Nike Half Race photos & 2006 Marathon Photo Fundraiser Announcement

Ok, for those of you who don't know, there is an organization called Brightroom, and they take photos at races and then sell them to participants. I am a bit too cheap or perhaps not vain enough to spend $25 for photos from a race that is less than 26.2 miles long, but you can take a look at some of them for free by following the below links.

Me running, hat in hand, during the last couple of miles. Towards the end of races I always take my hat off and hold it in my hand. I think it makes me go faster. Not sure about the physics behind it but it seems to work:
Bob No Hat


Me on the West Side of Manhattan running as fast as I can in the rain:
Bob Getting Soaked

Me running in Times Square. It almost looks like neither of my feet are touching the ground. Not sure if that is correct form or not. Will definitely lose sleep tonight contemplating the ramifications of this picture:
Bob in Midair

Just entering 7th Avenue from Central Park looking happy. This is the middle of the race and note that at this point the hat is still on, albeit in the unorhtodox backwards position favored by juvenile delinquents and Ken Griffey, Jr.:
Bob Backwards Hat

Me and a bunch of TFK members awaiting a free post race massage, from left to right Tom Storey, Me, Erik Pena, Nathan Miller, Greg Roelants. Note the hat has returned to its original, normal position with the bill pointed forward, yet it is a bit askew. There is no reason for the askewness, if that is even a word, that is just an unfortunate accident:
Bob Hat Askew

Feel free to purchase as many of the photos of me as you like for your home, office, Bob Scofield shrine, or indoor shooting range; any place is a great place for a $20 photo of me. :o)

2006 Marathon Photo Fundraiser

As a way to circumvent the gauging done by Brightroom and to help reach my fundraising goal last year, I had my roommate shoot photos of TFK members during the marathon. We put them online and offered an 8 x 10 print plus the computer source file in exchange for a $25 donation. As you can see, Brightroom at this half marathon would charge $19.49 for an 8 x 10 print plus $34.99 for the high resolution digitial source file, for a total of $54.48. Also, my roommate was concentrating on TFK members exclusively, so the shots tended to be much better than the group shot and crop technique favored by Brightroom.

Here is a link to Jeff's website where the photos still reside if you want to kill some time at work this afternoon after your bosses hop in their BMW's and speed off to the Hamptons at noon for Labor Day day weekend. Jeff was set up at about Mile 21 in Harlem I believe, and it was about 70 degrees at the time, so you will see people bearing down when the going is starting to get really tough. [Note - disregard the instructions for donating on his site, they relate to last year only].

http://www.carpenterstudios.com/TFK.html

If you like Jeff's work, check out his framed prints on the site and other services provided (headshots, portraiture, etc). Giving him extra business is a nice way of thanking him for his generosity in donating so much time to the team last year, between the shooting, and cropping and making the website. This will also all but guarantee that you get a flattering picture taken at this year's marathon. ;-)

Have a great weekend and see some of you runners at the 10 mile "Fun Run" hosted by Coaches Deana & Danielle on Saturday.

TFK Video

Here's a video I edited together from footage shot by documentary filmmaker Christian Regnaudot, myself, Eugene Koenig, Coach Adam and my ex-girlfriend Be. It was used as a promotional tool to get people interested in joining the team, and a lot of people seemed to enjoy it. Anyway, take a look, it does a good job of summarizing what the program is about.

Click here to watch video:
TFk Video

I am a fan of DVD's and director's commentaries, so I will explain all the shots for those people who have seen the video numerous times and were wondering what they were looking at:

The first scene is of Laurie Adelman who was on Team for Kids last year, right after finishing the race. Laurie's net time was 3:37:40, which qualified her for the Boston Marathon, a great achievement.

The Music

The song is "To Win Just Once" by a great Irish rock band called The Saw Doctors. They are very popular over in Ireland and have a small but fiercely loyal cult following here in the States. I was going to type a big explanation of the band, but the Internet, God bless its little heart, did it for me, so here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saw_Doctors

I got permission to use the song from the manager back in November for a video I edited from footage Coach Adam and I shot at the 23 mile run. We showed it at the pasta dinner the night before the marathon and the song inspired people while the images reminded people of their accomplishment at the 23 miler (if you can run 23 miles, you can run 26.2, trust me on that one).

When we did the promotional video you have just watched (watch it now if you haven't), I felt we needed permission again, so I simply went to a few of their concerts in the spring of 2006 and approached the composers themselves. I spoke to Leo at a show in New Haven, CT and he said, "Brilliant!" and spoke to Davy at a show at the Irving Plaza here in New York and he said, "Great, as long as it's for charity, no problem!" They are very accessible, down to earth guys, as is the entire band, and we all appreciate their generosity in letting us use the amazing song.

If you enjoy their work here is a link to their website, the song can be found on the CD "To Sing a Powerful Song" which is sort of a greatest hits collection, and the two live albums, "Live on New Year's Day" and "Live from Galway".

http://www.sawdoctors.com

The Kids

I went to two events featuring the kids running after the marathon, one was a slightly over 1 mile cross country race held in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and the other was an indoor Jamboree held at the Track & Field Armory in the Coogan's Bluff area of Manhattan.

At the outdoor event there were two separate races, the girls ran first and then the boys. So you see shots of the boys finishing, and the "Braveheart" shot as I call it of all the girls running across the field at the camera.

Eugene Koenig went with me to the indoor event, and I interviewed some kids and coaches while he shot. So the shots of the red-headed kid stepping down off the podium prematurely, and the kids running around the track, and the 100 yard dash and the very excited girl collecting the blue ribbon, are all from that race. Many Team for Kids members were there that day handing out ribbons (Dave Edwards, KC Cohen, Oscar Sloterbeck), and helping out in other vital ways (Nancy Shanley, Jennifer Arozamena, Frank Brown) and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody.

The sign thanking TFK was made by children from P.S. 140 in the Bronx, whose running program has been supported by Running Partners for two years now, with the funds we raise. I got a chance to talk to Alan Day, the coach of the running team there, and he also expressed great appreciation for our efforts. He told me the kids get a lot out of the program and particulary look forward to events like the Jamboree put on by the New York Road Runners Foundation. He mentioned one kid in particular who really improved in school after joining the running program.

The Team for Kids Marathon Training Program

The next part of the video showed various scenes from our training program:

- Coach Adam speaking on the bullhorn at our 23 mile run, the longest one we do, 3 weeks before the marathon

- Coach Danielle checking people off on the list at one of our practices

- Coach Dave timing some runners as they finish up at the Engineer's Gate at 90th Street and 5th Avenue, where we meet for a lot of our runs. You can see Cliff Sperber, the Executive Director of the NYRR Foundation, as one of the runners who passes Dave.

- Nancy Shanley and Beverly Gayle finishing their 23 mile run

- Amy Dold & Sonia Song, two members of my pace group finishing the 23 mile run. As you can see, Craig and I were no where in sight, as we had stopped to go to the bathroom at about the 13 mile mark and tried in vain to catch up with the two speedy women for the next 7 miles. Here is a tip for you runners out there: don't try catching up to your pace group if you spend two minutes in the bathroom after running 13 miles with 10 miles to go. We sped up and caught them at mile 20, and then died a slow and painful death the last 3 miles.

Another interesting thing about this scene is I always tend to put Amy Dold and dogs in all the videos I make, so when I found this footage while sorting through Christian's tapes I was understandably delighted to find a scene with both Amy Dold and a dog in the same shot (note the Boxer playing soccer with the little boys on the left side of the screen).

- Next shot also at the 23 mile run, of Coach Alem exhorting us on before the run (this was probably at 6:45 a.m.).

- Volunteer Anthony Chang, who graciously let me borrow his bicycle for the NYC Triathlon last month, and Coach Erica, over on the east side of Manhattan, the best attended of the water / Gatorade stops during our 23 mile run. Shout out to Suzanne Guziec for going to the market and buying more Gatorade with her own money after supplies ran out.

