This is me finishing the half marathon in Florida. I sure look like I am having a dandy of a time!
Good afternoon my friends. I know it has been a bit of a break again. I have been settling back down after my little vacation to sunny Florida. As I alluded to in my previous post, there was a half marathon involved. I mean what is the point of taking a vacation if I can't spend it obsessing about a race? That is totally normal and sane right? Fine, let's call it alternative sanity.
Florida in the middle of an Upstate New York winter sounds fantastic. You get warm sunshine, the beautiful ocean and of course PALM TREES. There is nothing more invigorating than waking up to palm trees and sunshine. While I was down in Florida the weather was incredible save for one day. There was one day where a warm front moved through and ushered in the full furry of tropical humidity. Care to guess which day that was? If you guessed the morning of my race you are correct. In honor of our new King, I will send out a tweet telling everyone who guessed wrong that they are bunch of losers and its SAD! Being a loser is so unpatriotic....
Now to the good stuff. Not only did the race start at six in the morning but it was a combo half/full marathon with about 7,000 total runners. That means if you wanted any shot of having a decent warm-up you had to get to the starting area by 4:30 unless your idea of a good warmup is being stuck in a traffic jam. With that said I did manage to get up at 3:30 in the morning and drag my father and I down to the starting area. As a perk I purchased a $30 VIP parking pass. All of you know I am very important. Even a very important person makes mistakes... I left the parking pass at the apartment. Luckily my dad asked me about it and I turned back before I made it very far to retrieve said parking pass.
After claiming my deluxe $30 parking spot which came with absolutely nothing, I took a very pleasant early morning bus ride to the start during which the driver got lost. I was able to get a warm-up in on this incredibly sultry morning. However, there was a bathroom scare right before the race. Ask any serious runner, and the pre-race bathroom routine is a holy sacrament that is absolutely necessary before any race. The race had plenty of port o Johns, but way too many people who needed to lighten their loads before the race. Nothing is more aggravating than standing in line waiting to dump excess weight as the start time creeps closer and closer. I personally think that is a very shitty situation. However, I did manage to make it to the start line with five minutes to go and the gun went off at 6 AM.
I was able to hit a pretty solid clip for the first mile, but by the third mile reality hit and it hit hard. My pace started falling and it felt like i was trying to move a mountain just to maintain my marathon pace, which is what my final pace averaged out to. Sometimes you are dealt a losing hand and there is nothing you can do about it. I found myself getting passed by a few "homies", who are people who live in South Florida and are used adapted to the heat and humidity. I was a shipper form the northeast. In the past few times I have raced in Florida I was blessed with cool pleasant mornings which tipped the scales in my favor. That was not meant to be last Sunday.
One of the first things I did after I finished and stopped panting was pull out up the weather conditions on my phone which said temperature 71 degrees with humidity at 100%. That gave me a sense of peace which is hard to accomplishment because I am so hard headed. To put that in perspective the dew point might crack 70 three or four times during an entire summer in upstate New York.
I would be seriously remiss if I didn't address Ms. Cheater. As you are well aware by now the second place female in this race decided that a shortcut would be a convenient way to give the middle finger to the rest of us who ran. Boy did she underestimate the running community. We don't take too kindly to those who don't play by the rules. I will give her this much; she may be a Laaaddyyy, but she had quite a set of cojones to go up to the race director after the race and argue for her second place finish. I mean the set of balls to yell at a race director after you cheated WOW.. I could never fathom cheating in a race just to get a sponsorship. Yet she apparently had no problem flushing her morals right down the drain for a free pair of something...
There are those of us who enjoy the struggle, and who understand that one of the greatest perks of running is the struggle. As JFK said "We choose to pursue this not because it is easy, but because it is hard". If we wanted to pursue something easy, we would join two thirds of this country and eat cheetos on the couch while slamming down sugary beverages. We are runners, we are the ones who embrace a challenge. We are the ones who get right back up when we are knocked down. We have an impenetrable spirit that will never be broken!
Have a good week my friends. The Boston clock is ticking quite quickly. I only have four more weeks of serious training left and then I get to meet my maker in the world's most famous race.
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