Photos, Broken Transportation, Other Randomness

Photos from Philly

So, here are the race pictures from the Philadelphia race.  

Other Randomness:  

I took a look at the statistics of my blog and got a little chuckle.  From the beginning of this blog, I have been averaging about 150-250 views on each post.  There are a few in there that were only viewed 50-100 times, maybe the titles were boring, maybe many of you have grown weary and bored with me and my blog and my goal.  I completely understand.  Then there are other blogs that get a couple hundred views.... hard to say why, but I got a chuckle from looking at the stats today as my last post only had 15 views, and that is not even the funny part.  I became curious if there were periods of time where there would be more or fewer views, or maybe there was some other statistic that I could find a trend that would help me better understand my "audience". -- that is kind of funny in it self.... but the part that I found the most funny was my blog about Hurricane Irma.  A couple things I found funny about this:  That post has exceeded the views of every other post by at least five times.   First thing I found funny -- that blog has nothing to do with running or my goals.  Second thing I found funny -- I am imagining that it received the most number of views because of people's morbid curiosity.  Presumably if you think I am gonna die in the hurricane and not be able to blog anymore, you may be more willing to read "my final blog".  Maybe even treat it as a "snuff film".  I don't LOL all that often, I tell my family that LOL is not really my personality, but if I find it humorous, then I will give a GQ (grin quietly).  This information was definitely GQ worthy.  

Broken Transportation

I have not had a car for about a year and a half.  When Keeley turned 16, I gave her my truck.  Truth is, I bought the truck after my vette was wrecked, and I bought the truck because that is what Keeley wanted.  I had every intention of "giving" it to her when she was able to drive it.  So, I drove it for about a year, and then surrendered it to her when she became of legal driving age.  I figured I would buy myself a new car when I decided what I wanted.  In the time frame that I was considering a purchase, I was riding my bike and running as my mode of transport.  I soon discovered that I did not have that much need for a car, so I just never got one.  My bike was serving me well... until yesterday.  It is a mountain bike that I bought somewhere around 2000.  I would ride it every once in a while, but not terribly frequently.  I bought a new saddle for it and had it serviced to make sure it was transportation worthy and rode it to work every day and back for lunch most days and back to work after lunch, then home... most days.  It was obviously around 18 years old, but it was working... until yesterday, Thanksgiving Day.  I ran to the gym to go for a swim.  I swam nearly a mile at the gym pool and then ran home.  I thought I was done for the day, but Thanksgiving happened.  I am betting most of you will understand exactly what I mean.  The Thanksgiving Day festivities began.  There were house and food preparations and then there was a descension of family and other guests.  I, personally get a little "stir crazy" in these situations, so I decided to go out for a ride.  I rode for about a half an hour, then turned around.  I figured this would give me an hour ride and I would be back at just the right time to get the turkey in the oven and meet the dinner time frame.  I was cruising at about 16 or 17 mph, when my front wheel broke. 


It was not a dramatic crash or anything, just cam off the pedals and scratched up my leg a bit, but decided it would not be a great idea to try to ride the rest of the way home.  I was still about 5 miles away, so I decided to just run home.  I tried carrying the bike, but it was cumbersome.  I tried holding the handle bars, but I kept hitting the pedals with my foot as I ran. Eventually, I found a way to hold the saddle and simply push the bike along ahead of me.  I found that I could steer it fairly well and the only real downside was not being able to swing my right arm.  No big deal.  I made it home about 40 minutes later.  All of the Thanksgiving Day preparations and Thanksgiving Day dynamics were all still happening, and if I did not mention my adventure to anyone, they would not have even noticed.  Funny how that works.

So, now I need a new wheel.  Would you believe that every mention of these wheels on the internet refer to them as vintage or retro.  I feel the same way.  Vintage AND retro. 

I still have to find a way to get to work on Monday morning.  I will probably go buy a wheel at the local bike shop.  It will not likely be the vintage/retro version.

BTW... my left shoulder hurts from my swim, my right lower leg hurts from the pedal scrapes, my right IT band is fairly uncomfortable, my left upper leg is sore from the run, my right meniscus is informing me that it is still there, and saddle sores are real.

