Retrospective: TCS New York City Marathon 2014

 I just finished my first New York City marathon!  Unoffical time: 4:15:29.  A bit above my goal of 4:00 hours, but not too far off my PR from Toronto 2012 of 4:09.

Training plan:
Run a lot. Concentrate on doing lots of 13-14 mile runs and just getting the mileage in. No scheduled speed work or tapering.  I also stopped eating cane sugar in August, as an attempt to make training a bit easier.

Running gear:
Shoes: Feelmax Osamas, no socks.
Top: Long sleeve black thermal shirt layered over Etsy running club shirt.
Bottom: Cotton, unpadded bike shorts under bright green shorts.
Hands: Black, cotton gloves.
Head: nothing originally. I grabbed a discarded Dunkin Donut's fleece hat (they were handing them out at the start village, but I didn't manage to figure out where) right out of the gate, before we headed into the wind tunnel of a Verrazano bridge, and ditched it on the other side.
Outer wear (to be tossed): Sweatshirt (no hood) and some thin fleece pants.

The Start:
This was by far the worst part of the whole marathon experience.  I woke up at 5:30am with my alarm, and biked the two miles from my apartment to the Staten Island Ferry.  My bib had me scheduled to be on the 7:00am ferry, but since I was early, I went ahead and got on the 6:45am one.  I don't think this was a huge deal - arriving later may have saved me some time in the cold, but not a whole lot. The ride over to Staten Island was pretty pleasant, the bus ride from the ferry terminal to the start fairgrounds was not - it took a long time and I was standing up.

Our marathon advisor at work (he's run a zillion, and is more or less responsible for sending out announcements about us to the rest of the company) suggested dressing warmly for the start village. I didn't have time to make a run to the thrift stores for extra warm tossables, so I decided to ditch some much beloved, old sweats instead.  I made a huge mistake in not bringing a hood and/or a hat and socks.  The wind at the start village was freezing, and to make it worse, there was little shelter in my start village.  The wait was also interminable.

I arrived off the bus around 8:00am, I didn't start until 10:05am.  This is considerably later than my usual run time of 8 am.  I ended up just sitting on the ground, shivering while slowly eating the bananas and cheese blocks breakfast, while trying to warm up my feet. Some nice German guy literally saved my ass by letting me have his tarp-blanket, so I wasn't sitting on cold asphalt.  I probably should have looked for a place more out of the wind, but was too cold to move.

Around 9:15am, I gave up on my feet, checked in my bag (and the warm clothes that I didn't want to toss), wrapped myself in my tarp-blanket, and went to go wait in the corral.  There was about a 20 minute wait before we started moving up toward the starting line.  I ditched the tarp blanket then.

My feet are really sensitive to cold.  At the slightest suggestion chill, they proactively shut down and turn themselves into white, bloodless blocks of icy flesh.  When this happens, most sensation in them is lost.  Unbeknownst to me, they had been in the process of shutting down while I was waiting.  I didn't realized how bad the situation was until I started jogging up towards the start line.  I had no idea where my feet were.  On one foot, it felt like I was running on my heel (that was where the sensation ended), on the other a fleshy piece of the ball of my foot that wasn't numb was screaming like I was mashing it between a rock and hard place (the hard place being the rest of my foot, which was frozen).  It was like running on blocks of unfeeling flesh.

Verrazano:
The cannon went off to mark the start, and off we went.  I was in the Green corral, which meant we started on the lower level of the Verrazano.  It was literally a wind tunnel.  Luckily, not a headwind - it came from our left side (North), whistling between the levels.  Some people lost their hats.  It was a bit of a struggle to stay on my feet.  Already unstable as I couldn't feel where my feet were hitting the ground, gusts of wind would drive me a foot or two sideways, usually into the next person.  It was rough, and by the end of it I was seriously doubting how on earth I was going to finish the next 24 miles with ice block feet.  Luckily, by mile 3, my feet had come back to life and the wind was back to fairly normal.  Looks like this race is happening after all. :)

The Race Plan:
I intentionally did not wear a watch or set a pace goal for this race.  I was counting on diet, consistent practice, and "bare" feet to provide a bit of an advantage.  Here's the pre-race plan that I came up with last night:

Mental Marathon Prep

Tomorrow's goal is to have fun.  To run free. I won't be wearing a watch.  I'm not going out super fast.  The first 5 miles are gonig to be warm up.  I'm going to just focus on keeping moving, and working the fuzzies out of my brain.  The next 7* miles (this will take me up to the half way point) will be zoning in on form - making sure that I'm keeping my feet low and the bounce -out- of my step.