- Jenny Arden joking around trying to explain her name to Amin Jai, one of the support staff of the team. This section of the orignal footage with sound is funny to watch because apparently Amin was really tired as it was early in the morning. So here he was having trouble with the name Jennifer Arden, and then he walks up to a guy I know who is named Jakob Hirzel, from Switzerland, and yes, hilarity did ensue:

AMIN: What's your name?

JACK: Jakob Hirzel

AMIN: Ummmm....

JACK: [Laughs, takes clipboard, writes his own name down]

AMIN: Boy am I tired....

Marathon Day

One of the nice perks we get as Team for Kids members is special buses to the start of the race. Everybody must take a bus to the start and the NYRR provides that service, for an extra fee, but typically you don't know anyone on it with you and you have a long & lonely ride to the start. On the TFK buses you get to sit with your teammates who you have bonded with over the last several months, and it was very enjoyable. So there is a shot of Coach Pete talking to my buddy Craig on the ride to Staten Island, and then a shot taken out the window of the entrance to the starting area. Then a shot of Pat Padden, the 2nd fastest man from Concord, Massachusetts, in Brooklyn during the early stages of the race, probably between miles 3 and 5.

- Then you see a shot of a group of my friends and pace group members, Farrah Buchanan, Russ Artman, Sonia Song & Amy Dold. We had run together for the first 16 miles of the race, but I had fell back about a minute at that point (this was shot by my ex-girlfriend at the 18 mile mark).

- A shot of the Team for Kids logo plastered on a light pole with some bright green streamers.

- My friends Farrah and Moffat hugging at the finish, their times being around 3:49.

- 2 brothers from Utah, each doing their first marathon. Things are going to get mushy here, but here is why I threw these guys in there. Autumn Backman's mother reported seeing an inspiring sight of somebody running back after crossing the finish line to run along side a fallen friend, which she had photographed. Autumn posted the message to see if any one would be interested in the photo, and Tasi Young posted this reply:

"I’m seriously in tears remembering this moment.

I pulled something in my knee right around mile 22 and the pain went up into my hip. I went from a good race pace to a hobble/hop. My brother encouraged me but I just couldn’t keep up with him and at mile 25 I couldn’t see him any more. I was frustrated and in a lot of pain. I just kept thinking the finish line would never come and I knew when I did cross I would be late and alone. It was all I could do to stiffen up my upper lip and not let emotion take over.

Then of course I see my brother running back for me. I know it sounds cheesy but at that moment everything seemed to change. We started this together almost a year ago and now we would cross the finish line together on our first marathon. The pain and dejection evaporated and was replaced with joy and love for my brother, the race, and the cause. I couldn’t couldn’t hide my smile.

T.J. grabbed my arm and pulled me out of my hobble and we finished with our hands in the sky.




My brother is my best friend, he is a year my senior, and we would have never run this race without his zeal for life and determination to do great things. This moment is a great representation of his care and love; there have been many times in our life where he could have left me behind, but he has always come back for me.

Thanks bro!"

- Ok, and we're back. Sorry about that. :-( Dawn West with my close friend Beth St. James to the left and in back of her with Jeff Hunt from Tampa, Florida.

- Marla "Flash" Weinstein and my buddy Nathan Miller showing off their medals.

- A guy whose name I don't know, but if you dye your hair green, you're getting some airtime!

- Lauren Wibmer flashing a brilliant smile. At least one guy told me he joined the team on the off chance that he might meet her, so that was a good pick by me.

And finally my racing partner down the stretch of many a training run, Alan Gardner, and his victory dance. At practices, he would always catch up to me and pretend to be a commentator of a race, "It's Bannister, it's Prefontaine, Bannister, Prefontaine, neck and neck." He was Ban and I was Pre and he always won the sprint to the end, as he has a top speed greatly in excess of mine. At the end of the marathon I actually caught sight of him on Central Park South, with less than 0.4 miles to go, and contemplated trying to race him to the end one final time. But I knew I would break 4 hours if I didn't try anything stupid so for once during my "Tin Cup"-like running career I exercised some self restraint and did the smart thing and let him go. He wound up crossing the finish line 14 seconds ahead of me. :-(

Ok so that's it, hope you enjoyed it, if you'd like to donate follow the directions over on the right side of the page. You might as well do it now, because I have a lot more sappy stuff to hit you with over the next 3 months. ;-)

The Nike Half Marathon - Negative Splits

Today in Manhattan the New York Road Runners Club and Nike put on an excellent half marathon. It consisted of a loop and then some of Central Park, exiting the park and continuing down 7th Avenue to Times Square, over to the West Side, along the Hudson River, past Chelsea Piers and Ground Zero, and finishing down in historic Battery Park.

Team for Kids was running the race as part of a 16 mile run. We were to run 3 miles before the race and then start at the back of the pack and run the half marathon. Some of the faster members and I decided to skip the 3 miles and enter our preferred corral locations and start the race from there.

Many of my pace group members had more legitimate reasons than I to skip the extra 3, since they had run 12 or more miles the day before at Bear Mountain. I skipped that run for a couple of reasons, mainly because I am trying to avoid downhills as it causes some discomfort on my jaw in the wake of my surgery. I had the same procdure done back in March and the constant pounding of running on the road while training for and then competing in the San Diego Rock n Roll Marathon in June had caused me problems which I won't get into. This is why they had to essentially redo the surgery, under general anesthesia this time, 2 weeks ago. So on Saturday, at 6:30 a.m. when the person who was giving me a ride called to say our car was bailing due to inclement weather, I decided to stay in bed and rest for the half marathon. I suppose I could have arranged to get picked up by one of the other people going, but then I would only be able to run up the mountain and would have been forced to walk down it. I heard tell later that they ran sub 6:00 miles down the mountain, which could have caused the surgeon's brilliant work to come undone in a very painful way. Plus it would have caused my friends to wait 36 minutes for me to come back down before they could have left, assuming I could safely execute a 12:00 pace. Finally, my surgeon is going to take the stitches out on Monday, which I'm sure will hurt plenty, so back to bed I went.

In order to do optimally at the race I felt I had to skip the 3 miles beforehand, as doing the 3 from what I understood would put us in the back of the pack at the start. Ironically, the 3 mile run concluded in ample time whereby we could have gotten into our preferred corrals, so we would not have been impeded by a large crowd of 10,000 people for the first mile. We still would have suffered the competitive disadvantage of having run 3 miles beforehand, but 16 miles were on tap in the training program, so perhaps that would have been the better way to go. The 3 miles were a bit hilly, incorporating Harlem Hill, the largest one in Central Park, but it is really not that significant, nothing compared to Bear Mountain (and would have been uphill for the most part, so not too tough on me).

Here are a few considerations that drove my decision to deviate from the program, which I don't do lightly as I am a believer in it. One was, the race was being televised by the local ABC affiliate, WABC-TV, Channel 7. I assumed the commentators of the race were given some kind of information regarding Team for Kids, so I figured the more chances they had to see us out on the course, the more free publicity we might get. Actually I assumed nothing, I wrote an email to one of the TFK administrators asking if they had spoken to WABC and let them know our story, didn't hear back but I hoped that they did. We wear bright green uniforms, so I would have hoped that somebody on the team would be spotted during the race and the commentator would have said something to the effect of, "There's a TFK member, they are running the NYC Marathon in the fall to raise money for kids. To find out more to support this great cause, check out www.teamforkids.org." Who knows if anybody even watched the broadcast or not, as it started at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, but anybody who is a big enough fan of running to be tuned in might be intrigued enough to look us up and donate a few bucks.

