Posts from — December 2006

I spent all day Sunday moving around. It started with the NYRR Joe Kleinerman 10K in Central Park. It was my ninth NYRR race for the year and officially qualifies me for guaranteed entry into the 2007 NYC Marathon.

To save time on getting to and from the city, I decided to drive to the race. I needed to make the commute to the city a fast one since I had to take my son to basketball practice at 11:30am. The race started at 9:30, so I calculated about 45 minutes to do the race, 10-15 minutes to get back to my car and 20 minutes home. This would give me about a half hour to spare. If I took the subway, I could count on the trip being about an hour which would make us very late for Basketball. I made it home a few minutes before 11am. I would have bet there were people still out on the course while I was already home in Brooklyn eating breakfast.

I hung out before the race with another runner named Mike. He started talking to me as we walked to the Road Runners club to pick up race souvenirs. We had both parked near the club, but it turned out he parked illegally so had to move it. We drove together closer to the start and we hung out inside it for a while to avoid the cold. That is the great thing about doing these races; it is so easy to befriend a fellow athlete and have a lot in common to talk about.

The race was over quickly. I did it in 44:50 with all negative splits. I ran the miles as follows: 07:53.0, 07:32.4, 07:12.2, 07:12.5, 06:57.9, 06:45.2 and 01:17.1 for the last .2. I ducked under the tape for the finishers shoot as soon as I crossed the line and ran a leisurely mile back to my car.

My son and I got to basketball practice on time and for the next hour and a half, I helped coach the kids. I would have liked to just veg out for a while, but fatherly duty called. After practice there was still no time to rest, since my son now had an ice skating birthday party to go to. So it was a quick trip home to get our skates, a snack and then off to the rink.

This is where the real fun began. In the past when I have skated with my son, it was a lot of me towing him around while he stood. Miraculously though, he seemed to learn to skate since our last trip to the rink and was off on his own for most of the time. This was a very good thing, because the mother of the birthday boy asked me if I could help her son around the rink. He is a very nice boy and very enthusiastic, but skating is definitely not his forte. The child couldn’t stand on the ice for more than two seconds without falling. I spent a torturous half hour trying to get the kid on his feet and suggesting that he just go to the side and slide along the boards. He didn’t really want to do that though, and let me tell you this kid was no lightweight. I could feel the strain in my hamstrings every time I tried to lift him up. I was afraid I would soon pull a muscle. Watching him on ice was like watching a comedy scene where you have a bunch of people constantly falling down because they are slipping on marbles. Mercifully another parent in our group came by and I was able to beg off the responsibility. I needed to for my own physical health and sanity. I finally got to skate with my son for a while and we had a grand ‘ole time sliding around in the afternoon sun.

Once back home I still didn’t get to relax. My brother-in-law was over so my wife had us move a heavy item into the basement. Fortunately that didn’t take long and I got to sit on my couch for about 10 minutes before we went out again for my daughter’s dance recital. It was off to a small and overcrowded neighborhood theatre, where my daughter was waiting to perform with her Hip-Hop class. It is always great to see your child perform and the look of happiness on their faces when the do so.

After that, I finally got to relax a bit. We got take out Japanese food for dinner and soon got the kids to bed after that. I didn’t get much relaxing time on the couch, because I started falling asleep and I figured I may as well have gone to bed.

I went for a run last night with both of my children accompanying me on their bicycles. It doesn’t get much better than that. For a while it became clear to me how lucky I am to have two beautiful children who adore their father so much that they think a good time is to going bike riding with their dad on a winter’s night. We talked about all sorts of things, from when I was a child and doing some sort of sport, to picking out a X-mas tree, presents and decorating the house. I felt a warmth come over me and a feeling well being that I too rarely feel. It is amazing how something so simple as running with your kids can make you feel so good.

I felt so supremely proud to be going around the park with my kids as other runners and cyclists past us. It was like look at what my kids can do while yours are home sitting on the couch watching TV. My kids insisted that they wanted to go with me and would have been very upset if I told them they had to stay home. I don’t think words can express how much I love them and telling them so a million times a day is entirely inadequate to express the feelings.

After completing one loop around the park, we hung out by the entrance where they climbed on the monuments and insisted we take silly pictures of us together. We kept taking shots until we felt that we had a really good one. We didn’t hang around for too long, because I was starting to cool down and getting very cold. So we left to go back home where my kids raced their bikes to the end of the block.

My son was sneaking though, and took a head start. This upset my daughter tremendously so I had to figure out another sort of race that didn’t involve going back down to the end of the block to race bikes again. I decided on separating them about 20 feet from each other on different sides of the house. I then had them spin around until I counted to 20 and said they had to race up the stairs to the front door of the house. I made sure they kept their helmets on so they didn’t smash their heads in case they were so dizzy they fell down. My son started to make it up the stairs first, but at the last moment he lost his balance and my daughter was able to squeak by him. It was hysterical to watch.

The 2007 Ford Ironman World Championship Lottery is now open for registration. For a mere $35 I can have a chance to win a slot to the big race in Kona. If I spend an extra $50, then I get a second chance to win entry. I’ve done this for two years in a row, but don’t know if I feel like throwing my money away again on a small chance to win. It is not like I get any value for my money if I don’t win a slot. If at least I got something worthwhile, then maybe I would fork over the cash. Oh, I do get a plastic card that says Ironman on it with the years of my IM finishes on it. I think that is hardly worth $50. Neither are the crappy discounts you get from the various Ironman stores. I think this year I will pass; better to earn a spot by qualifying anyway.

