Cherry Tree 10-Miler, February 22, 2009

Yes, I did sign up for two races in one weekend. Perhaps, considering my wonky knee, not the smartest decision I've ever made. But I did cross the finish line of both of them, so that's saying something.

Today's race was the Cherry Tree 10-Miler, sponsored by the Prospect Park Track Club -- the same people who sponsored my first race of this Year of Running, on New Year's Eve. Unlike that race, bagwatch at the Cherry Tree was in an actual tent with an actual numeric system set up placing bags, as opposed to just putting them under a tree that had crime tape wrapped around it. The volunteers were some of the nicest people I've ever encountered at a race -- all of them, without fail, friendly and smiling.

This was not a marathon qualifier. It was our TNT BK practice for this weekend. I guess you'd have to say I ran it for...fun? To push the limits of my endurance? Yes, that sounds better.

The big downside of this race was that it was three loops of Prospect Park. I run this loop on a pretty regular basis -- at least once a week, generally -- but I can't say I've ever had the urge to do it three times in a row. Remember when I compared the turnarounds in the Bronx Half Marathon to Chevy Chase talking to his kids about Big Ben and Parliament in "National Lampoon's European Vacation"? This was more like "Groundhog Day."


I ran this race at a pretty fast clip, considering. I finished in 1:32, meaning I maintained a fairly consistent 9+-minute mile.

I would have to say the high point of the race came as I was rounding the top of the park on my second loop and a bicyclist squirted his water bottle directly into my right sock, evidently as revenge because my foot went over the center line between the running lane and the bike lane. Please note that he was one person with two whole lanes to himself, as opposed to me who was one of hundreds of people in two lanes of the road. Effing bikers. If you are a cyclist and you're reading this, squirting water into a runner's shoe is not necessarily going to keep her out of your lane, especially if she's there because she's trying to keep an injured knee from falling on the wrong side of a steep drop in the road. It will, however, make her really angry and possibly prone to blisters. On the plus side, I was not the victim of another cycler I saw who power-snotted (thanks to Kelly for this almost onomatopoeic term) into the throngs of runners as he sped by.

Kelly and I ran together most of the way, until our third trip up the North Hill when I inexplicably became dizzy and faintly nauseous. This has never happened to me during a run before. I stopped for water, walked through the water stop, reminded myself about who I run for and why, and charged (well, plugged away) up the North Hill. My stomach was very...sloshy, for lack of a better word (and sorry to those of you reading this). I kept trying to think of things to distract me, but I just kept seeing Groundhog Day in my head.

But I did eventually finish, got my chocolate milk, got out of my soaking wet clothes (it was drizzly and I was hot and sweaty - bad combination), felt much better and determined with the coaches that my problem was not enough salt and/or not enough carbs. I'm not unfamiliar with getting dizzy from low blood sugar in my non-running life, so that was my first thought, but I also think that on a warm day I need to be drinking more Gatorade or putting an electrolyte tablet in my water bottle.

I feel pretty hardcore, now that I'm sitting on my couch in sweatpants drinking coffee and looking forward to the Oscars dresses, I mean, the telecast. Two races! One weekend! Booyah!