My second reason was I wanted to race it to see how well I could do (ok, that doesn't really help the team at all). But in some respects, I think I do enough in terms of helping other members of the team, and attending other people's fundraisers. There is an interesting dichotomy, in one respect you are trying to help the kids as much as you can, and I think in that regard few would argue I pull my weight. And then there is the marathon training program component, which is largely personal in nature to the team member. I like to help my team members in that regard as well, at practices and even in races. I actually stopped in the marathon last year to help a guy in my pace group who was struggling and ran with him from miles 19 to 24 until he was able to actually run off on his own and finish ahead of me. We both broke 4 hours, so I have no complaints about helping him out, I like to think he would have done the same for me. So every once in a while I like to do something that I think is in my own best interest, and today I wanted to see how hard I could run at the end of a race.

My plan was pretty simple, and that was to start slow and finish strong, while attacking the hills in Central Park. With hills early and none late, I figured there was no real reason not to go hard up the hills. On marathon day it's a different story, as the last 6 miles is predominantly uphill, so you don't want to kill yourselves on the earlier hills. But the trail on the West Side is flat as a pancake, as was 7th Avenue and 42nd Street, so I made it a point to pass people on the hills in the park.

I also had to slow down on the downhills, which there were quite a few of, since we went in a clockwise direction (the two largest hills in Central Park are Harlem Hill and Cat Hill, both of which are uphill only when going counter-clockwise). One added thing I focused on going down hill was to let my arms dangle by my sides. There is no real reason to pump your arms going downhill the way you do when you usually run, so it is a good idea to give them a break on the downhills and conserve energy for the uphills and flats.

For you non-runners out there, a "split time" is a time for a smaller portion of a race. At today's race they measured splits at 5K (3.1 miles), 10K (6.2 miles), 15K (9.3 miles) and then of course at the end of the race, which was 13.1 miles. So the last distance where you could calculate a split was the final 3.8 miles. Split times are valuable tools for judging your performance. In the Team for Kids program the philosophy is to achieve negative splits, meaning you run faster in the later stages of the race than you do at the beginning. I had never really achieved this before. If you've been reading this blog you know my splits in my first marathon were terrible, 2:02:32 for the first half, 2:52:34 for the second half. That is very ugly. That is a case of running way too fast for the first half and then dying during the second half, being reduced to walking in tremendous agony towards the finish.

There are two ways to run negative splits. One is to run very slow, so slowly that you don't fatigue yourself at all, and then speed up at the end. The other way, which is what you want to try and achieve, is to run as fast as you can while still being able to increase your speed at the end. That is a delicate balance to try and strike with not too much margin for error, but it's what you have to strive for if you want to be the best you can be. In the second method, you are likely to experience some degree of pain and fatigue in the last part of the race, at which point your determination, will and heart come into play.

At the end of races I always find myself debating whether to try and push myself to go faster. It is often difficult to gauge what you are capable of doing in the final stages. There is a risk that if you push too hard you can pull something, or vomit, causing you to lose time or even not finish at all. At one race in the past year I tried stepping it up the last 0.2 of a 6.2 mile race and very nearly threw up. I had to slow down a bit until the feeling subsided and I missed my time goal by a few seconds. Sometimes that is a legitimate concern, but most other times I found myself complacent and tired and content to just breeze in without trying to get that "kick" at the end.

Typically after those races where I didn't push myself to the brink at the end I was pretty dissatisfied with myself. So recently I resolved to always push myself as hard as I could towards the end. Today I did the best job I ever did of that. I resolved to run the last 3.8 faster than any of the other splits. Right about the time I crossed the mat for the 9.3 mile split, it started raining. It actually felt nice and kept me cool, allowing me to skip the last two water stops. As I approached Ground Zero there was a bagpiper on the side of the road playing "God Bless America", which also gave me a bit of a lift. After that, to inspire myself to keep pushing, I kept thinking about Steve Prefontaine, the great American runner from the '70's with an iron resolve and some of his famous quotes:

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift."

"Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it."

And then I focused on the people surrounding me, speeding up when I heard footsteps to keep people from overtaking me, and targeting people in my sights who it looked like I could catch.

I had never run a 3.8 mile race, since I don't think they even exist, but here are my personal records for comparable distances, expressed in minutes per mile pace:

3.2 miles (a 10K lengthened 0.1 miles to fit the course in Prospect Park, Brooklyn): 6:28

4.0 miles: 6:36

Many people would think it impossible to "PR" (personal record) at a distance after having raced 9.3 miles, but here is what I was able to do today:

Splits in minutes per mile:

First 3.1 miles: 7:14
2nd 3.1 miles: 7:15
3rd 3.1 miles: 7:43
Last 3.8 miles: 6:28

I actually did the 3.8 miles at the end today 16 hundredths of a second faster than the entire 3.2 mile race in Brooklyn.

So I was very happy with myself, having established a PR for the half marathon distance of 1:32:31 (overall 7:04 pace) I finished in 434th place out of 10,294 finishers, beating 95.8% of the field. But more importantly I did a negative split, and was able to step up and overcome the pain and fatigue and run close to my top speed for an extended distance, 3.8 miles. My legs are sore, but no pain or bleeding from my jaw, so overall I'm feeling great about the whole experience. If I am going to qualfiy for the Boston Marathon this year and be able to run it with my friends who are already going to be in the race (KC, Amy, Ben, Allyson & others who may still qualify yet), it is going to require me to run to the limit of my physical ability and beyond at the end. I am going to have to average a 7:29 pace for 26.2 miles, something I attempted 2 months ago in San Diego but failed. But I think I passed a big test today in terms of will and determination, and running a smart race in terms of pacing, so now I just need to focus on racking up the miles without getting injured and I will have a fighting chance.

"A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself." - Steve Prefontaine

Movie Fundraisers

I will be hosting a series of dinner & movie fundraising events, to be held the night before our long runs in September & October. I am lucky enough to live in a 1,300 square foot photography studio / 2 bedroom apartment, with a 7 foot wide movie screen and a kitchen the size of the entire studio where I previously resided. Cost is a $20 donation made online, and a $5 cash contribution at the door to defray the costs of the food & drinks. Gatorade, water & soda will be provided as many of the guests will be doing a long training run the next morning, so if you want to drink anything stronger feel free to bring it with you.

There will be a different inspirational sports movie shown each week, with a menu related to the theme of the film in some way. On September 30th, Coach Pete will be preparing the food (perhaps with an assist from Mrs. Kenny), for a screening of "Rudy", the true story of a determined young man with no athletic talent who pursues his dream to play football for The University of Notre Dame.

Guests, significant others, friends, relatives are welcome, just let me know how many. Each event will be limited to 25 guests, so sign up quickly. Once I email you back and let you know the event is still open, then go ahead and make your donation (or donations if bringing multiple people). For the first event, "Breaking Away", the donations will go to Sonia Song, Entrant Number 41170.

The first event will be held on Saturday September 9th, details below:

The Film: "Breaking Away" (1979) Ranked #8 on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time. Dave Stoller, having just graduated from high school in Bloomington and not having any plans for the future, becomes obsessed with the Italian national bicycling team and spends all his free time training and winning races. He and his other aimless friends have many humorous clashes with the Indiana University kids, until the Dean of the school invites Dave and his friends to field a team in the Little 500 bike race to settle their differences. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for 1979, and one of my favorite all time movies.

The Fare: Pasta and meatballs, just like the ones the Italian-obsessed protagonist feeds his cat, whose name he changed from Jake to Fellini, much to his father's chagrin. There will also be salad, garlic bread, fruit & prosciutto for appetizers, and other tasty treats as well. The meatballs will be courtesy of my Mom & brother who did a bang up job for our "Sopranos" parties back in March. Guest Chef Sonia Song will be contributing the pasta main course for those all important pre-race carbs.

The Venue: Lexington Avenue & 103rd St in Manhattan (we'll email you the address after you donate). The 6 train stops directly across the street from my place.

