NYC 2010 Qualifying Races #5 and #6: Healthy Kidney 10K, May 16, 2009 and the Brooklyn Half Marathon, May 30, 2009

Here's the story of two races, because your blogger is lazy.



I ran the Healthy Kidney 10K on May 16, a mere three weeks after my marathon. It was my first time doing anything other than a slow, lazy loop around Prospect Park since 26.2 (not counting the miles we ran while cheering on fellow Team in Training spring season folks at the New Jersey Marathon on May 3). Kelly and I drove to the race and ran it together, but failed to anticipate the lack of parking. No spaces ANYWHERE. It didn't help that I'd been running late that morning to meet her and felt terrible. We finally found a spot on the East Side, across the park from the race start, with five minutes to go until gun time and no quarters to be found on either of our persons or in the car. We called a friend to come fill the meter and ran. We later calculated that we ran a full additional mile to the starting line. It started raining on us halfway there (OF COURSE) so we jumped into the queue to cross the starting line soaking wet. Five minutes later, it stopped raining but all of us runners were soaked to the bone for the duration.

I enjoyed this race, mainly for the course, which was a full loop of Central Park that minimized the uphills. I love the uptown part of Central Park, which is quiet and woody and doesn't feel like an urban park at all.

The race took us about an hour to complete at our post-marathon recovery pace and we ended up getting a parking ticket for our troubles - our friend arrived just as the ticket was being written. But, we finished, we felt good and we got another qualifier under our proverbial belts. The tech t-shirt souvenirs were nice. And more people, presumably, have healthier kidneys.



The Brooklyn Half Marathon was yesterday. I had an unusual preparation strategy for this race, which went something like this:

5 weeks prior: Run full marathon in 92-degree heat and 67% humidity.

4 weeks prior: Run 7 miles with friend at the end of her full marathon in pouring rain and persistent chill (foreshadowing. That means keep reading.). Begin running slow 3-mile loops in park with friend.

3 weeks prior: Run 10-K (see: Healthy Kidney 10K saga, above). Continue running in park. Begin taking circuit training class that consists of running uphill holding water bottles and a lot of pushups. Question sanity.

2 weeks prior: Run 7 miles through Brooklyn and across Manhattan Bridge with friends. Become winded. At end of week, run 5-mile loop in Prospect Park, successfully and without massive exhaustion. Sign up for Brooklyn Half Marathon. Plan to run an 8- or even 10-miler beforehand.

1 week prior: Become sick. Go home from work sick the next day. Call out of work sick the day after that. Cough up both lungs to the consternation of several coworkers when you do return to work.

Two days prior: Take the kind of cold medicine that makes you contemplate flying out of your office window (the kind you can only buy behind the pharmacy counter because SOME PEOPLE decided to make meth out of it, that's how awesome it is). Under influence of aforementioned cold medicine, make plans to meet up with lots of people at Brooklyn Half Marathon.

One day prior: Stop taking cold medicine because the heat advisory on the New York Road Runners website calls out pseudoephedrine, aka the meth-maker, as a dehydrator. Foiled again! Drink lots and lots of water. Miss speed-y feeling. Understand meth addicts. Cough. Write gently mocking Facebook status about how New York Road Runners thinks 77 degrees Fahrenheit is hot, and how you ran a marathon in 92-degree heat, haha, in an attempt to psych yourself up. Cough.

Morning of: Exit apartment. Think, hmmm, it is warm out. Comfort self by knowing that New York Road Runners posted that heat advisory, and thus will be out in force with extra water and Gatorade and misters (more foreshadowing). Smugly chuckle, thinking of Nashville.

I met my friend Alex and her friend Michelle at the 15th Street entrance to Prospect Park at 7:15 and we headed to bagcheck. Bagcheck was my first sign that New York Road Runners might have underestimated the wave of humanity that was running the Brooklyn Half. It wasn't disorganized, but the people manning the checkpoints seemed overwhelmed. I saw a lot of TNTers along the way, which was nice, and we all wished each other good luck.

