A Long Run Tale

20150530_083048

…in which I remember there are summer routes and winter routes.

/
My training plan called for a 20-mile run this past weekend. I wanted a change, so I began mapping out different route options in parts of the city I don’t run often. There’s a particular route I’ve wanted to run for a long time and I decided this was the perfect weekend to do it.

I was wrong. It was not perfect.

The route is basically a loop divided by the East River: run across a bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan, up 1st Avenue to the 59th Street Bridge, cross into Queens, then run south back into Brooklyn and back to roughly where I started. It wasn’t too difficult to fit that into 20 miles, so I decided to do it. I checked the weather and figured leaving by 6:30 am would be perfectly fine, so that’s what I did.

I was wrong. It was not fine to leave by 6:30 am. Read More

Brooklyn Half Marathon

10001437_10206405657489391_5165993688572120433_n

Brooklyn
16 May 2015
2:18:18 finish

This is probably going to be my last race report for the Brooklyn Half. The run itself was okay, pretty far off my PR, but not a bad pace for a race in the middle of a training period for something longer. I just didn’t enjoy myself very much and I’ve decided it’s too big now to offer a good experience.

The morning started off fine. I took a car to the start. I didn’t get stuck in the baggage line the way I did last year. The porta-potties in my corral didn’t run out of toilet paper. The corrals did collapse as I was waiting in the bathroom line, but I didn’t worry about that. In 2014 I crossed the start line at 7:55; this year I crossed the start line at 7:56. Negligible loss of time.

Read More

Brooklyn Greenway Half Marathon

10711141_10153359275460288_2650079497980579895_n

Brooklyn Waterfront
19 October 2014
2:13:43 – PR

It was the best of races, it was the worst of races.

I had run pretty fast—for me—at the Run for the Rings Half Marathon a week prior to this race, but I never expected in a million years to PR by a full 6:00. That’s almost unheard of. I chalk it up to finally getting my food/fluids right*, good weather, new course distraction, and running by feel without obsessively checking my Garmin.

Now, I never thought I’d be complaining about a race I PRed at, but I have some complaints. Read More