Sunday, February 26, 2017

Half marathon recap

   



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.




Friday, February 17, 2017

Just checking in on YA!




I know it has been a little quiet on my front the past 10 days. You might be wondering if  my real name is Benjamin Sanchez, and that I am hiding from immigration. The good news is that isn't the case. The not so good news is that I have been a little nicked up the past week. 

It started a few Tuesdays ago where we were having a “just a smidge above freezing rain” storm. I was supposed to do these very hard two minute runs; and let me be the first to tell you they were hard. Just ask my teammate who was with me as she kept asking me why I so out of breath. Well the answer was that I was out of breath because I was running all out in a rainstorm carrying five pounds of soaked clothing. On the 5th rep I felt a pull on my hamstring, and that’s when the workout pretty much ended for me. I got the diagnosis that it was swollen, and icing it a few days would be the remedy.

Thankfully as I write this, I feel pretty much recovered. But as a runner, one of the absolute worst things that can happen is getting injured. Sustaining an injury can be anything from a minor speed-bump, to driving right off a cliff. Hopefully, this was just minor speed bump on the road to Boston. 

I should have another post coming next week recapping the super steamy half marathon I am doing this Sunday morning. Even though the race starts at 6 AM, the current forecast calls for a temperature of 70 degrees, with a dew point temperature of about 68 degrees. To put that in context for my fellow Yankees, the dew point might reach that high in the capital region 14 days during an entire year, sometimes a lot less than that. And yes, I will bring a towel with me to the race in case you were wondering. Good bye from sunny Florida!


Saturday, February 4, 2017

Its the Time of the Season



So a thought occurred to me on one my recent runs; is it harder to train in the winter or the summer? There are very valid arguments for both sides to this argument. I am not going to even entertain the seasons of spring and fall because if you don’t like running in either season then no offense, but you are absolutely crazy.  I won’t tell you my personal preference right now because if I did then you would stop reading this article.

Since we are currently in winter we will start there. What are the advantages to training in winter? Well number one in my mind is that it is more difficult to overheat to the point of exhaustion. That being said you can overheat from overdressing which is a very common problem in the winter, but generally you will never come close to the feeling of running on a 90 degree day with 100 percent humidity.. You are pretty much guaranteed that the air will be dry and starved of moisture on a winter run.  If you get the chance to get out on a snowy day, you will be treated to a visual experience that is just sensational. There is nothing more peaceful than a fresh snow coating and the gentle crunching of your feet as you run through the snow.

Of course winter brings with it some very obvious negatives. The first one for me is the darkness. The days are short, and if you are like me with a daily job, that means you have a slim window to run in daylight. Otherwise you are left playing a real life game of Frogger as you try to avoid angry impatient motorists on icy snow covered roads in the dark. Do you like grip? I hope you do because in winter you will have a hard time getting a grip on those icy snow covered roads. On a bad day your only option is to run through those awful slush piles where the water and mud soak right through your shoes and numb your feet almost immediately.  Winter would not be winter without that cold icy wind blowing right through your bones like a Kleenex.

Now we can talk about summer. I am sure most of you are begging for those long summer days with that glorious sun. I am talking about the kind of weather where you would run naked if it wouldn’t get you arrested. There are several positive aspects to summer from the cool summer mornings, glorious sunshine, even running in a warm summer shower. The days are longer meaning that you have plenty of opportunity to run in daylight. The air is fresh with all the life that is thriving.

That being said summer also presents that soul sucking humidity. I personally could write an entire book about humidity and how much I despise it. That humidity will cause you to flood whatever clothing you have on.  If you like breathing then consider that a luxury on a 90 degree day with 70 percent humidity. You get the heat that comes straight from the depths of hell. If you are really lucky you will encounter a vicious lightning storm that will scare the living daylights out of you

So now it’s time to crown a winner before you get bored with this post. The slight edge goes to winter. Summer has better positives but the combination of the heat/humidity is like a lead plate on a one of those little balance scales you used in science class. What is your preference? Let me know in the comments section!