The Time: Saturday September 9th, 6:30 p.m. appetizers will be available. Approximately 7:00 salad & dinner will be ready, with informal seating in the kitchen and in the studio surrounding the movie screen. Movie to start at 7:15, ending at 8:55 p.m.

How to sign up: Email bobscof@gmail.com first with the number of people you wish to bring to make sure it is not sold out. When I reply you can go ahead and donate online, using the link and entrant information on the right side of this page, and then your spot will be reserved. Show up with $5 per person and any alcoholic beverages you wish to consume (not recommended for people doing the next day's long run, encouraged for those of you who aren't!)

Fundraising update and TFK on TV

I have raised $535.00 so far. Thanks to me, my parents Ralph & Betty, Brian & Julie, Gina, Allyson, Regi & last but not least, Alice, my biggest contributor not related to me by blood or marriage. Just for that I am going to talk favorably about her as I run along side her hero Lance Armstrong on marathon Sunday. When we get to the park I'll hand the 7 time Tour de France Champion Alice's phone number and say, "Well Lance, I see you're struggling a bit, so this is where you and I part ways. Give Alice a call, you won't regret it! See you at the finish!"

I have to raise $1,000 by September 15th, so if you haven't donated yet, act now. The demographics of my contributors are a little startling, 2 married couples, 4 women and no men. Come on fellas, time to step up! I will buy a beer for the first guy to donate the next time I see him out on the town.

We will run the Nike Half Marathon in New York this weekend (Sunday morning at 7 a.m.) Come out to watch in person and cheer us on, or watch it on Channel 7 (WABC). My teammates and I will be clad in our bright green shirts, you can't miss us. :-)

The Need for Speed

Last night we did intervals as our Tuesday night workout. This is how you develop speed. The longer the race you are training for, the longer the distance and the greater the number of repeats you will do. We did 4 one mile repeats, from 72nd street to 90th street, running at "race pace", which is the speed at which we would race a 10K. When we got to 90th street we would do a recovery jog/walk on the bridal path south to about 86th street, then run at "warm up" pace down to the boat house, then jog for 100 yards to 72nd street and race for a mile once again back to 90th.

On my first interval I went faster than I should have, closer to a 6:20 mile than a 6:48 mile (my 10K race pace). On my 2nd one I stopped for 5 or 6 seconds to ask my friend if she was ok, it looked like she was heaving over on the sidelines during her recovery jog between the boathouse and 72nd. She said she was ok and I took off to try and catch my pace group members. I started flying faster than I had ever ran before. I flew by the 12:00 mile group, weaving in and out of people, then the 11:00's, 10:00's, 9:00's, and caught up with the 8:00's and went by them, finally getting pretty close to Pete who was well out in front of everyone else. He had not run the first inteval with us, so was fresher, and he had not stopped for several seconds like I did, but I still wanted to see if I could catch him.

As I passed someone he said "Go Bob!" and I turned and said, "Shhhh!" as I knew I would never catch Pete if he knew I was behind him, because he would just go faster. So my plan was to sneak up behind him and then pass him at the last minute. I made a tactical error at that point. I should have stayed directly behind him but I saw a group of people in the middle of the rec lane and an opening on the left (Pete was on the right). So I thought I might scoot up the left side and pass him, while hopefully the people in the middle would block me from his vision. As I made my move he looked over his left shoulder and I started laughing and put my arms over my face to conceal my identity but he knew what I was up to and he said, "Come on, let's go!" and took off. Of course I couldn't keep up, having tuckered myself out just to get that close, so I finished about 10 seconds behind him. He later wrote us that he had done sub 6:00 miles, so that was probably the fastest mile I ever did, even factoring in the stop at the beginning.

The above image is from a scene in "Top Gun" as almost everybody knows (I recently met somebody who has never seen the movie, which I found surprising). As the Top Gun competition is heating up, Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) say to one another, "I feel the need. The need for speed!" They are a team, Maverick is the pilot and Goose is the "R.I.O.". I'm not exactly sure what the "R.I.O." does; in the movie he is primarily there for comic relief. They go up in the air for that day's simulated dogfight, when they discover to their horror that their head instructor, Viper (Tom Skerritt), is flying against them for the first time. Maverick, in an effort to get in position to "kill" Viper before their competitor Iceman can, pilots his plane through Iceman's jet wash and loses control, causing their plane to crash. Maverick was cleared of responsibility, but it was not his first questionable decision during training. Earlier he pursued Jester below the hard deck, the lower altitude limit imposed upon the pilots during the exercise for their own safety.

There is a bit of Maverick in myself and many of the runners of the team. As marathon runners we tend to be "Type A" personality, competitive types who never shy away from a challenge. Often times I find myself disobeying our coach's instructions and running too fast. In some ways it is understandable, as running faster is the way to increase your overall speediness. But for instance with last night's workout, the point was to do all 4 intervals at the same speed. I ran top speed the first two, then slowed down to a bit below my "race" pace for the third one, and wound up running much slower than that in the 4th interval. So it is questionable whether or not I derived the full benefit from the workout by going off the reservation for the first two repeats, or if I would have been better served by doing what I was told and doing all 4 at the same prescribed pace.

I had another Maverick moment at our 8 mile training run on July 22, half of which was the 4 mile Race for Central Park. We were supposed to run the whole thing at our commute pace (the race plus 4 additonal miles immediately afterwards), in my case 8 minute miles. For various reasons, I wanted to do well in the race and post good numbers on the NYRR results database. The chief reason was that I had done relatively poorly at the NYC Triathlon the previous week, only beating 21% of the field, so I wanted to go out there and put up an impressive time. I raced the 4 miles at a 6:40 pace, finishing 124th out of 3,847 people, beating 96.78% of the field. So I felt good about that showing, but was kind of unhappy with myself for deviating from the training program. After I finished the race I waited a few minutes for the rest of the 8 minute milers to finish and then stuck with them for the second loop.

The problem with going too fast is most glaring on marathon day, where it is imperative to exercise discipline in the early stages of the race. You do need to keep those competitive juices in check, especially when you get off the Verrazano Bridge and the great crowds of Brooklyn start cheering you. Running fast creates lactic acid much more quickly than running not quite as fast does, so the fatigue in your legs builds up rapidly and ruins you for the latter half of the race if you are not careful. It is better to do your racing at the end of the race, because when the race ends, it doesn't matter how tired your legs are. Running fast for the first half of the race is just going to make the second half of the marathon pure torture.

Going the Distance

"Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood." - Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Rocky 1976

Pam Block, a member of TFK dating back to last year, organized an outing to Bryant Park in Manhattan for the last installment of the HBO / Citi Summer Concert Series. The film was "Rocky", the 1976 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture and Best Director. Sylvester Stallone was a double nominee for writing the original screenplay (see below for his inspiration), and for actor in a leading role (becoming only the third man in history to earn this distinction, Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles being the other two).

Pam and others had brought tons of great food, wine & other treats, which everyone enjoyed. The lawn opened at 5:00 and there was a mad rush apparently to stake out a claim to a piece of real estate, so she and our teammate Danika did a great job in securing us a great spot. I'm sure their running speed came in handy during the race. Hilary was also there early and brought some excellent spinach dip, which was a big hit.

I got to meet some new members of the team, some of whom even professed to be fans of this blog, which is nice. It's always good to know that there's somebody out there! Here is another blog I learned of while there, and Danika has links to two other TFK members' blogs as well:

http://danikaruns.blogspot.com

"Rocky" is a great film and was very inspirational to all of us. Unfortunately I had made plans for later that night (that's right, 10:00 p.m. on a Monday night, that's how I roll!) So I had to leave before Rocky started training and of course the fight itself, which are the best parts. There is a strong parallel between his story and ours. Rocky is slated to compete in an athletic event which is set for a date a couple of months away and he knows he has to train hard for it, otherwise he will be in a world of hurt when the day arrives. He knows he can't win it, but he knows just making it to the finish will be a tremendous accomplishment, so that is where he sets his sights. I've run marathons after training like Rocky did (last year with TFK), and after training like Apollo did (San Diego in 2001, longest training run 13 miles). Believe me I felt great at the end last year, and felt like I had gone 15 rounds when I stumbled across the finish line in San Diego 5 years ago.

