You Guys are Great!

Great job everyone! Donations are pouring in!

Here's the 2nd marathon preview again!

Here's the 1st one!

Finally, here's the link to donate!!
Last name Kelly, Entrant 72936

You all rock!!

Final Day to Order DVD & Another Preview Video

Here is a 2nd (out of the 4 on the DVD) marathon video, I apologize about the quality, but again it is compressed to be viewed on the web. The quality on the DVD is excellent. With the DVD you will get this video plus the 3 other ones set to cool songs, all the footage being of you (maybe) and your teammates (definitely) running the 2006 ING New York City Marathon with Lance & Shannon Miller. Someday long into the future your kids or grandkids may doubt grandma or grandpa (you) when you say you competed in the NYC Marathon with the 7 Time Tour de France winner. They may even conclude that you are suffering from delusions and use that as an excuse to have you committed to a nursing home involuntarily. Buy your DVD and keep it as proof! Do you know what they do to old people in those places? Better safe than sorry.
You will also get several other videos - approximately 50 minutes of content all together. Oh just buy the damn thing already. You've never spent $30 drinking during an evening? What did you have to show for it afterwards? A bad hangover. I used to routinely bet $30 and even more than that on a single hand of blackjack. Do you know how long a single hand of blackjack lasts? Under a minute. $30 is less than half of what Nathan Miller tips each of the 14 doormen and maintenance guys in his building for Christmas every year. How many $30 toys did you buy for your kids this Christmas that they have already stopped playing with and WILL NEVER TOUCH AGAIN? I am so sick of you people. Buy the video or I will hunt down all 960 of you who have not yet bought it and MAKE you buy it. Do you think I'm joking? I'm going to start at the top of the alphabet and work my way down. So Abbie Bookman, if you haven't gotten your video by midnight tomorrow night, don't be surprised when your doorbell rings at 12:01 and I am standing there with a machete and a DVD. Do I sound like I'm kidding? Try me.

Please make your fully tax-deductible donation on behalf of last name Kelly, Entrant 72936!
Donate $30 for Mary-lynn Kelly here! Now! Last chance!

Did I mention the money goes to kids? Free shipping? Enhanced probability of entering Heaven or your religion's equivalent thereof upon your death?

Click below to see 2nd marathon preview video
Preview video # 2 and final one

Thanks in advance to those who donated or will donate soon! The rest of you I'll deal with later.

DVD Preview

Here is one of the 4 marathon videos, set to the tune "Clocks" by the amazing band Coldplay. The other 3 songs are from the Garden State soundtrack. The quality you'll see here is in no way comparable to what you will see on the DVD, this version has been compressed for quick viewing on the web. The real version is of DVD quality. :-) In any event this sample is just here to give you an idea of what the marathon footage looks like.

To order the DVD, donate 30 here, last name Kelly, Entrant 72936. Offer expires Friday at Midnight!

Click here to watch video:
2006 Team for Kids New York City Marathon

Only 3 days left! It's for the kids!

Your Face is my Case

Went home to Connecticut for the holiday after my surgery yesterday, sitting here at my Mom's computer putting ice on my face. Hopefully I won't need Jackie Chiles to represent me, as I'm pretty sure all went well. My face is still numb but the doctor says that is normal.

I've been watching the TFK DVD over and over again, it is quite mesmerizing. If you haven't bought it yet, you can still acquire it by donating on behalf of Mary-lynn Kelly, Entrant 72936. This last viewing I counted the occurrences of different TFK'ers in the marathon video and came up with 272. That is a pretty good number and many people show up more than once. If you didn't wear your green TFK shirt for whatever reason you probably are not in it. But anyway, we got better than 1 in 4 team members in the video, so there is a decent chance you are in it, or at least somebody you know well. I stuck a shot of Lance and his entourage in there, so you can say you have a video of yourself competing in a sporting event with Mr. Tour de France. Also my brother's roommate got a good shot of our teammate and Olympic Gold Medalist Shannon Miller on 5th Avenue.

Other videos on the DVD:

- The TFK trailer that inspired some of you to join the team back in June.

- The "I've Been Everywhere" video with footage from many of our training runs in the New York area.

- The Run with the Rabbits Video.

