Did the last 10 miles with the Prospect Park Track Club on sunday and enjoyed spectacular weather, great support, and got to see a part of the course I had not seen before, the run up First Ave, the Bronx mile, and coming back down Fifth Ave into the Park. It really was a beautiful run, probably the easiest 10 miles I have ever run, which is the irony of course. We do this crazy training for twenty weeks only to get to the taper phase where we are supposed to take it easy and stay off the legs- at precisely the time when the weather is the best, the leaves are peaking, and my fitness is peaking. It is crazy really.

another way to get to the finish line…

the famous uphill finish...

I wanted to share with you the website for the athlete tracking- you will get 5K splits for me along the way; go here and you have to enter your email and a password, don’t worry, the email is deleted after the race. Submit that and then the next page allows you to add runners, either by name or bib number. Mine is 22909. Sometime after 10 am you will begin to get 5k splits which should be in the neighbourhood of 25 minutes per. For the metrically challenged 5K is 3.1 miles. You will also get the final time. Here are some landmarks:

5K; 83rd and Fourth Ave. Brooklyn–10k; 17th Street and Fourth Ave (hey I’m home!)–15k; turn from Lafayette onto Bedford Ave Brooklyn–20K; Greenpoint Ave–25k; middle of Queensboro Bridge (just the sound of a lot of breathing and groaning I am told…)–30k; 102nd and First Ave Manhattan–35k; 128th Street and Fifth Ave–40k; lower Central Park and almost done!

that’s me in the lime green tfk shirt down front-PPTC.org is the group!

I have learned a lot in this training go round, and depending on the outcome Sunday I will have some wisdom to share.

Spectating options; I lifted this from the NYRR website verbatim. Yes they wrote all that funny stuff about moi! I put my splits in there for guidance. I am calculating based on an 8 minute mile, although I will be running a little faster I hope (7:51/mile). So all times are plus or minus about 10 minutes.

Attire: I will be sporting jaunty black shorts and shirt, with a frighteningly lime green TFK singlet over top. And a hat. There will be many like me. I will write my name on my jersey as do most people to encourage a little name-calling, and to assist EMS should I become un-responsive. Not really.

Choose your borough or neighborhood:

Staten Island: This is the staging area for the start. All you need to know is that you can’t get here from there. If you’re curious about the start, it’s better to watch it on television. NBC4 has coverage starting at 9am. NBC is also airing a package nationally at 2 pm to 4 pm with highlights. Don’t expect to see me, it’s like March of the Penguins meets Dawn of the Dead, with less exploding brain. I am Wave 2, meaning I start at 10:00 am, but expect to cross the official start line a few minutes after. Start: 10:04 am.

Brooklyn: Ten miles of the race go through this borough.

Park Slope: Fourth Ave at Prospect is 6+ miles in. (10:52 am) At Fourth Avenue and 7th Street, (11:00 am) Time Warner Cable will have video screens and access to the Race Day Tracker; enter your runner’s official bib number and get an idea of where he or she is. At Fourth Avenue and Douglas Street, BP will set up an Invigorate (?) Station with giveaways and photo opportunities. The Brooklyn Academy of Music at Fourth Avenue and Lafayette Avenue (11:08 am) is a popular place to view the marathon — there’s an ING Cheering Zone here. Beware Bishop Laughlin High School will be playing the Theme from Rocky over and over here…I’ll probably be in a very sunny mood, expect jubilation, high fives, a bon mot or two-yo-Adrian!

Lafayette Avenue (miles 8-9: near 11:16am) is lined with trees and traditional brownstones; lots of marathon-day stoop parties go on here. This is also the end of my first “10″ of the race, the taking it easy part of the game plan. The next 10 miles I get on the game plan and focus on being consistent and plowing all the way through. Consider McCarren Park (mile 12, 11:40 am) as a viewing spot: It’s tree-lined and attracts a lot of spectators and I hear has some good taco trucks.

Queens: On the Queens side of the Pulaski Bridge at about mile 13.2, (11:48:07 am- I should still be in a good mood here- game face, zen mastery!) Asics will set up a huge video screen that will flash photos of runners who have registered to have their image displayed (dunno about that). Also in Queens: A neighborhood cheering zone at 44th Drive near Court Square and an ING Cheering Zone on 44th Drive between 11th and 21st where you can get bright orange cheer sticks (between miles 14-15, 11:56-12:04 pm-start clapping you silly dolphins!!).

