Today I woke up with a bad taste in my mouth, and it wasn’t from a long night of drinking (which also happened). Rather it was from NYRR’s decision in the late hours yesterday to cancel the 2012 NYC Marathon, an unprecedented move even for an organization that has become synonymous with controversy during the past year. As I lay there in bed, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. I had trained very VERY hard, both on the roads and in the gym, and I had taken all the necessary precautions to ensure that I would arrive at this day feeling 100% ready to take on the marathon, and it was now no longer going to be possible to run it. What?! Was this just a bad dream?!?! This isn’t how it was supposed to be! So I did what any runner in my situation would do, I went online and tried to find the next possible marathon to run.

Runners sometimes train with a single-minded purpose of being rewarded for their hard work. We expect that after grinding out all the miles, after all the countless hours stretching, taking ice baths, resting and recovering to the best of our ability, there will be some reward in the end. Often times it’s a medal, a trophy, a plaque, or just the satisfaction of having achieved another personal best. Why else would we train so hard? The past 15 weeks have been no different. I was fully expecting to do something special in this year’s marathon, but after Hurricane Sandy landed and tore apart our livelihood I began to think about this race a little differently. When the mayor and NYRR finally canceled the race, it still came as a shock, but I was more mentally prepared to accept it than I would otherwise have been. The fact is, runners know how to overcome adversity, and we also know how to sympathize with others going through adversity. So when people began to lose their homes, their cars, their businesses and their way of life, this runner began to sympathize and realize that no race, no individual goal trumps the collective well-being of a community. That is why I am now at peace with the decision that was made.

Tomorrow I will attempt to run the full 26.2 mile distance within the confines of Central Park, a place that I am so familiar with I could call it my second home. Tomorrow it will be the most grassroots of all runs, one that is done with no timers, no fluid stations and no crowd support. Tomorrow we will usher back an era of running for running sake, as we also pay homage to past marathon greats such as Tom Fleming, who won the race twice while it was still in the park. Tomorrow we will keep it simple, because there is a much bigger thing happening in New York. Our community is still trying to rebuild.

Yeah I’m nervous. Yeah I’m freaking out and feeling underprepared. Yeah I have no idea what to expect. But at least my outfit is ready :)

p.s. I think there’s something very poetic about packing my bags to go run Boston, one year TO THE DATE after joining my running club. You can roll your eyes haha! It’s ok.

This past Tuesday, April 10th, I had my first run with a non-profit called Back on My Feet, this really great organization that tries to combat homelessness by using running to teach homeless and other undeserved populations the confidence, self-esteem and strength (both physical and mental) they need to lead independent and self sufficient lives. It’s sort of like an organization of second chances (and probably third or fourth for some) and who doesn’t need a second chance in life every once in a while!

A little background first. I decided to get involved with Back on My Feet (BoMF) this year after my friend Simon told me they were coming to NYC and were looking for volunteers. I had heard about them last year, from a teammate who was running the Philly Half Marathon for them and was looking for some donations. I donated to the cause, then I did a little research to see exactly where my money was going (it’s usually the other way around, but I trusted his judgement). Turned out to be a GREAT idea because I was very impressed by their mission! I put that in my back pocket as a good-to-know sort of thing, and moved on but kept reading about them from time to time, and by the time Simon reached out to me it was pretty much a no brainer. I live in New York and they were coming to New York!! I had to get involved!

Flash forward to Tuesday and the official NYC launch. We all met at Tavern on the Green in Central Park at the butt crack of dawn, aka 5:45am. After a brief intro speech by Wylie, one of the coordinators, we started by warming up with your basic jumping jacks, high knees, butt kicks, hamstring stretches, nothing really new to me so I was more focused on the sheer number of people who had shown up to this run! By my own count there had to be at least a hundred people there, both residents (people experiencing homelessness) and non-residents (volunteers like me). The run started right at 6:00 and we ran to the base of the park, out through Columbus Circle, down Broadway and into Times Square where we were met by all these other volunteers and photographers!!! It was nuts, we were running through TIMES SQUARE, and there was all this cheering and cameras flashing and the whole spectacle of it was pretty moving. They even had BoMF stuff flashing on one of those giant billboards. We then took some group photos, cheered some more, hugged each other (there’s a lot of hugging) and then made our way to this amazing launch breakfast at the Marriott Hotel.

Ah, Times Square with NO tourists! That’s me in the blue-ish shirt just above the sign that says “Common Ground”

The breakfast itself would have been enough to call it a great morning! They skimped on the food (*sigh*) but considering that it was entirely donated by the Marriott it wasn’t bad. The best part however were the speeches, including Mary Wittenberg (CEO of New York Road Runners) who talked about the power of running and how it can transform an individual’s life, and a VERY moving speech by BoMF’s founder Anne Mahlum who basically had the room in tears with her personal story and the story of how BoMF came about. She talked about addiction in her family, and how she used running to find purpose and fulfillment in her life, and you could see just how selfless and generous this little woman with a big heart really is!!