- The never before seen Bronx Zoo Kids Race Video, set to the tune "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens.

- "Beer Mile 2006 - The Quest for Corporate Sponsorship" - Watch it now before it becomes all commercialized just like the Super Bowl!

- The Poland Spring 5 Mile Kickoff featuring special guest Lance Armstrong (Pete Kenny).

- "Meet Tyler Darby", an interview with your inspiring teammate, triathlete, pilot and cancer survivor.

- The 23 Miler from 2005

- Finally there is a special video I made for Megan Cannady which was not finished in time for the initial release of the DVD but I've added to the most recent version. Megan is the 6 year old daughter of our teammate Jill, who had to defer her entry to the marathon until next year when Megan fell ill. Eugene Koenig and I went to the Kids' Cross Country Race in Van Cortlandt Park the week after the marathon and made a video to inspire Megan to get better. I finished it a few days ago and sent it along with a race shirt and some Christmas gifts purchased with Coach Adam's money from his Thanksgiving promotion. I'll tell you more about that after Christmas, we don't want to spoil the surprise for Megan (you never know who might be reading this blog). :o)

Going Under the Knife

Tomorrow, Friday December 22, I will undergo surgery at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, NY. They are going to take that pesky cyst out of my jaw, and the tube that was in there the past several months to irrigate it. Hopefully things will go well. There is a small risk of damaging the nerves in there which could cause me to lose feeling in my face, either temporarily or permanently. That is something that has me really worried. :-(

All right, I have to focus on eating & drinking, I have 27 minutes before I am supposed to start fasting and as those of you who have dined with me are aware, I am a very slow eater. Wish me luck!

What Not to Eat 15 Minutes Before an 18 Mile Run...

Many of you probably already knew this, but I learned the lesson the hard way. Stayed out too late again the night before the Hot Chocolate 15K, which was turned into a 10 miler, which my friends and I were going to convert into an 18 miler since we plan on running Miami on January 28th. So after getting 4 hours of sleep I found myself in the tobacco / Red Bull store downstairs, and after grabbing a small Gatorade I thought to myself I needed to eat something if I was going to be doing a long run. I looked around through the various treats they had for sale, and this one seemed the most substantial and least disagreeable (a sad commentary on their wares).

Walked over to the park, met some fellow TFK'ers, and started eating the Honey Bun. It tasted good, very sweet, which I like. I was commending myself for my excellent choice. Surely I would run 18 miles without a problem.

The first 6 miles or so were ok, kept it at a 7:15 pace or a little faster, which was my goal for the 18 miler (I can run 10 miles much faster than that). I never ran a 10 mile race before, but my PR for 15K is a 7:00 pace. That was another crushing near miss, I wanted to post a sub 7:00 pace, needed to go about 5 seconds faster. I tried to ratchet it up in the last 0.3 that day but felt like, no, knew I was going to hurl, so had to slow it down considerably. I actually made it to the finish without vomiting, but narrowly missed my goal.

So here I was taking it relatively easy (I am faster than I was 6 months ago when I did this PR, I'm sure I could have done 6:45's without trouble based on my last 2 races). At mile 6 or so I started getting a bit sick to my stomach. Around this time I burped, as I had been doing a little more than usual this race. But this burp brought with it a little bit of vomit-like liquid from the digestive tract, not sure what the technical word for this is, but my brother calls it "burping up a donut". So that happened and I tasted the honey bun and thought to myself, "Hmmm. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea." The rest of the race I kept the pace but wasn't too happy about life in general. In the last half mile my teammate Phillipp passed me, and of course I couldn't let him get by without a fight, even though he wasn't doing 18 and did not have a Little Debbie Cake as his pre-race meal. I'm fairly certain Phillip wasn't out until 3:30 the night before singing Johnny Cash songs at a bar in midtown Manhattan. But I still figured I'd try to catch him. I snuck up behind him and drafted him for a while, but then he saw my shadow in front of him and looked around to see me there and sped up a bit. Then this other joker comes by and tries to pass Phillipp which makes him go even faster. But I kept close enough to beat him by chip time, so I accomplished that part of my idiotic mission, but of course I was ruined at the end and couldn't do the extra 8 miles. I don't think the little race really affected that outcome, the die was cast when I downed the honey bun, my stomach was reeling from that fiasco all day.