Alex, Michelle and I got into our starting corral, which seemed to be for everyone who had signed up with a pace time over 8 minutes. That was a lot of people. It took us about 20 minutes to cross the starting line. The first wave of runners passed us while we were still waiting, in fact.

At one point during the endless patter of runners making it to the starting mat, a familiar, heavily Brooklyn-accented voice rose over the din. Alex and I turned to each other and said, "Is that Marty Markowitz?" Indeed, it was Marty himself on the mike, welcoming runners to his fiefdom.

I made the mistake just before the start line of bypassing a Port-a-Potty, which came back to haunt me about three miles later.

The first few miles were good. Tackled the North Hill in the park with no problem. Even made it around the morale-sucking lower stretch of the park still feeling cheerful. Appreciated the separation of the faster runners (those who lapped us at the start) from those of us who still had to go up the North Hill again here.

Second time up the North Hill, the siren call of the Port-a-Potty became too much to handle (or was that just the smell, which you could detect from the road?) and I veered off, telling Alex and Michelle I'd see them at the finish. I estimate that this took me about 10 minutes, but there's no way to know for sure since although I was wearing a watch, I didn't actually look at it the entire race. I passed Coach Lisa and MK somewhere around here, as well as some of the Pace 4 Success girls.

Then it was around to the South Hill. I wanted to stop for some water here before exiting the park and hitting the shadeless stretch of Ocean Parkway. When I got to the water table, I got elbowed, hard, in the back by some guy who reached over my head (not an easy feat) and grabbed one of the few cups that was resting on the table away from me. Thanks, dude. And then I realized - there was nothing else on the table. No Gatorade, no water. One woman said that the faster people had drunk everything. Um, so the slow runners get screwed? The volunteers were basically just standing around looking overwhelmed and not getting out the cups. At this point people were just reaching into the Gatorade and water barrels themselves and scooping out what they needed. I felt badly for anyone running this race for time, since I'm sure they either lost valuable minutes here or risked dehydration by skipping it entirely. I took a Gu on my way out of the park.

Out on Ocean Parkway was where I'd anticipated hitting a morale dip. Surprisingly, I still felt great. The water stations continued to suck and I was glad I was carrying my own Gatorade. I saw Alex again and we ran together for a bit until she stopped to stretch. I stopped once to adjust my shoelaces because I felt blisters forming. I saw Jasmine just before mile 10 and she said I looked great. Then I saw the sign that said "Misting Station Ahead." Misting station! All right! The awesome misting stations in Nashville totally saved Kelly and me. We had run through these giant sprinkler setups several times and used them to wet our hats along the way. I was all ready to forgive NYRR for the water station debacles. And then.

I got to the "misting station" only to find that it was ONE GUY. HOLDING A FIRE HOSE. UPRIGHT (since you obviously can't blast a crowd with a fire hose). I even asked him if he was the misting station, and he sheepishly answered that he was. He did soak my hat, though. I laughed myself silly for another couple of miles and then realized I had passed the 12-mile marker and was in the homestretch, baby!

I saw Pamela and Melanie here - Melanie wasn't officially running, but she got us up on the boardwalk and Pamela and I ran in together. Lots of crowd support on the boardwalk, and the Coney Island publicity people did a good job of fixing the accidents-waiting-to-happen that were all the loose boards along here.

I finished in what NYRR tells me was 2:26, but if I subtract my restroom stop I end up with something around 2:16-2:20, I think. Pretty awesome for someone still in marathon recovery, no?

The finish area was chaotic but I got my stuff, made sure Pamela was OK (she had a massive blister), saw Alex, and met up with Jess and Erin and Chris. Jess, Erin and I ran into the freezing-cold Atlantic to ice our legs, and then got some fried food. Good times, all considered. I really had a fabulous run - never really felt tired or hurt or over- or under-hydrated. I would run this again in a heartbeat, but hope that NYRR gets its act together before next year and makes for better water stops and a more organized area at the start and at the finish.