We can all identify with the scene where Rocky goes through the city and tries to run up the stairs in downtown Philadelphia, only to become short of breath and have to walk. Later in the film, after having trained more and more, he is able to run up those same steps, and he bounds into the air with his arms outstretched when he reaches the top. He knows he is as ready as he is ever going to be, and it is time to face Creed. For those of you who are training for your first marathon, this is the feeling you will get upon successful completion of our 23 mile run in October.

Thanks to everybody that came out and brought food, especially Pam for organizing, and I'll see you at the next practice!


This is the true story that inspired Stallone to write "Rocky" (taken from Wikipedia.com):

On March 24, 1975, Muhammad Ali fought Chuck Wepner in Cleveland, a fight that was to inspire the Academy Award winning movie "Rocky". Ironically, however, it was Ali's opponent who provided the inspiration for history's most famous fictional pugilist. Wepner was a journeyman fighter who had been earning his living as a liquor salesman and security guard. Wepner had been dubbed "The Bayonne Bleeder" and, although he was ranked, he was considered hapless. Wepner, however, trained for two months and although he lost on a technical knock-out, he survived all 15 rounds and even managed to knock Ali down. Sylvester Stallone saw the match on television and the concept of Rocky Balboa -- an unknown club fighter who goes 15 rounds with the heavyweight champion -- was born.

Rockefeller was a milk run.

In Joseph Heller's "Catch-22", set in Italy during World War II, the Bologna mission was one that all the members of the bombing squadron looked forward to with dread. They all thought the city would be heavily defended by the Germans and that they would come under deadly attack from anti-aircraft fire when it came time to fly overhead. It was certainly not going to be a "milk run", which is the nickname for a mission where little or no enemy resistance is encountered. Fearing for his life, the protagonist / bombardier Yossarian sabotaged the intercom in his plane and convinced the pilot to return to base. Later that day, when Yossarian looked to the sky and saw every single plane but his returning in formation, unscathed, he assumed that weather had prevented them from seeing the target, scuttling the mission. As it turned out, after all the nervous anticipation and fear, Heller sums up the reality of what happened in one great sentence. "Bologna was a milk run". This is the type of irony that the great novel is laden with, you should check it out if they didn't make you read it in high school, it's one of the greatest (and funniest) books ever written.

I've mentioned in this blog how brutal Rockefeller was last year and how everyone, including myself, was scared for today's run. Amazingly I actually had a very easy time of it today, and most of the people I spoke with after the run felt the same way. The heat was not nearly as severe as last year. Today it was probably in the high 70's or low 80's, whereas last year it was 96 degrees, and felt like over 100 with the heat index. I was injured for last year's run which made it particularly tough on me, and even though I am recovering from jaw surgery, I found that I was able to run just fine. I decided to take it easy and ran with the 9:00 pace group, a full minute slower than normal, which made things a lot easier. Also the coaches cut out one of the tougher hills from our previous foray into the woods, and finally I think we had more volunteers with more water and Gatorade available out on the course.

So a good time was had by all and I'm in good health and ready for the next challenges that lay in store for us.

It could be worse...

8 days post op and still experiencing some pain in my jaw. Tomorrow is the brutal Rockefller Park in Sleepy Hollow, NY. Every vet I talk to has been dreading this run, those who were there last year and felt the pain, as well as those who missed it but heard tell of what lay in store for them. But this is why we train, to get stronger, and what we will do tomorrow really pales in comparison to what some of my teammates did today in Colorado.

My close friend Jenny moved out to Boulder a few weeks ago and invited others to join her in tackling the Pike's Peak Ascent, which is a 13 plus mile run straight up to the top of the eponymous mountain. There is 7,815 feet of elevation gain throughout the race. You start at 6,295 feet, which is 7 feet higher than the summit of Mount Washington, the tallest peak east of the Mississipi River. You end at the top, which is 14,110 feet high. My friend Jenny called me afterwards and said for many periods of the race you are not really running anymore, rather just walking or hiking or crawling up a mountain.

Jenny, Eugene, Erin and Dan all finished the race in fine form and with 98% of the precints reporting, nobody was injured (you never know, you can always wake up the next day with some undetected ailment, but everybody seems to be feeling well). Congratulations to everyone, you all accomplished something that Zebulon Pike never did, and that is reach the summit. :-)

It would appear that Zebulon Pike was not the greatest explorer in American history. He was chosen ostensibly to explore the southern half of the Louisiana Purchase, but in actuality the General who appointed him wanted Pike to spy on the Spanish in what is now Texas and New Mexico. In his travels he saw Pike's Peak, but never set foot on it, only documenting it from afar. Part of his mission on paper was to find the Red River, but instead he set up a fort at the Rio Grande on Spanish territory. His men were captured, which actually amounted to a rescue, because they were dressed in summer clothes in the middle of winter and were suffering from frostbite among other things. Pike was taken to prison deep into Spanish texitory, which enabled him to make many observations about Spain's presence in the area, which came in handy when we decided to settle in Texas and ultimately take over that state and the rest of the southwest. I've actually found accounts of Pike's exploits online that paint him as the Clark Griswold of explorers, and its true that he was no Lewis & Clark, but during the expedition to Southern Colorado he actually was following orders and got lost on purpose.

2005 Humorous Posts

Last year and this year our team uses a Yahoo Group to send messages to one another, about training runs, fundraisers, social events, questions about injuries, etc. Here are some messages I posted last year that got a few laughs, hope you like them:

Running Related Cleaning Tips

When you have clothes strewn across your bedroom floor, both clean and dirty, and you have doubts as to whether or not you just ran a half marathon in a particular pair of running shorts, I just learned the hard way that it is not a good idea to make the determination by taking the shorts in question and placing them directly against your nose and taking a deep whiff. I now advocate holding the suspect clothes 2 feet away and sniffing, and then moving them closer gradually, in 6 inch increments, checking the aroma at each interval.The 2 feet figure is correct for a half marathon, and becomes longer or shorter in proportion to the length of your latest run. For runs of18 miles or greater, it is best to ask your roommate or neighbor to perform the test. In other news, I just found the corn muffin that I was going to bring to the Brooklyn Half as part of a novel experiment invoving eating carbohydrates before a race. It was under a pair of pants, and I have tentatively slated it for tossing in the trash, as I don't think it will be edible on Sunday for the 30K. I will keep you all updated if I find anything else of interest or learn any more lessons this evening. Good night and good luck.

And the follow up:

Found: One Marathon Glove

I found one left-handed black marathon 5 boroughs glove during the ongoing excavation of my bedroom. I know that the right glove is lost. If somebody is in a complementary predicament please send me an email and we can unite my left glove with your right glove so that at least one of us will have a functioning pair.

And a response to a woman who announced she was unsubscribing to the group shortly after this post (this was several months after the marathon and many of us were still using the group to keep in touch and discuss offseason training and races):

"I understand you not wanting to get all of these irrelevant messages. So, should I just email you reports on my laundry situation directly? Does twice a day work for you?"

There was a flurry of emails about different marathons people were doing in early December, so I proposed this alternative for people who wanted to stay local:

Newer Marathon

For those of you New Yorkers who don't want to travel and don't like the idea of running outside in the cold weather and snow, I will be hosting an indoor marathon in the comfort of my studio apartment on the Upper East Side on Sunday December 18th. The race will consist of 7,685.33 18 foot loops around my coffee table. There will be water and gatorade stops on either side of the table (every 9 feet). Due to space restrictions the entry field will be limited to 5 people. Typical weather, thanks to an overzealous radiator, is 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius). There is no qualifying time, entrantswill be admitted on a first come first first served basis, so apply early. Coach Alem will be on hand with his bullhorn to shout encouraging words. More details to follow...