Lessons learned:
- Sweet pastries are not a good pre-race meal.
- Never do anything that you don't ordinarily do before a race.
- If you want to do extra mileage in conjunction with a race, do it before the race starts and not afterwards. That way if your competitive fire gets the better of you during the race, you don't have to worry about exhausting yourself too much to tack on the extra miles at the end.

Joe Kleinerman 10K

As you may recall, I tried to break 20 minutes at a 5K on Thanksgiving in a driving rainstorm, but just missed, finishing in 20:06. Somehow I got the idea in my head that I should try to do the 10K in 40 minutes, which is somewhat illogical since your times are supposed to increase exponentially as the distance gets greater. But I always like to shoot for round and / or meaningful numbers (4 hours, qualify for Boston, sub 7:00 pace, etc.) So off I went.

The sleep situation was not good, went to bed around 4:10 a.m. Also I don't really recall eating dinner last night. On second thought there was food at the second party I attended, in somebody's home on the UES. (UES stands for "Upper East Side" for those of you in other parts of the country. That is where "The Jeffersons" moved when they got sick of living in Queens next to their racist neighbor, Archie Bunker. It is a magical place where fish don't fry in the kitchen and beans don't burn on the grill. It does, in fact, take a lot of tryin' just to get up that hill. Thankfully however, as long as we live, it's you and me baby, there ain't nothing wrong with that. And yes, there was pie at the party at well, pecan to be precise.)

At the party they had more donuts than I have ever seen at one fiesta held by people in their 20's on a Saturday night. I had a cookie, made by one of the guests, which was quite good. And I had some chips and dip. There was a bit of a design flaw in the set up however - the chips were atop the television while the dip was on the counter between the kitchen and the living room. I would grab a chip and walk 4 steps over to the dip, make some magic happen, eat the dip laden chip, and then make my way back over to the TV. I didn't really feel comfortable grabbing the dip receptacle and bring it over to the TV set, and every square inch of the counter top not occupied by the dip bowl was covered in donuts, so moving the chips was not a viable option either. So I made the best of the situation and got a little exercise as I ate, possibly burning more calories than I was consuming, which would not help me during today's race (to the extent eating potato chips and sour cream and onion dip actually helps at all to begin with).

The day before the race had started off well, with the breakfast of champions, an egg and cheese croissant from Burger King, plus 6 French Toast Sticks. Mmmmmm. During the rest of the day, before the donut party, I ate a bag of Utz brand Cheez Curls and some pretzel rods. That was it. :-(

Ok, the morning of the race arrived and I got up and drank a bottle of water and got a Gatorade from downstairs. The guy sells me small bottles of Gatorade for $1 while the rest of the world pays $1.75. He loves me, what can I say? I drank that on the short walk over to the starting area. One of the good things about living in my 'hood is that I am a short walk from the 102nd Street Transverse in Central Park where many of the races start and end.

This week I got in position at the front of the race (it took me only 9 seconds to get to the start). I decided since I came in 93rd last week that there should be roughly that many people in front of me and no more, so I felt like I belonged. Mary Wittenberg said a few words about Joe Kleinerman, the man for whom the race is named. I didn't know much about him so I googled him and found out he was quite an influential character in the running world (Mary had mentioned some of his accomplishments and innovations in her speech). I saw her assistant, my friend Alice, looking radiant as always standing next to Mary, which was nice. They then brought out a European woman who once won the NYC Marathon to blow the horn. In NYRR world the words "Get Set" and "Go" do not exist. It is "On Your Mark" and then the horn blows. And off we went.

We went counter clockwise which forces you to go up the two nastiest hills in the park, and Mile 1 takes you almost all the way to the top of the worst of them, Harlem Hill. I didn't really know what to do about that in terms of strategy. I could attack the hill and risk tuckering myself out for the rest of the race, or just take it a bit easier and save my energy for the other 5.2 miles. I decided to go with Plan A. I didn't attack it that hard - I posted about a training run I did during the summer where I essentially ran up it as fast I could go and was pretty spent at the end of it. So I knew I wasn't going to do that again (I do make some correct decisions on occasion). Anyway the result was pretty impressive. When I got to the 1 mile marker which was about 50 yards from very top of Harlem Hill a bit before the 102nd transverse the clock read 6:31. With my 9 second differential that was a pretty incredible 6:22. I felt pretty strong after that but must have lost something along the way because I actually ran slower the rest of the way (my average pace wound up being 6:24, and don't do the math now, you'll spoil the ending of the story). But I was confident anyway, because I felt like if I could do Mile 1 in 6:22 that the other comparatively easier stretches could easily be done in that time or better.

