What a great race day it was Saturday! The weather was perfect! We had a great Team Joe turnout. Unfortunately, the day did not start out quite as planned. If I was looking for foreshadowing, (like if I was a REAL writer) I'd have said that there were signs for bad things to come...like my race in San Diego that ended with a bad ankle sprain. However, omens aside, all turned out well in the end.
Firstly, worried about sleeping through my alarm, I slept nary at all. When I got to Waverly Joe to make myself a cup of coffee at 6:30 a.m., I had taken the wrong key. This meant I had to suck up my coffee snobism and go to Murray's Bagels for coffee. This is a publicly read blog, so I will say nothing bad about Murray's coffee. I had a delicious whole wheat bagel with tofu veg cheese.
Kurt, Betsy and I hailed a cab and got to the meetup point early, around 7:20. My running partner for the race was Ashley Bauman, who works at Joe. She I found, but nobody else. I decided not to worry about it, but to be like the Buddha and go for the non-attachment approach.
Free from worry, but a little confused, Ashley and I ran together the whole way.
2 loops in Prospect Park, hilly, but not more so than Central Park, and then out onto Ocean Parkway around Mile 7. As I told Ashley, as I count down miles, I like to tell myself that I am just now starting a run. So, at mile 7, I said to us, We are starting a 6 mile run. Easy Breezy! Tricks like that really work for me. OR, visualizing being done, taking off my shoes, eating lunch, whatever works for you.
Ocean Parkway was pretty long and boring. Something happened that I'd never seen before: The water stations ran out of ready-to-drink water and Gatorade! That sucked! It slowed everyone down, because we had to find a stack of cups and fill them ourselves. What happened NYRRC? They are usually so organized.
The prize to the whole event was(besides the really cool t-shirt) running to the finish on the boardwalk. That was really something.
After the race, as I had visualized, I put on some flip flops. Looks like Jen "Jenks" and Judge Christopher, pictured above, found their way to the Cyclone.
As I hobbled to the subway station to visit my 93 year old Grandmother who lives nearby, I saw that Nathan's hot dog stand was packed with happy runners, eagerly lined up for dogs, fries and lemonade.
2 comments:
A very wobberrley video of the finish line here.
Happy to see I wasn't the only one feeling thirsty during this long straight lonely 7 miles stretch after Prospect park. I am used to the NYRR races and it is the first time it feel very disorganize, without to mention the long way to be at the starting line and the lost few portable toilet attacked by so many runners. Saying so it was so nice at the end and still a beautiful race.
Like your blog keep going Joe team
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