So much has happened in the past week, and I've been so lacking in diligence when it comes to posting that I'm not even sure where to start. I guess since this blog is ostensibly about running, I should write about the Club Championship races yesterday. 
However, before I get to that, let me just say first that Dave Eggers is freaking brilliant! If you have not already done so, stop reading this drivel and go buy, borrow, or beg for a copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This book is, in Egger's terms, a "memoir-y thing" that he's admittedly conflicted about because he's not Irish. Although the work is indeed heartbreaking in places, Eggers avoids all the "woe-is-me" aspects that breed like a putrescent bacterial glob in many memoirs and one finishes the work with the impression that he views the entire genre as a giant joke. Please, please. Go read it.
OK. Moving on to the race. I considered this a "pseudo-race." By that I mean, that I intended to race it as hard as I could, but I was doing no taper nor otherwise materially changing my training leading up to it (other than to replace a Friday tempo run with a regular run on Thursday). Add to that my having just finished a week with my then highest mileage ever (54) and my being in the middle of my new highest mileage ever week (55) and I was in no shape to really hammer this one. My goals were as follows:
- 32:30 -- this is the time that the Magical McMillan Calculator tells me equates to a BQ marathon effort.
- 31:48 -- my time in my one and only 5 miler, back in June; running the same time on fatigued legs would bode well for my training program.
- Anything faster -- that'd just be cake.
The second snafu was that I was nearly hit by a garbage truck. That's right. Less than 800 meters to the finish and a garbage truck pulls out onto the closed to traffic Central Park loop through a stream of runners. To top it off, he's oblivious to the race and commences yelling at the racers while being yelled at by the race official. For the runners' part, we all yelled and scattered around the truck and off the course. Ridiculous. However, the best part of the whole thing was when, after the race while I recounted the story, NY Flygirl responded with one of the smart-ass lines I had written on her blog in response to her complaints about the crowded park: "But isn't this little inconvenience worth it to race in the greatest park on Earth?" Touché Mademoiselle. Touché. So, in the end, the race went off, I finished in 31:41, which is a 7s P.R. (for what that's worth, since it's only my second ever 5 mile race). But more importantly, this fatigued time equals a predicted 3:06 marathon according to McMillan. That makes 3:05 a reasonable target and means that things are progressing more or less on pace.
Shot of me in the last 200m. I caught the GNY guy at the line.
After the race, I joined a group of Flyer guys as we ran the course backwards so we could cheer on the women racing who'd be coming towards us. It was a really fun 5 mile cool-down and I hope we do it again. After the women finished up, we had a picnic with all the other Flyers and lots of Flyer kids. Bagels and what had to be the best orange juice I've ever had in my whole life! It was nice to see so much of the club; so many people I'd never seen before. But, as Dorian put it, the Flyer's have so many events you can't make them all!
Today I finished off the week with what I'm calling 14.5, a run across the Williamsburg Bridge, then across the Manhattan and Brooklyn, around the Battery, up to 40th Street on the West Side and then back down to the subway at 14th and 8th Ave. Time was 1:58.
Week-in-Review
| Monday | Tuesday | Wed. | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Total |
| Rest | 13.1 miles | 6.0 miles | 11.5 miles | Rest | 5 mile race 5 miles | 14.5 miles | 55.1 |
| -- | 7:53/m | 7:43/m | 7:50/m | -- | 6:20/m 9:00ish | 8:10/m |
3 comments:
wow-and if you were really "race-ready" you would have torn up that course. congrats on the PR and even moreso...isn't it nice to feel like everything's on track? :)
glad to know that i provided some comic relief that morning. of course, you started it :-p
As someone said on my blog a few weeks ago, a PR without any speed work is a great sign. Well Done!
Be wary of calculators, my actual times for longer distances are well behind the "calculated" times. Don't assume you're ready to run a 3:05 marathon just because some algorithm tells you that you are.
It's funny how sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. If I put my 3:22 for the Pig in McMillan, it hits within about 20s of all my then p.r.'s. However, let's not kid. 3:05 or better will be a challenge.
Post a Comment