 5k cross-country race going on somewhere that I might need to know where I’m going at some point. I couldn’t hear a thing. No one around me could either. Oh well.

The race began, basically, with a man yelling “GO!” No lie. There was no starting line. I mean, I didn’t necessarily expect a time chip since the race was relatively small… but come on. About 100 yards from the start, there was a tripod set up for a clock… clock was on the ground and not ticking.

The actual course was okay. It was basically 2- 2.5 mile loops. The problem was that there were no water stations along the route, no race officials… nada. This wasn’t really a problem for me, but there were certainly hazards – it was at least a major liability.

Bottom Line? I had fun. It was not at all what I expected. I would suggest that if it’s the same format next year, they market it as a group run or something… if it’s called a race, I at least expect a clock.

(*As such, since I don’t wear a watch… and there was no sort of clock or time-keeping, I have no idea what my time was. Hmm.)

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Race Recap: Runyon 5k

By ellen on November 15, 2009

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I accomplished quite a few things today:

  • got all my school work done
  • mapped my meals for the week
  • ran the field at Yankee Stadium
  • got my face on the Jumbo-tron

The last two happened this morning at the Runyon 5k. I should also probably add that I ran up nearly every staircase in the stadium, but I’ll get to that later.

Preparations:

I was about to have my usual pre-race breakfast of bread (Ezekiel, in this case) toasted with a shmear of peanut butter and a sliced up banana. This morning, however, I realized as I was shmearing pb that I don’t have any bananas. Or really any fruit at the moment. I just went without. If it were a longer run, I would have been more concerned, but a 5k would be fine with just the toast. I also had a glass of water and a mug of green tea. This was at about 7:30 am (2 hours before start time).

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Forecast and Fashion:

After yesterday’s crummy rain, today was supposed to be unseasonably warm and sunny. At race time, it wasn’t too sunny yet, but was already in the low fifties. I think I over-dressed for the weather. I wore medium-weight tights, a thin long-sleeve technical tee from the marathon last year, and only a sports-bra underneath. Even this one layer was a bit much. If I could do it again, I think I’d wear capris and a tee-shirt, but it didn’t turn out too bad. Oh yeah, and my Yankees hat.

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Pre-Race:

Husbo and I got to the stadium at about 9. We figured that extra thirty minutes could be spent wandering around and taking pics. Not so. Even though I already had my race packet and didn’t need to check any baggage, we wound up waiting in this line…

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FOR 45 MINUTES! Seriously. They only had one gate open and were letting people in one at a time. We waited so long that by the time I got in the third wave was lining up. I ran right up and the horn went off.

Race-time:

The course began on the concourse level and took you twice around that level. It was pretty cool because when you looked across the field all you could see were runners on different levels of the stadium. Then we ran down to field level and out onto the field. It was then that I realized that I should have run with my camera :( Luckily, husbo paid enough attention (and I wore a bright red shirt) so he got some shots of me on the field.

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How cool is that?!?!

The Review:

It was definitely the coolest 5k I’ve run, but also the toughest. There was flight after flight after flight of stairs. It was pretty brutal. I’m not sure what my time is (I’ll post when I get the official one), but I know it was not even close to a normal time for me. The fairly poor organization (it was the first time for this race), and the hundreds and hundreds of stairs are totally trumped by the cool factor. I’ll definitely be back again.

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