Thanks to the 14 of you who have nothing better to do.  Hope you can GQ at some of my calamity.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

State #31

Philadelphia Marathon Dietz & Watson Half Marathon

TLDR

Generally, I wait until the race photos come before I post.  Many times the race photos take a few days to a couple weeks to show up on a web site somewhere.  Then I have to find some time to write (type) something and paste those pictures into the body.  The last half in St. Louis was two weeks ago and still no pictures.  Of course, the truth about that race, it was a bit of a low budget race and it was all rainy anyway, so I doubt there will be any pictures to post... and I did not take very many pictures myself.  I posted the blog anyway with whatever pictures I did have... and the truth of the matter is that there are just a select few of you that actually read my blogs in the first place... so, I am going to post my blog now, without the pictures.  It takes time, and I currently have the time... and you and I and possibly my mom will be the only ones who read this anyway.  Even my children don't read it... which brings me to explain the TLDR in the title.  I learned a couple months ago of a "word" that has made it into the dictionary.  That "word" is TLDR.  It is actually an acronym for the phrase Too Long, Didn't Read. If TLDR is mentioned in the post, the point is to provide a summary of the lengthy text so that someone can skip to the TLDR section and get a quick overview of what the story talks about without having to read the whole thing.

I have come to understand that in this Insta-Snap, FaceChat, and YouTwit generation, 140 characters may still be too much.  In the spirit of connecting with the youth, I will offer the Twit-a-gram version of this race in the next paragraph and then elaborate for the somewhat more "mature" of you who are interested.  (For the record, I recognize that there are an even larger subgroup who did not even make it this far.)  BTW... I had to look it up to remember, but did you know that if only part of a sentence is parenthetical, then the punctuation is placed outside the parenthesis, but if the entire sentence is parenthetical, then the punctuation is placed inside the parenthesis?  Who knew?  Who remembers?

The Snap-o-Gram version:

Philly.  Cold and crowded.  Funny thing happened at the start, but didn't matter.  Old buildings and streets, historic.  Got a PR 1:36:38.  Carry on.

For the rest of you with a slightly longer attention span:

 Of course, by now you know that I have a goal for most everything.  My goal for this race was to run steady and treat it like a training run.  I travelled alone.  Valerie drove me to the airport.  I snuck out of work about 30 minutes early just in case there was a lot of traffic.  Made it to the airport in no time and was easily an hour early for my flight.  I flew SouthWest and it was an easy, uneventful flight.  I was wearing shorts and flip-flops which was not appropriate attire for the 40º Philly weather.  It was super crowded at the airport.  I attempted an Uber, but they cancelled on me.  I attempted a Lyft, but the driver cancelled.  This happened another 3 times.  I cancelled the last one myself because I had already been standing out there for 27 minutes waiting for a ride share, and the app let me know the driver would be there in 17 min.  So, I walked over to the cab station and picked up a taxi.  It cost $15 more than the ride share, but at that point I did not care.  I had the cab take me to the Expo, which was 0.7 miles from my hotel.


The Expo was at the Philadelphia Convention Center and it was a fairly big one.  There were lots of people there too.  Lots of vendors.  I would have browsed the vendors, but I was tired and hungry and I still had not run for the day... so, I just got my race packet and left... on to the hotel.  The hotel was a Sheraton, which is a Marriott and it was called Hotel 201.  It was a fairly inexpensive, 3-star hotel, but the accommodations were nice and clean.  I waited in line to check in behind 15 or so other people, and they were ALL part of the "marathon weekend." (Periods and commas are placed inside the quotation marks in the US, BTW.)  I was starting to get a sense that this was going to be a large and crowded race.  Good thing I was not intending to race it, but simply "go out for a little jog", that is use it as a training run.

I needed food and I needed to run.  It was cold out, so I decided to go run, in my jeans, to the restaurant.  Two birds, one run.  I found a TGIFriday's and decided some french fries sounded like a good pre-race dinner.  As you can see, my Garmin had a hard time finding and keeping my location during my run, which also proved to be a "bit of an issue" during the race.  I sat at the bar at Friday's and ordered the Salmon with steamed veggies and rice, a water and a side of fries.  It was really pretty good.  Three ladies sat across from me and were eying my food when it came, pointing, nodding and smiling.  One of them turned to me and asked if I was running the marathon.  I don't bother trying to explain the half or the full anymore, I just nodded and smiled and said, yes ma'am.  She said, "We are too.  That is why we ordered the same thing.  We are carb-loading."  I said, "Well, have a great run tomorrow."  She said, "Oh... No... we are running Sunday, the full.  Are you just running the half?"  --  Ugh...  Yes, I am just half a man... only running the half.    After talking with them, I only wish I had ordered the sweet potato fries that they ordered.  Enough conversation, back to the room.  I watched a movie and went to bed.

I woke at 4:30 and got some food, then watched another movie.  The starting line was about .5 miles from the hotel.  It was dark out still and the police had already blocked off the roads.  I could see the flashing blue lights from my room.  I left the room about 6:50am.  As I was walking to the start, I noticed two very long lines of people.  At first I assumed this was the line for bag drop, but I noticed many of them were not even carrying anything, so I started to get nervous that I was gonna have to go stand in one of those lines.  As it turned out, it was a security line.  There was a metal detector and security guards checking for something... a bomb maybe.  I just used the old trick that if you act like you know what you are doing, people will assume that you know what you are doing and leave you alone.  I walked right in and one of the guards asked me if I could unzip my jacket, which I did and he said, "OK", and waved me on.  I am not sure how some of those people made it to the start on time.  It was a very long couple of lines.