Resting for Rockefeller

I'm still in a bit of a weakened condition following last Friday's surgery so I figured it would be prudent to skip the run. I showed up and said hi to some of my teammates, and did some push ups with them in my work clothes, but when they took off running I headed home. I saw my friends Alice and Michelle running by me near the Engineer's gate, didn't see them at first as I was engaged in conversation with others, but finally they got my attention as they were about to get up onto the Jackie O. reservoir path.

This Sunday we're going up to Rockefeller, which as I mentioned was very tough last year. I ran with Sonia and Craig for brief stints during that run. Later in the season I would join their pace group, along with Russ and Amy, and the 5 of us ran the first 16 miles of the marathon together. It was my first time ever meeting Craig, who does not have the physique of the typical runner. He is an avid weight lifter and in pretty amazing shape, not to mention a handsome guy, so when I first saw him on the path I figured he must be a jerk. ;-) This was a great illustration of the old saying, "Never judge a book by its cover." We exchanged a few words, and mind you this was 10 or 11 miles into the most brutal run of my life, so there wasn't a long dialogue, but it soon became apparent that he was cool, which should have made me hate him even more, but I quickly realized he was also a nice guy, so I had no choice but to grudgingly like him. :-( After the run was over Sonia took pity on me and gave me a ride to the train station, which is only 300 yards from the parking lot, which tells you how bad I looked.

There is one more interesting thing that happened on the run. Here is the post I made about the incident on our team's Yahoo group the next day:

It's all about the Hamiltons

During the Rockefeller run around the mile 1 mark I spotted a $10 bill on the asphalt, which I bent over and picked up without breaking stride. I think it may have belonged to somebody in the 10:30 group a couple of minutes in front of me, either that or they all have really bad vision. I completely forgot about the bill until later in the afternoon when I was heading down the stairs into the 86th Street 4-5-6 Subway station. At that point I saw this homeless man who frequently stakes out that location, a nice enough seeming guy with long brown hair who is usually hunched over, a little more so today than usual. I have always ignored his requests for alms in the past, but I remembered finding the bill and in my fatigue-induced haze I thought I might generate some TFK donation karma by passing the bill onto him. He was quite appreciative to say the least, but he then took a closer look at me and the way I was limping after the 14 mile run and said, "No sir, you look to be in worse shape than me, you keep it." Ok, that didn't really happen. He thanked me profusely and kept the money, and I felt pretty good about things as I hobbled onto the train.

It occurs me to now that the money might have been somebody's trainfare back to the city, but I really didn't remember when we were back at the camp after the run, my mind being preoccupied with water, food and the radiating pain in my left hip. So, to whoever lost the money, I apologize if you had to spend the night in SleepyHollow and/or walk back to New York. :o)

Bob

Trouble at the Overlook

Ok there was no trouble, but there was a Team for Kids fundraiser on Wednesday night at a very cool place, which had the unfortunate name of Overlook. For those of you who don't have photographic memories and spend way too much time watching movies, that is the name of the hotel in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining". This film still scares the hell out me to this day, but it was for the kids, so I entered the bar. Luckily there was no ill tempered guy in a maroon sweater with a bad case of writer's block offering to sell his soul for one lousy drink. No little girls in blue dresses standing spookily in front of one of the doors. No little boy riding around on a big wheel, taking time out to engage his index finger in conversation. There were no elevator doors issuing forth fountains of blood and no axe wielding madmen handing out attitude adjustments.

Not feeling too well, still a bit out of sorts from the surgery and Tuesday's run, which I'm thinking now may have been too soon. I'm starting to get some pain, but I'm going to stick with OTC medication for that and forgo the top shelf stuff prescribed by my doctor. There's a run tonight, I'm going to skip it I'm pretty sure, and try to get back to 100% for the big Rockefeller Park Run on Sunday.

Last year Rockefeller was the toughest run for me, as I was having pain in my hip flexor muscles from an injury sustained the Thursday night before. It was 96 degrees and there were insane hills at this place. Actually the whole experience was kind of like a horror movie in its own right. Nobody was killed but many of us were put through the ringer and would not soon forget that day. As our coach says, "Train hard, race easy." Gotta go, more later.

All Shook Up

Today is the 29th anniversary of the death of Evis Aron Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. He died due to heart problems, not to mention his addiction to prescription pain medication. I had been taking some pills of this type the past few days as part of my recuperation from Friday's surgery, and they were pretty effective at alleviating the pain. The pills are known as Vicodin, generic name hydrocodone, and they don't eliminate the pain so much as they make you not care about it. It's almost like the pain is there and you are aware of it, but it's like it's happening to somebody else. I had taken these pills following a wisdom tooth extraction in 1995 and I had known from researching them that they were addictive (sending off to rehab the likes of Matthew Perry and Courtney Love, who is nearly indestructible when it comes to narcotics). So obviously I was going to follow the directions and discontinue their use the moment the pain stopped. Being a recovering alcoholic with nearly 16 years of sobriety I wasn't going to take any chances.

As it turned out I took my last pill at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday (yesterday). I had to decide whether or not to run that evening with TFK at 6:45. I didn't think running while medicated would be a problem, I was worried that my jaw might not be fully healed and all the shaking and jostling of running might cause the wounds to open anew. But I figured since it had been 96 hours since the surgery and I got a clean bill of health at a checkup from the surgeons on Monday morning that everything would be ok. I also knew that on Tuesdays we ran on the softer surface of the bridal path, where the horses run, which would also cause less bouncing and impact on the jaw. I also resolved to run with people in slower pace groups which would also help matters. So I figured I had a good plan on my hands, and off to Central Park I went!

I ran with a girl on my team who is doing her first marathon, Diana, and we ran the first circuit nice and slow, and I felt no pain. The second time around, when we got to the "race" pace portion of the workout, she started speeding up, and I started speeding up, which I think all got started when some other people from our team passed us. At the end she pulled up lame and actually had to leave the practice early and head home. She told me later that she was feeling fine, which was a relief. At the time I was shaken up for a bit, but then our buddy Mr. Vicodin reminded me that things were going to be ok, so after giving her $20 for cab fare so she wouldn't have to do any walking to get home, I ran off to find some more people to run with.

I joined the 9:00 pace people, who are closer to my speed, and ran with them for a bit, before speading up and catching (and passing) some of the members of my 8:00 pace group. So the running was working out ok, and even after the drugs wore off I didn't have any extra pain in my jaw.

This morning I was exhausted, even though I went to bed at a pretty reasonable hour, before midnight. I could barely keep my eyes open and contemplated just leaving work to go home and go back to bed. I'm not sure if this relates in part to getting off the medication (I had 10 or 11 pills from Friday night to 4:30 on Tuesday, surely it couldn't be that addictive?) Or maybe it was just a function of doing all that exercise in a still weakened condition.

Well I am feeling better now, I had a couple of Tylenol 8 hour pills this morning which are doing their job, so thankfully I am done with the hydrocodone and don't have to worry about getting hooked. I often wonder why a guy with so much going for him like Elvis or Matthew Perry would get involved with pills, but with the Vicodin, at least they do tend to alter your consciousness in a pretty interesting way. I found this hard to believe, but I read online that the Friends star was taking over 30 pills a day. Pretty shocking, and I imagine Elvis must have been doing something equally horrifying if not worse in the late stages of his life. Well anyway, I'm glad the pain is over and I don't have to worry about going down the road Elvis went down, at least for today. Have a great night and long live The King!

A Look Back - My First Marathon

I didn't run today, still recuperating from my surgery, so I figured I would write about my first marathon experience, which wasn't real pleasant thanks to my poor training regime, if you can call it that.