The next seven* will be on rhythm. I'm going to run mile 13 to mile 21 in a steady beat, the same one that I've established over the first 13 miles.

The last five will be pick ups. Can I drum my feet a little quicker, shorten my stride without losing form?  Push my heart rate up a little bit, giving a good swing at the pace. So that on mile 26, I'm effortlessly flying up hills, and around the corner to the finish. 

* Math is hard.  8 miles is the actual rest of the distance.

How It Panned Out:
The five mile warm up was a good idea.  When my feet turned out to be ice blocks in the first three miles, I just counted it as a part of getting warm.  If the had still been blocks at the 5 mile mark, I may have tried to do something, but it worked out.  Here's my splits -- they're pretty awesome for warm up.

The next 8 miles to the Brooklyn/Queens bridge was the (as expected) easiest part.  Having a goal of just coasting through this portion kept me from lighting off in a fast frenzy when the mood struck me.  It's also some of the most populated for cheering.  The first 10+ split was a bathroom break, the next 10:min dip was the bridge (I think).  Overall, I was pretty happy with my splits.  Pushing it here would have meant times closer to 8:30, but I kept them hovering at or around 9:00s, which was where I would have needed to be to hit a 4:00hour finish.

The next 8 were pretty good too. I freaked out a bit when I hit the 16 mile mark -- this is where I cratered in Toronto 2 years ago, but 16 and 17 passed without much ado.  By the time 18 and 19 rolled around, I was starting to get worried about the upcoming wall -- still moving pretty well, but not as fast.  Somewhere between 18 and 19, in an attempt to stave off an imagined upcoming crash, I ate half a banana.  I few minutes later my stomach started cramping -- oops.  I'm not sure if this contributed to the huge slow down, but I'm pretty sure it was a terrible idea.  It's hard to tell though if this actually did stave off later problems or what, but either way it wasn't good - my average time moved from the 9:00 mark up to the 10:00 mark.

The last 5 were not pretty.  My leg muscles started cramping.  I forgot why I was even trying to run a a marathon.  According to the plan, this is when I was supposed to be pulling up my stride, and starting to let loose, but I couldn't find the motivation to keep moving. Everything hurt.  The finish seemed so far away.  Looking at my times, you can see when I did get motivated again -- when I ran into my roommate and her boyfriend who were cheering for me around mile 25 in central park.

I'm pretty proud of the last two splits -- as soon as I realized that the hellish ordeal of running 26 miles was almost at an end, I decided I could in fact get the hell out sooner.  I finally started tightening up my stride, pushing more of the work into my quads and hips.  It was a really good finish - I just wonder how it would have ended if I had started kicking it in a few miles earlier.  I definitely had the energy, just not the motivation.  Also, running faster might have helped with the muscle cramping -- running faster uses different muscles.

Overall, I'm really happy with the whole day.  Big thanks to everyone that came out to cheer me on -- friendly faces were a welcome sight!


Mistakes that I'd fix for next time:
- Bring socks and a hat for the start village.

Things I'd like to experiment with:
- No eating during the run.
- More speed workouts during training.
- Bringing headphones and music for the last 5 miles.  I intentionally didn't bring them because A) I didn't want to carry them, and B) I would have had to wait to the last 5 miles to put them in, so as not to get out of the gate fast too early.  I was counting on the bands, but they went by so fast that it wasn't long enough to get my feet moving, which was what I really needed at this point.
- Wearing my name on my shirt.  Having people yell your name in encouragement is a game changer. More of this would have been awesome.
- Getting friends to cheer from the Bronx/Upper Manhattan.  This stretch was long, and psychologically hard.  I got a huge boost from seeing friendly faces 2 miles from the finish -- maybe having someone push me around mile 21 would have helped me get over the "wall" of pain and second guessing earlier in the race.
- Not flying back from Europe the day before.  My clock was off, and I felt energized really early in the morning.  This may explain why the last 5 miles were so rough -- it was late in the day (in London time).

Grow up

Grow up, said the man to the cheetah.

The cheetah looked at the man, shrugged his shoulders, and then darted away into the reeds.

Grow up, said the man to the giraffe.

The giraffe could barely hear the man from way down below.  He leant closer, and huffed in the man's face.  The man repeated himself.  The giraffe took it to heart, and thought, yes, I can grow taller.  So he stretched himself up on his legs and pushed his nose closer to the cloud puffs hovering, just out of reach in the light blue sky.  He was too busy nosing upwards that he didn't notice til much later that the man had walked away.

Grow up, said the man to the dog.

The dog barked twice and then fetched the man a stick.

Grow up, said the man to his reflection in a pool.

And then burst out laughing at the funny face that stared back.