This dining/conference room was huge! That’s Larry Solomon (COO of Accenture and a damn good emcee) on stage

…and George Hirsch, Founding Publisher of Runner’s World Magazine

…and Anne!

BoMF has also been profiled on ABC News, NBC’s Today Show, CNN and NBC’s Nightly News. 

Last but not least, I’m very excited to have been named a coach/coordinator with one of the local centers, so stay tuned for more on that! Can’t wait to see how many lives we change this year!

This has been my training strategy for Boston, and I’m hoping it will be a successful campaign. It was born out of necessity since I had such little time to prepare, just over 2 months, so I decided to focus on the quality of my workouts, and making sure each one counted, rather than targeting specific mileage.

My taper begins today, so I thought I’d post my mileage so far. It’s very light, in comparison to most marathon workout plans you’ll see, but the idea was to do no more than four runs per week on any given week, and to always include a hill session (at least five hill repeats per session) and a moderate-paced long run.

The only runs that felt somewhat easy these past two months were my recovery runs (which I do the morning after my hill session) and the fun weekend long run I posted about earlier. Every other workout was intense!

Fingers crossed.

Mileage

Typical training week (weeks might differ but this is basically the foundation)

Sometimes long runs turn into quite an adventure!! That’s one of the many benefits of being a runner - the adventure of it all, especially when you aspire to make every run just a little bit different from the last. I’ve gone on a few mini weekend adventures this year, but the one I did last Sunday definitely took the cake (pun intended…it was a birthday run!).

Exhibit A. I’m surprised the watch didn’t quit on me.

This would have been fun to walk, but it was definitely much more fun to run! Not to mention it took much less time. Score!! We did this run on the tail end of my girlfriend’s birthday weekend and the only objective was to get in 10 miles that day. No pre-determined course, no pre-determined pace, not even a real desire to look at our watches unless it was to see how far we had gone. If you know me, you know that I’m all about how fast and how far, so this was a little…or a lot different for me. I just followed her lead, and what an adventure it turned out to be!!! We took in Central Park as I’m sure very few people have, running through well worn and not so worn trails and cinder paths, climbing over boulders, running past little waterfalls, a castle, and over countless bridges, racing down hills and climbing other hills only to do it all over again, discovering little picnic nooks, stopping to watch ice skaters and tennis players, and DUCKS?! We even learned a little history along the way.

Did I mention we stopped to take a few pictures?!?!

This was a day to remember, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Central Park is one GIANT playground!

Next time, she says, “let’s REALLY get lost in the park!”.

This past weekend I ran the 13.1 NYC Half Marathon in Flushing Meadow Park, Queens. That’s a borough in New York for anyone who doesn’t know. It’s like the distant and much less popular cousin to Manhattan. Anyway I thought about writing a lengthy race recap about the half because I had plenty to say about it, but the truth is it was pretty uneventful. I went out there, ran a bunch of loops around the park, then came back home. That’s about as exciting as it got for me personally. Others may disagree, because there was music along the course and post-race beer and big finisher medals, but to me it was just another training run, and I have the results to back it up. I ran a 1:25:50, with positive splits almost all the way to the finish. It was tough!

I was joined by a few of my fellow Whippet teammates, including a very special someone who even wore a tutu that day and cheered her heart out for a bunch of guys and girls running themselves dizzy in the park. A couple of us, myself included, were in the middle of our high mileage weeks while we prep for Boston, while others were just recovering from injury so none of us really expected to blow this race out of the water. Most of us were using it as a tune-up to the Boston marathon, which is less than three weeks away!!

I think (and look like) I was still feeling good here.

Not so much here…

This guy loves to interview me every time I’m in Queens. He must think I’m Kenyan.

My teammates! Steve sitting down, Colleen and Tom to my left.

Teammates again! That’s my training buddy Anthony to my left. Look at all that bling!!

Me and my tutu-wearing photographer/cheering section/special someone!

So what was the take-away?

Well, I still think a 3:05 in Boston is still possible, but anything faster than that will be hard to do. A 3:05 is the time I need to run in order to qualify for next year’s race. I have this neat little equation in my head that I use to determine potential finish times for a marathon given half marathon performance. I take my half marathon time, double it, then add 10 minutes to it. Based on this weekend’s performance, this gives me a 3:01 marathon, and a four minute cushion to boot! Not bad!!…right??

We shall see.

I have yet to break 40 miles a week (I actually came up short last week) but I should be right around 40 this week, and then 45 next week before I taper down for a week! Haha. This is all experimental of course, but I tapered for three weeks last time and felt a little rusty so this time I’m doing a much shorter taper.

In the interest of keeping my workouts fresh, I’m also switching up my usual routine this week. Normally I do a hill session + recovery run + long run every week as my focus runs, but this time I will be running a tempo + track session + long run as my focus runs, resuming my hill repeats next week.

Stay tuned!!