In 2001 I was living in San Diego and was leading a very sedentary lifestyle. I used to play quite a bit of poker as a hobby, which is legal in California, so when I wasn't spending time sitting at my office, or sitting in a law school classroom, I was sitting at a table in a cardroom. That's a lot of sitting, and aside from the occasional game of golf or taking the dog for a walk, I got very little exercise. In January, the girl I was living with at the time told me that our friend Trevor was coming to visit in June to do the Suzuki Rock n Roll Marathon. She suggested that I do it as well. That idea was somewhat out of left field, as I had never been a runner, and certainly was not in any kind of shape to run 26.2 miles. I had been with this girl for several years so I kind of knew what the subtext of her suggestion was. I was in a rut and knew it so I welcomed the motivational push to try and tackle this new challenge. The next day at work I hopped online and registered for the event. I was feeling pretty confident about things. I had run a mile in gym class back when I was 16. And I had actually run a 5 mile race on Thanksgiving several years earlier, and I was a smoker at the time. I had since given up cigarettes, and while my diet consisted largely of Double Doubles and vanilla milkshakes from In N Out Burger, I wondered how hard could the marathon be?

I went to the store and bought some running shoes, and then one day after work went to the gym at our office building to try and figure out the treadmill. I got on and tried to see how far I could run. As it turns out, it was only a quarter of a mile. Oh boy. This was going to be tougher than I orignially thought. A marathon is 26.2 miles and I could only do 1/4 of one mile, with the race 4 months and 1 week away. Not only that but the 1,320 foot journey made me too sore to run the next day.

Two days later I went back to the treadmill and tried to go longer, and was able to do a half mile. Woohoo! I was making great progress. Inspired by my amazing results, when I got home I did some research and wanted to find a good goal for myself in terms of a finishing time and saw that 4 hours was kind of the benchmark for non-professional runners to try and break. So I did some math and figured out what pace I needed to run, which was 9 minute miles. On the treadmill readout that is 6.7 miles per hour, so that is the speed I would program for all of my future treadmill runs. Incidentally, this is not the correct way to determine your pace. Your pace should be dictated by your ability and not some goal you looked up online after nearly falling off of a treadmill after a half mile "workout".

Although I ultimately got into a good 9 minute mile groove, I didn't like running on the treadmill at all. It made me kind of dizzy and was incredibly boring, so after I got up to about 2 miles I decided to take the show on the road. Luckily I was living in San Diego where the weather is always pleasant, and there are some nice trails to run on that are quite scenic. The main place I used to go was Crown Point, where there is a sidewalk with markers every quarter of a mile, so it makes it easy to track your progress and monitor your pace. The path winds around Mission Bay, a beautiful body of water not far from Mission Beach and the Pacific Ocean.

On my birthday, March 11th, my then girlfriend bought me a runner's watch, which was very thoughtful of her. So now I could time myself more accurately when I ran outside (for the previous couple of weeks I would just note the time on the clock in my car and check it again when I got back, not very accurate). So now that I had the watch and I had been training for 6 weeks, I wanted to see how fast I was. I decided to run a mile as fast as I could, which is a common method of training, to mix in a night of speedwork, but I didn't really know any of this at the time. This was on a Tuesday night, when I would typically run 3 or 4 miles at the usual 9 minute mile pace. I ran the first mile in just over 7:00, and was pretty exhausted after doing that. So I just walked around and caught my breath and drank some water for about 10 minutes and then started the stopwatch and made another go at it, back toward my car, determined to break 7:00. As I got near the end I sped up quite a bit and went flying by some people on roller blades who looked at me like I was nuts. As I crossed the finish line I clicked the stopwatch off, and when I looked down I was happy to see the readout: 6:59.93! It is kind of funny to think of it now, since now I can do sub 7 minute miles for a 10k, and once did exactly 7:00 pace for a 15K (9.3 miles), but at the time those 2 seven minute miles took a lot out of me. I was actually too sore to run until the weekend, having to skip my Thursday night run. But that is one of the thrilling things about running, reaching new limits and establishing new personal records.

I was following a schedule I had found online or in a book, doing a long run on Sunday and shorter runs on Tuesday & Thursday nights, gradually increasing the mileage as I went along. I had made an Excel schedule calendar where I put the proposed miles for every day, and then would update it with the actual results (the real miles I wound up doing, which would often vary, and the times). So I was pretty well organized and was living in a city with an ideally suited climate, had a supportive girlfriend in my corner, and plenty of weeks left to get ready for the race. Sadly, the wheels were about to come off of the whole operation.

On April 15th I did a 12 mile run, which I started in Mission Bay and went all the way to the ocean and then up the boardwalk in Mission Beach for a bit, and then turned around and came back. It was unseasonably hot, and it was a bit rough so I couldn't maintain the 9:00 pace, slowing down at the end to a 10:00 pace, but still not too big of a problem in the scheme of things. However, as it turns out, this wound up being my longest run before the marathon. For those of you new to the sport, what I should have done in the following weeks, and they were all laid out right there on my handy Excel schedule, were Sunday runs of 14, 16, 18, 20 and then tapering down to 12, 5 and then the marathon. Instead I opted for 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and marathon. Don't try this at home!

After April 15th I was not as busy at work so there was really no reason to be missing runs. School ratcheted up in intensity a bit, as my final exams and a big paper were on tap for early and middle May, but there was still plenty of time to run. I had no excuse, I just wound up not doing the long runs. I would run periodically on Tuesdays & Thursdays, 5 miles at the most, sometimes only 3. I had started playing poker again, which is something my ex-girlfriend hated and was probably the driving force behind her suggestion to take up running. After all, running was much healthier and a much less expensive hobby. I'm not sure what was going through my head at the time, I'm sure we were having some kind of relationship difficulties (we would break up 6 months later). But mainly I was just being a lazy loser. In any event, with 6 weeks or so to go before the race, I essentially stopped training altogether.

The Friday before the marathon I went for a run around my neighborhood, probably only a mile and a half. This was the first time I had run in over two weeks. Sunday was going to be ugly; I had read enough on the subject to know that failure to log enough miles was going to cost me in the later stages of the race. But our friend was in town and he was doing it and it had been built up so much that I couldn't back out now. I had made my bed and now I had to lie in it.

At the starting line I realized there was one crucial decision left to make, one that might spell the difference between finishing and not finishing, and that was what pace to run. I could go out at the old 9:00 pace and see if by some miracle I could do it in 4 hours, or slow down as a concession to the reality that I had not put in nearly enough miles. Again, I made the stupid decision and threw caution to the wind. I did the first 10K in a 8:53 pace. The next 6.9 miles I slowed down to a 9:47 pace, which is attributable in part to a prolonged uphill from miles 6 to 10. My half marathon was 2:02:32 (9:21 pace), so if I could have sped up a bit I could have broken 4 hours. But that was never going to happen, as my legs were already getting sore. This represented the longest distance I had ever run at one time before, and now things were going to get difficult. I began walking through the water stops, taking a cup or two at the beginning and then walking through the whole station and then starting to run again after having leisurely drank my fill. Once I got to the 20 mile mark things got even worse.

At the 20 mile point back then (the course has since been changed) there was this really large hill that seems to go nearly straight up into the sky. I had to walk up it and it then we went down a hill of nearly equivalent steepness, which was also painful. After that I kind of started hallucinating, which is always fun. I began talking to myself aloud, kind of a Tourrette's Syndrome kind of thing, where I would just randomly swear under my breath in repsonse to the pain. One thing that kind of helped keep me going was that the pain would manifest itself in different parts of my body. So my legs would hurt, and they wouldn't stop hurting, but all of a sudden a new and more exquisite pain in my left shoulder of all places would come to the fore. This was actually a welcome break in the monotony and was almost entertaining in a way.