The starting corrals were delineated by flags.  The flags were different colors and corresponded to the corral color on the bibs.  The corral assignments were as follows:
There was the elite athletes, then the maroon group, etc.  I was in the maroon group.  Interestingly I saw several with a black bib and there was even a few that had White.  Not sure what that meant, but they situated themselves in front of the maroon group.  Oh well, I am just out for a little jog anyway.
The starting line was just in front of a roundabout.  So, there were two starting lines.  One on the left side of the street and one on the right side of the street.  After the official start, the runners could go around the roundabout on either side.  It was the same starting line, just broken up by what I would call a median... it was a median created for this event, created by barricades so that the runners could not be in the middle and create a "bottleneck".  There was a celebrity runner who was in charge of the starting horn, Mebrahtom "Meb" Keflezighi .  He is a retired professional runner, very well liked and respected, but is not so good at the starting horn.  The short story is, Meb had a little premature announciation of the horn which apparently confused the left side runners, the side I was on.  The right side started the race, the left side did not begin for another 27 seconds.  As I stated previously, I was just out for a little jog, so it did not bother me, plus it was a chip timed race, so your chip time did not start until you crossed the start line, but I am certain that it was a bother to some of the runners as they were pushing and yelling.  This also created a bit of a traffic jam at the start, so it was a bit slower start for many as we had to navigate around all of the runners who had incorrectly self seeded as well as those who were on the other side once we all came together after the roundabout... which went directly into a right-hand turn, BTW.

I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.  My Lulu lemon yoga pants, a running jacket and gloves.  I wore them all the entire race.  It was in the 30's.  Maybe it hit 40º in the sun towards the middle of the race... maybe.  I had to lower the zipper on my jacket at one point, then I zipped it back up.  For the most part I was comfortable.  My Garmin proved to have some issues as we ran through the Philadelphia streets.  The same thing happened in NYC and the night before in town in Philly.  I looked down to check my pace and my watch showed that I was running a 5:15 per mile pace.  I was certain that was inaccurate.  So, I could not count on my Garmin.  Also, this race had a clock at every mile.  After a couple miles, I realized that we were behind the official clock by 27 seconds because of the start SNAFU, and my Garmin was calculating my mile splits about 0.25 prior to the mile.  It became consistent after mile 3, so I just had to do a little minor math to understand where I was at each mile, which wasn't so bad.  I realized at about mile 7 that I was on pace for a PR.  So, I still felt good and decided to keep this pace until the last 3 miles and then pick up the pace a bit and try to shave a minute off my previous best time.  All went great, according to plan.  I got to mile 10 and started to try and increase my pace, but it was uphill at that point, so I decided to wait.  I was not able to find the energy to up my pace until I hit mile 12.  Then I realized that I could still PR, but it was gonna be tight.  I picked it up a bit, running mile 12 at 7:09 and mile 13 at 7:11, and the last .1 at 6:45, finishing 18 seconds under the PR set two weeks earlier.  Official time 1:36:38.  That is a 7:22 per mile avg. pace.  I am happy with that, especially considering I was not really shooting for a fast race.


The fan support at this race was the best that I have experienced so far.  There were spectators everywhere and they were playing loud and inspirational music and they were yelling and encouraging.  Water/hydration stations were about every three miles, but they were very well manned and efficient.  There were bands playing, drummers, cheerleaders, all sorts of "entertainment" out on the course.  I was impressed.  As I mentioned, there was a clock at every mile marker and the finish line was large and elaborate and full of cheering spectators.  The medal is very nice.  A working liberty bell replica.  Other than the start problems this was a great race.  The only disappointing part for me was the post-race food.  There was water, fruit cups, bananas and pretzels.  That was it.  Nothing else.  Every other aspect of this race was big and well-done, but no food (to speak of).  I was really hoping for something more.  I went out and got myself a burger and fries... and a chocolate milkshake. 

I intended to walk around the city a bit after my post-race meal and take some pictures.  I set out to do just that, but it was cold and windy, so I quickly abandoned that idea and got an Uber to the airport.  I did capture this picture from my hotel room so you could see what I could see.  Otherwise, I guess you will either have to go there yourself or you could browse the internet and see other peoples photos... maybe google maps.  BTW.  If you zoom into this picture you can see the two long lines to get to the security check point, or you can simply take my word for it.

In all it was a fun race and a nice course.  I enjoyed my time and am happy with my performance.  Although I am not yet to my goal, I have made some baby steps toward it.  Maybe I will get there.  Next race is in Memphis.  Noble and I are going together.  Should be a good time.  I have not been back to Memphis since dental school.  I am betting it has changed a little.  Thanks for reading to the end... or at least skipping to the end. lol.