I raced both days this weekend. On Saturday it was the NYRR Holiday 5 miler in Central Park and on Sunday in was the Peter Rabbit Cross Country 3 miler in Prospect Park. Sunday’s race was definitely the highlight of the two even though it was the slowest 3 miles I’ve ever run. It was a PR for my daughter though who also won her Age Group. I am not too concerned with my slow time, or the fact that I was last and she beat me.

This was the first real race my daughter has participated in. I was very happy when she said that should we give it a try and smiling as we headed down to race registration. We looked around at the other runners and tried to figure out who we could beat. We saw one older gentleman putting on a number on top of his down jacket and figured we could beat him. I thought a few other kids would be in the race considering it was so short, but my daughter was the only one under 16 in attendance.

The race start is very informal with everyone lining up on a grass field. There was no particular starting or finishing lines and we all went when someone yelled go. We started out running and were with several other runners for quite some time. After a mile or so she started to get a little tired and we began to take walking breaks. We undoubtedly went out too hard, but she was a trooper and wanted to keep going on. We walked, we ran, we ran holding hands. It was a great time. For a long time we had another runner within out sights, but eventually she got ahead of us and out of sight. We kept turning back though to see if the older guy was behind us. We learned that he was walking the race and kept checking to make sure we weren’t going to be passed. With about a mile left in the race we found out that the walker had dropped. I think we were a little disappointed, but it didn’t really matter.

To keep our focus on the race and to avoid completely walking in the latter stages, we picked out landmarks in the distance and would run to them. I’d give her a head start and we would race to it and then follow that up with a walking break. We did this for a mile or so and it served to make the time go by quickly. We finished the race running side by side and were greeted across the finish line by some cheering spectators, along with Mom and Brother. The race director gave Sophia an award and she proudly wore it home.

We didn’t have time to go back to the registration area for bagels and hot chocolate, since I had to race again to get my son to basketball practice. I told Sophia that for the rest of the day should could sit on the couch and do nothing by watch TV. We both felt she earned it. I wish I got to do that as well. After basketball, but I had to help my wife geocode the locations of Monk Parakeet nests located around Flatbush Brooklyn for a school project. I am now intimately familiar with the familial locations of many Monk Parakeet homes.

For Saturday’s Holiday 5 miler, I finished in a crisp 37 minutes. The start of the race kind of got away from me and I found myself all the way in the back of the pack when the gun went off. I don’t like being that far back at the start of the race and it irked me to wait the couple of minutes to cross the starting line. I always get a twinge of nervousness when this happens, as if I don’t get further forward fast, I will somehow by left in the dust. I think that was what Sophia was feeling today when she wanted to know that someone else was behind us.

I ran the race harder than I should have, but I just did what felt good. Here is a chart of my splits. With this race out of the way, I only have one more to do in order to guarantee entry into next year’s NYC Marathon. Hopefully, I will be able to get it in on Sunday at the Joe Kleinerman 10K. Perhaps I’ll even go for a PR.

I’ve gotten my workouts in everyday this week so far. This definitely would not have been the case, had I not had someone to pull me along. On Monday, I came home from work feeling distraught and exhausted. It was a bit difficult to make it through a day of work after having a nice and relaxing 4 day weekend. When I got in the door I headed up to my bedroom and could have collapsed for the remainder of the night on my bed and felt quite satisfied. However, I could let myself do that since both of my children felt like bike riding with me while I did my run.

It was a beautiful night and I had a great time outside with them. I was reasonably certain, that I was the only father running around with their kids in tow at 8pm in the evening on a school night. It felt good to know that I was doing something with them that was perhaps out of the ordinary. We ran down to Grand Army Plaza where all the TV network news trucks were around to tape the lighting of it for the evening news. It was a warm and peaceful night and the stillness was only broken by some big heaving, coughing and hacking guy that caught up to us at one point during the run.

On Tuesday morning I made arrangements to run with my friend Chris. Normally, I am not much for doing a night, followed by morning run, but I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to have some company while working out. Global warming was doing its thing and made for beautiful spring like conditions.

I didn’t think I would get a run in Wednesday, since I had early morning and late evening appointments. However, my friend Larry called me up and asked if I was willing to go for a run that evening. I told him as long as he didn’t mind it being around 8pm, I was definitely up for it, so we firmed up to meet at that time. We ran down toward Grand Army Plaza and then reversed direction inside the park and did another full loop back to our starting point. It was a decently paced run on another beautiful night. We talked about various ultra races that could be in our future and I look forward to doing some with him.

Thursday night was my only solo run in over a week. I think it was the warmest it has been all week – two thumbs up for Global Warming. I saw a couple of people I knew in the park, but other than that I was on my own. I felt pretty good and got a sense of what it might feel like to be running on your own in the night during a very long ultra marathon. I was in the groove and kind of felt like running all night, just to get a sense of what it would be like for when I do my first 100 miler. If I didn’t have to get home so my babysitter could leave, I probably would have stayed out for quite some time.

Today (Friday), I fear may be a day off. Besides doing an evening run last night, my wife needed me to stay up to help her with Microsoft Excel. I knew she needed a lot of help with it, the moment she asked me how to create a table in Excel. If you know Excel, then you know how dumbfounding that question is. I could get it in tonight, but I have the Asphalt Green Triathlon Club party to go to, plus I am doing a 5 mile race in Central Park tomorrow morning. Because I must do that race (I need it in order to get 9 qualifiers for the NYC Marathon) and I am thinking of going to this party, I may just be better served by taking the day off. I guess I’ll see how I feel later on this evening.