Another way I tried to keep myself sane during the torturous last 10K was to do math in my head. Now that the 4 hour goal was out the window I kept revising my time goal and doing the necessary calculations to figure how fast I needed to go. Doing math in your head of this nature is tough enough under the best of circumstances, but when your brain is not working properly it is nearly impossible. My 20 mile split time was 3:29:13, and I was walking at this point, so I came up with a new plan to just try and break 5 hours, which could pretty much be accomplished by walking briskly at a 14:30 pace the rest of the way.

I also resolved that I would finish the race running, so I made the conscious decision to do a lot of walking from miles 21 to 24. After the 24 mile mark, with 30 minutes to go, I started running again, albeit much slower than before, but running nonetheless. So when I entered the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot for the last few hundred yards of the race I was moving at a respectable clip. When I crossed the finish line the clock read 4:55:06, and my net time was 4:53:40. I was very happy that it was over, and I saw my friend Trevor, as well as his fiancee and my girlfriend who were volunteering at the finish line. I got one of those tin foil heater things and a banana and sat down on a box of water bottles, which isn't optimal (you're supposed to keep walking to aovid getting sore). But I didn't much care at that point I had no energy left and could barely stand up. We went and got some free food, mainly chocolate chip cookies for me, and then made the long walk back to the car.

The rest of the night I spent sitting in a recliner in my apartment, and I was incredibly sore and stiff the rest of the week. It was probably Friday when I was walking in a manner that was not reminiscent of Frankenstein's Monster. I did have a tremendous sense of accomplishment, but was not yet in love with running. Having run alone all during my training and then enduring so much pain at the marathon itself, the whole experience was not as fun as it should have been. Consequently, it would not be until 2 years later, in the summer of 2003 that I would run seriously again.

The difference between this experience and my first year with Team for Kids (2005) was like night and day. I almost never ran alone in 2005, I always had great people to keep me company. As my speed changed throughout training, I just found new people to run along side with no problem. I never missed a training run unless I was too injured, as I didn't want to let down my teammates or miss a chance to see them again. The results were vastly different, I completed the New York City Marathon in 3:57:34, about 56 minutes quicker than my first effort. I had run New York the year before (2004) in 4:41:20, which is one where I trained by myself yet again, but actually did an 18 mile long run and did not decide to stop running in the weeks before the race. So while 2004 was an improvement over 2001, and resulted in knocking 12 minutes off my time, joining Team for Kids was the key to breaking 4 hours and joining the ranks of the speedy amateur runners.

So the moral of the story is to join a team or at least find somebody else to train with, unless you have the discipline to make yourself show up day in and day out for your scheduled training runs. Even if you are the kind of person that has that ability to drag yourself to the park early in the morning just because the Excel schedule tells you so, joining a team is going to provide you with a lot of great friends that will make the expereince much more fun and memorable.

About the Program

Team for Kids raises money for running programs for kids in New York and other parts of the country. Childhood obesity is a terrible problem here in the city and all throughout the U.S. The problem is particularly acute in many of the poorer areas of New York, as some school systems don't have enough funds to have a gym teacher or any kind of physical education at all. As a result, roughly half the kids in a recent survey were found to meet the definition of obese. Overweight children tend to grow up to be overweight adults, and they are 25% more likely to develop Type II Diabetes. They are also at risk for heart disease and suffer from low self esteem and depression.

The money you donate will go to establishing after school running programs, which involves having coaches, equipping the kids with running gear, and conducting races for the kids to compete in throughout the year.

Here is a video I made for the team that does a good job of summing up the whole Team for Kids marathon training program and who we will be running for in Novemberl:

http://www.carpenterstudios.com/TFKTrailer.wmv

Missed the 12 Mile Run

The team ran 12 miles today, starting in the park near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, running over to the running trail along the Hudson River on the West Side, down to Chelsea Piers and back again.

Unfortunately I had surgery on my jaw which still is painful and swollen today so I had to skip it. The surgery seems to have gone quite well and I am optimistic for a speedy recovery.

Hopefully somebody will post about today's run and I can link to it or copy & paste it, as I am curious as to how it went.

Last year it was one of the two most difficult runs all season, as it fell unluckily enough on the hottest day of last year. The temperature was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius). Running along the West Side there are very few trees or buildings to provide you cover from the sun, so you just cooked the entire time. The pace selected by our coaches was not a slow and steady pace, they had us doing accelerations throughout the run, which they mercifully said we could abandon for the second half. When we got to Chelsea Piers there was no water left to drink for me and my speedy brethren who all started later. I had been trying to keep up with Greg Roelants, Sonia Song & Amy Dold, as was Autumn Backman. We lost Autumn pretty quickly and left her for dead essentially at her insistence. Amazingly she wound up finishing the run a little after us. During the second half I had to stop and walk several times, it was incredibly brutal. When I made it back up to the city streets, Helen Hostin caught up with me and gave me some Gatorade, which was a lifesaver. That gave me the energy to make it to the water fountains in the park which kept me going until the end.

Ok I am off to get ice for my jaw, I have kind of a Michael Corleone thing going on from "One" ["The Sopranos" characters always refer to the various "Godfather" installments simply by their number]. Add that TV show, Entourage, and Seinfeld to the list of required viewing for maximum enjoyment of these musings. Ok, I am freezer bound, have a great day!

"I don't think the heavy stuff's gonna come for quite some time."

It rained in New York today, and hard. There was thunder & lightning and some very cold, big rain drops. It was reminiscent of the scene in "Caddyshack" where Bill Murray is playing golf with the Bishop, who is having the round of his life in a driving rainstorm. You should remember it and if you haven't seen the film, you should go to netflix.com and have them send it over right away.

It started raining at the precise moment when we began our pre-run stretching exercises. It was actually kind of pleasant running in the rain, in contrast to the 100 degree heat we had to contend with last Tuesday night, August 1st. We were supposed to do hill repeats but wound up just doing a loop of the park. Overall everybody had fun, it was one of those situations that was so absurd that everybody was laughing and having a great time. To my knowledge nobody was struck by lightning, "which is nice" (sort of a dual "Caddyshack" homage there you may have missed).

Ok, I'm starting to worry now that some people have not seen "Caddyshack". If you are going to get full enjoyment out of this blog I will alert you to some of my favorite movies that I will probably be alluding to liberally up until marathon Sunday that you may want to watch so you can keep up with all the references. Here is a partial list:

Caddyshack
Back to School
Old School
Wedding Crashers
Rainman
Rudy
Breaking Away
Animal House
Casablanca
The Godfather I & II
Goodfellas
My Cousin Vinny
The Graduate
The Princess Bride
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Braveheart
Total Recall
The first two Terminator movies
Predator
Silence of the Lambs
The Good The Bad & The Ugly
Forest Gump
A League of their Own (which will always be some variant of the line, "There's no crying in baseball.")
Back to the Future
The Karate Kid
The Breakfast Club
Cool Hand Luke

Ok, I have to go to bed, and you have a lot of work to do. Have a good night!

Running for the kids

Hi, my name is Bob and I am a runner. It is sort of like being an alcoholic, only not as healthy. My legs are sore and I've been tired lately. The photo of me above is from the Knickerbocker 60K race held in Central Park last year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I am the guy on the left in the bright green shirt, which is the uniform of The Team for Kids. The rationale behind the brightness of the shirt is it makes it easier for our supporters to pick us out of the crowd. This was not that important of a consideration during the 60K as there were only 87 finishers (I came in 60th). It is very handy during the ING NYC Marathon, as there are 37,000 or so runners out on the course. There will be 1,000 of us out there this year, 1 out of every 37 people should be clad in bright green.

The guy on the right is Alem Kahsay, one of our great coaches. Here is a link to his website:

http://www.coachalemk.com/

He runs very fast (his best marathon time is 2:14, which is a 5:07 pace). If you live in New York City and would like running instruction, he holds a class every Monday and Wednesday I believe, check his website for details.