At mile 2 the clock read 12:51, for a 6:29 mile. At mile 3, the clock read 19:11 for a 6:20 mile. At mile 4 the clock read 25:33 for a 6:22 mile.

At mile 5, the clock read 32:00 for a 6:27 mile. At this point I had to put my thinking cap on to see if I could break 40, as I now realized I had 7 minutes and 59 seconds to traverse the final 1.2 miles. I didn't do the math fully but got the sense that if I did a 6ish pace I could do it. By this point I had summited Cat Hill already, and it was substantially flat and probably even net down hill the rest of the way so I was pretty confident. I actually got passed by 3 or 4 people and didn't really pass anyone myself, which was disappointing. I didn't really kick it into overdrive until I made the turn onto the transverse and got within sight of the clock and saw 39:50. At that point I went into a sprint and crossed the line 5 seconds later, beating 40 minutes by the big clock by 5 seconds, with a net time of 39:46 (a PR by quite a wide margin). My previous PR was a 42:20 which I had done twice before: once in January at the Boston Buildup race in Darien, CT and at the Healthy Kidney 10K in Central Park in May (a 6:49 pace). The CT one was far more impressive because of the absurd hills they throw at you to get you ready for the Boston Marathon (I didn't do Boston, the races were open to everyone).

So the last 1.2 mile stretch was done at a 6:28 pace. It felt like I was going at wildly divergent speeds throughout the race, but in fact the splits were very close:
Mile 1: 6:22
Mile 2: 6:29
Mile 3: 6:20
Mile 4: 6:22
Mile 5: 6:27
Last 1.2: 7:55 (6:35 minute / mile pace)

A 6:22 up Harlem Hill is much faster in effort terms than the rate I achieved on the last 1.2 so I can only conclude I did run out of gas to some extent at the end. Perhaps I will eat a dinner the night before the next race and sleep more than 3 3/4 hours. :-)

My relative rank was a bit disappointing, I finished 227th this week after finishing 93rd last week. I attribute this to the 10K being a more popular distance among serious runners than last week's 4 miler turned 5 miler. Obviously since my pace was comparable for a greater distance (6:24 vs. 6:19) I should have actually had a higher percentage finish all other things being equal. So I think my explanation is correct, the competition was not equal, it was much tougher this time out. So instead of beating 98.2% of the field I only beat 95.4%.

Here is the 411 on Joe Kleinerman from an obituary written about him when he died 3 years ago on November 14th, 2003. One thing Mary mentioned not discussed in the blurb is that Kleinerman invented Age Group awards. I was somewhat surprised on the dearth of info on the Internet about him (no Wikipedia entry), from what Mary said he sounded quite interesting. Here is what there was:

"Kleinerman was among the founders of the organization [NYRR] in 1958 and in 1970 he was there to help Fred Lebow stage the first New York City Marathon, run entirely in Central Park. He went on to assist Lebow in turning the race into today's world-famous five-borough spectacular.

Kleinerman was also a strong proponent of women's long distance running and in 1967, he joined Vince Chiapetta and Nina Kuscsik, in leading a national movement to allow women to run races longer than a mile.

In recognition of his long devoted service to the running community and to the organization, the lobby of the New York Road Runners building in Manhattan was dedicated in his name in a ceremony this summer attended by many of his long time associates.

Joe Kleinerman was born Jan. 12, 1912 in Spring Valley, N.Y. and grew up in New York City. At 13, he began to run after his older brother Mike took him to the Millrose Games. In 1941 and 1942 he finished 10th in the Boston Marathon. The Millrose Athletic Association named him an assistant coach in 1941 and head coach in 1967.