Grow up, whispered the lover to the man.

Down went the children's book about bees and birds and giraffes and dogs and cheetahs and selves.

The man stood up, gingerly kissed a sleeping child goodnight, and shut the nursery door quietly, behind him.

Halfsies

I booked a room at a halfway house.  How long, they asked, are you checking in for?

18 months, I replied.

Halfway houses are strange.  You admit that you have a problem, but you don't give into having the problem completely.  You declare yourself halfway cured.  I'm halfway on the road to better.

I'm only halfway broken.



(No, I don't really know what the word halfway house means.  I assume it means what it says it means.)

The Other

Self definition rooted in what you are not.

Cry forever. Run until the end of days.

Cry forever. Run until the end of days.

How do you make friends that want to gel in the sunset too?  That want to loll in meadows and read and write angry treatises about the sky beyond the horizon?  Where the stars come out and we all have so much life to live but I don't know where the pen stops.  If I just sit back and let the choir pitch drown me out -- is that living?  What is this life?  It feels so anchorless, there are to many possibilities and not enough directions that will weigh me down towards the grounding that I feel I need.

Our time is now. This is a part of it.  Confusion, pain, scars, anger. This is a part of it.  This is all that there is of it.  This is all that there will be of it.  (So many letters written. So many emails unsent.  So many words not spoken because of ... fear?  Because of uncertainty?  Because I don't trust my own sly, slinking motives that meddle in all things.  And a growing uncertainty about the darkness that births itself, each night anew, in the center of my breast.

There is a hole that I've been keeping.  Have I wanted to keep it open?  That's open for debate, but it's open.  It's huge.  It's eaten me alive.  Like a piercing that took too long to heal, You can see through me there.  There's nothing there.  Nothing.  I don't know what else to fill it with.  Maybe nothing.  The hole lives on, scarred and pussed, with smooth edges that bely the weight that it has.  It pulls down on the corners of my mouth and weights heavily on my chin.  There is no lightness in my gaze. Just empty sad. Empty. Sad.  Empty.

The sun is setting on today.

I am so afraid that my dreams are but false prophets of an age that will not come.

They are naught but small passing blips on an infinite sea of rudderless, unmanned sailing into the dusk.


(Gazelle on the horizon, slinking lion beneath the ladder that stretches up into the stars wide and high and tall like hope, and forever out of reach).

Equality

A: The equation has changed.
B: What do you mean? Equations don't change. They're equilibrated.

A: It is no longer equal.
B: You must be mistaken. Perhaps what you're trying to say is that you've changed the equation that you're using to solve the problem. The problem space changed.

A: It's the same equation. But it doesn't equal out any more. I'm putting in the same digits as last week. It's coming out differently.

B: That's impossible.

A: I know.

Dockumentary moments.

I went to see No No : Dockumentary tonight. Our CEO knew the film-maker, so he bought tickets for everyone that wanted to go.  As the director's first feature-length film, he knocked it out of the park.

I had never heard of Dock Ellis before our CEO gave us an opening to watch this film.  I was quite struck with how charming and full of life the man was, as a character.  Throughout the movie, and the stories that are told about him, we're told who he was, as a man.  He's alive, he's irreligious, he's a gifted ball player.  He was well loved, and his loss was a great one.  Watching Dock, we not only get an into his personal life, but also an rare peephole view to the culture that was the Major Leagues in the 70's.  The drugs, the management structure, the racial tensions, the 70's were a time of big changes to a classic American pasttime.  Dock Ellis was at the forefront of those changes.

Most of the film was constructed from footage of Dock from games, photos, and a long interview he did with HBO from 2005.  We see his life reconstructed through interviews with those closest to him - his ex-wives, his sister, his teammates.

Watching them reminisce I couldn't help but wonder about memories.  They're fleeting things.  Does pulling them back up into the present, as each interviewer did, re-write them not just as that moment in time that happened, but also forever defining the moment that was spent in remembering?  Those few seconds that you spent reliving the past, in a way, redefined the past by bringing it into the future, or your present, with you.  How much of future rememberings will, in some way, be influenced by the time that you spent remembering it now?  Pieces of experience that get mosaiced one, on top of the other, like tie die washes on the same heavy canvas.

When these people who knew Dock Ellis are gone, what will be left of him?

In a way, memories are temporal.  But the outcomes of those memories are what we live with.  The trajectory that we find ourselves on is in some way an outcome of the memories that we carry with us -- in a way our day to day is a reflection of the compounding of the moments that we have lived up until this very one.

Dock may be gone, but the lives that he has touched, they go on.  Forever with his memory built into the fabric of them.