St. Louis, MO

Missouri

State #30 

The St. Louis Track Club put on the

39th St Louis Half Marathon, Clayton Police 5K for Special Olympics & Youth Run on

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018

It was a smaller race, but well attended and well organized.  I decided to race this one because I needed Missouri and it met my time frame.  I was in Seattle for the entire week prior and this race was the only one on the way home in a state that I have not already run.  At some point, the logistics of this venture dictate that one simply takes what one can get, where and when one can get it.  I had originally planned to run a different race in St. Louis (a bigger, more popular race), but when I found this one was on my way home from a long trip, I just decided to take it.

There were some pros and some cons to this race.  I'll start with the pros.

PROS 

It was only $65 total

It benefitted the special olympics

It was on my way home from Seattle

I was able to pick up my race packet on race morning

I was able to get relatively inexpensive accommodations (AirBnb) within a mile from the start/finish

Easy in and out, to and from the airport

Plenty of nearby "healthy choice" restaurants

I think the course would have been very scenic (see cons)

55ºF -- (this will get a pro and a con)

Race volunteers were incredible

Post-race food was decent
Oh, and I got a PR (personal record)  -- Always a plus!!

CONS

Hills -- many hills

Rain, Rain, Rain!!!  It started raining about two hours before the race start (as I was walking to the race) and never stopped the entire race.

Wind, Wind, Wind.  Nothing like a lot of wind to accompany a cold rain.  Up one of the hills a strong wind blew by and I looked up to see several runners leaning 45º -- looked something like this:

55ºF -  seemed like 35ºF when a cold, stiff wind blows by your already soaked body

Fan support was minimal because of the rain, but I was surprised to see several people out there cheering.

Another "free-for-all" start -- see below.

No pictures before, during, or after the race... so, this is what you get:

One other CON that really turned out to be a PRO was the walk back to my room.  It was about a mile and it was straight back down the end of the race.  As I walked back to my room, I was encouraging the runners who were still out on the course, telling them they were doing great and only had a mile or less to go.  As it turned out, they were even more encouraging to me... smiling and yelling "GREAT JOB!" and "CONGRATULATIONS!"... lots of waves and thumbs up.  It was a nice feeling.  I wanted to encourage them, but they were even more encouraging to me.

Free-for-all Start

The start was really pretty funny.  Before the race everyone gathered in the recreation center because of the foul weather.  The National Anthem was sung by a sweet young man with Down's Syndrome in the rec. center. Then there was an announcement about 5 minutes prior to the start and everyone filtered out the little door to get to the start.  There were self-seeding signs for pace at 10min/mile, 9:30/mile, 9:00/mile, 8:30/mile, then 8:00 and under... which was a tiny little area that would hold maybe 50 people.  The announcer was well behind everyone in the starting area and a speaker was being used to amplify his voice... but no one in the front area could hear him.  He gave a "ready, set, go" and it took a good 10 seconds for the front runners to recognize that the race had started as the racers toward the back pushed forward and yelled, GO, GO, GO".  It did not affect anyone much, but it was fairly humorous.  

Police support was really good in most areas, but the streets were not all completely closed to traffic, so there were a couple of times where the cars were turning in front of me and trying to pass.  I really prefer to run alone, so I usually find a "pocket" in front of the "pack" so their stomping and wheezing and coughing and spitting do not interfere with my stomping and wheezing and coughing and spitting... so, this must have appeared to be an appealing place to drive or turn or cross for the vehicles.  I thought I might get run over a time or two.  Should have run faster I suppose.

Once we got into the park, where the majority of the race was run, there was no traffic and there was great volunteer support to give us water and Gatorade and Gu gels as well as proficiently direct runner traffic.

Then the race continued back out on the city streets toward the finish.  It was still raining and gusting.  Somehow I eeked out a PR of 1:36:56.  I was feeling pretty good, although I was fighting cramp for about 5 miles, telling myself I would speed up as soon as I got rid of this pesky cramp.  Once I finally did shake it, the course seemed to be entirely uphill and I could not muster the extra effort.  This became painfully obvious when a girl passed me followed by a guy who was apparently 20 years my senior, followed by another guy who was likely in my age group.  I never caught them, but refused to let anyone else pass me at this late stage of the race and even passed a few others.  I did manage to get 5th in my age group, and I was happy with my time.

Next race is Philadelphia this weekend.  I will be traveling alone again this time.  Just a quick in and out race.  I am not really looking for a PR, just a fair, decent race.  The one after that in Memphis, 2 weeks later, is the one I am shooting for another PR.

I'll update you after Philly.