One of his lasting legacies to the sport he loved is the Joe Kleinerman Scholarship Fund created by New York Road Runners this year. The college scholarship will be awarded to a New York City Public School boy and girl track athlete beginning next spring."

TFK DVD Special

Donate $26 now on behalf of Mary Kelly, Entrant # 72936, to receive your 2006 TFK DVD! Offer valid through this Thursday night 12/7 at midnight!! Then the price goes up to $30 so act soon! DVD will ship on Monday December 18th and will include all your favorite TFK videos in DVD quality with new unseen ones as well! Remember if you donated $25 to Amy Dold back in September your copy is already reserved.

Donate Now!

5 Mile Race

NYRR held a 5 mile race today in the park. I went out the night before to a few bars, spending the most time at one called T.G. Whitney's, singing karaoke. I was quite a hit, performing "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk The Line", "Roadhouse Blues" and "Ring of Fire". By the time I went to bed it was about 4 a.m., but luckily the race started on the 102nd Street Transverse, a 5 minute walk from my apartment. So I got up at 8:57 and left the house by 9:11 a.m.

I couldn't find Nathan but got as close to the front as I could. Usually he is easily visible due to his height and tendency to wear the TFK green at races and a white hat, so when I didn't see him I assumed he wasn't in attendance.

The race started and was forced to weave in and out of the slower runners who annoyingly line up near the start of th race (you are supposed to line up near large umissable signs that reperesent your pace per minute). The big clock read 6:59 as I passed mile 1, with a 31 second lag between the gun and when I crossed the start, that meant a 6:28 mile. Mile 2 went faster as the clock read 13:20, so that one only took 6:21. I grabbed water and took a little slip between 1 and 2, not taking much time at all. I had gotten a small Gatorade at the deli downstairs and drank that en route - for a 5 miler I didn't really need more hydration that that, except for the fact that my mouth gets kind of dry when I run.

The Mile 3 marker read 19:39, so it that took me 6:19. Mile 4 contained the notorious Cat Hill, the biggest one we would have to contend with during the race, and at that marker the clock read 25:59 even, so I did that mostly uphill mile in 6:20.

I then performed the calculation and to beat my goal I needed to do a 6 minute mile (my goal was to beat 32:00). I actually knew I had some kind of lag between chip and gun time so I could break it fairly easily, but I figured I would make a push and see if I was physically capable of running a sub 6 minute mile and beating the big clock in 31:xx.

I thought about our training, when we frequently do speed work and do 1 mile intervals, sometimes between 72n and 90th, other times between 88th and 102nd (not quite a mile). So I was in familiar territory - this was the spot where I would often race my teammates so I just thought of it as another event. The strangers I saw ahead of me I pretended were Nathan, Erik, Avi, Pete & Greg, the guys I had raced all summer long. Some tall dude passed in front of me, so I spent a couple of hundred yards drafting him. When we got to the big downhill (which was the hill we walked up last week at the 60K), I moved around him and started hauling it towards the end (about a quarter mile to go). I ran strong, some guy passed me, I passed him back, he passed me, but it kept me going and prevented some other guy whose footsteps I could hear from catching us. I took the corner sharply making the turn onto 102, cutting off some guy in the process, but he just went out wide and went ahead of me from behind. Oh well, not going to beat him. Sped up even faster for the final 75 yard sprint to the end, and crossed in 32:06.

So my last mile was 6:05 which I was pretty happy about. I finished 93rd out of 4,993 entrants, my best percentile finish in a race ever (top 2% - actually 1.86%). My average pace per mile was 6:19. When I did this race last year, injured from the marathon and the 60K, I did it in a 12:45 pace! I have no healthy 5 milers to compare it to, but I ran it faster than my fastest 4 mile pace, which was 6:36 (done twice essentially, I also did a 6:37). I even ran it faster than my fastest 3.1 mile time, which was 6:28 (done twice).

There is a 10K next week, it will be interesting to see how well I do. Oh yes, and Nathan did run but was in disguise, he finished well ahead of me in 75th place with a clock time of 31:41 (25 seconds better), but on the chip he only beat me by one lousy second. Bastard! (He started very close to the front, only a 7 second lag vs. my 31 second lag. And we both beat Claire, the fastest woman on the team, who beat Lance (and us) at the marathon, so that was fun. :-)