Manhattan, East Side, First Avenue: First Avenue might be the craziest, most crowded place to watch the race — the sidewalks can be packed more than eight people deep. (Hint; its the bars and an excuse to drink at noon…) The runners are 16 miles into their race at this point and appreciate the roar of the crowd as they come off the Queensboro Bridge. (estimate 12:12am -this is probably going to be where you will catch RW being emotional-sorry about that) At First Avenue and 59th Street, Food Emporium and Emerald Nuts will be giving away food samples. Next, Time Warner Cable Online Cheer Zone at 83rd. (miles 17-18 estimate 12:20-112:28 pm-probably going to be doing some early negotiation here, might be a good place for a fan intervention moment!) Farther up First Avenue, at 96th Street, you can visit the Mobile Makeover Zone sponsored by T-Mobile. Catherine Zeta Jones will be giving it away here to all the older men…like any other day…Watch the elite runners make a move here; some great runners have pulled away — or been dropped — on First Avenue. I will not be making a move here-except on CZ-J!

The East Side is one of the best places to see runners twice: You can see them run up First Avenue, then walk west and see the runners on Central Park South or, if you’re farther north, on Fifth Avenue above 90th Street.

Bronx: At Mile 20 of the marathon, (estimate 12:45 pm-if I hit this mark or very close to expect to see a very happy runner, it will mean I am having a record day) runners often struggle to find energy and the residents here are famous for supporting participants with signs and cheers. If anyone guts it out to the Bronx to see me I don’t know what I’ll do, I might not even recognize you! Probably thinking why in the hell would anyone want to do this again…

Harlem: On race day, the sidewalks on Fifth Avenue between 135th Street and 110th Street are filled with people coming from church, going to brunch, and cheering for runners. Some gospel bands play live on the course (look at 135th, 125, and 117 streets). Marcus Garvey Park, between 120th and 124th Streets, is a leafy respite with bleachers set up for spectators (mile 22-some serious negotiation going on her, probably some food fantasies going on…beer? chocolate? estimate 1:00 pm if all goes well).

Manhattan, East Side, Fifth Avenue: Here I am fully in the “last 10″ or 10km in this case. If the plan goes according to, this is the actual race section. The runners stay on Fifth Avenue and run along Central Park until 90th Street, where they turn in (mile 24- 1:16 pm-if there is anything left in the tank, it comes out here, at Engineers Gate. That or all the green Gatorade Endurance Formula comes out in a spectacular ballistic vomit that induces all the spectators to vomit a la “Stand by Me”).

Central Park: Central Park is an ideal place to watch the race; just be aware that moving around the park can be difficult on race day. Good spots include: Park Drive between 90th and 86th Streets; Park Drive below 72nd is often more crowded. You can cross the park on either the 85th Street or 65th Street transverse roads. You cannot cross Park Drive, but you can go under it: Try the arches at 80th Street, 73rd Street, 67th Street, and 62nd Street.

Central Park South: This part of the course can be crowded; spectators might find it easier to access the south side of the street than the north side. Look for Continental Airline’s entertainment center at Columbus Circle, where the course turns into the park for the final time. Street teams will also be handing out Emerald Nuts on Central Park South. At this point I don’t expect to “see” anyone. 1:28 pm…I will have tunnel vision, snot running from my nose, dried spittle on my chin, I might look like the Hamburgler on crack…

Finish line: There are bleachers for the last few hundred meters of the race but you need tickets. I have a meeting spot setup that I need to get details on from TFK, I believe it is the YMCA where it will be fun to stay, and NOT be running…info to come.

Left, new, right, 450 miles, 63 hours, 59,774 calories, however you want to count it…

You can’t see it but there is water permanently inside the plastic bubbles.  Beat…

Getting nervous, 12 days to go. Freaking out over all sorts of things, possible flu forecast, weather forecast, long sleeve, short sleeve, hat, touque??? I have a sore achilles on the right side, which I am ascribing to how mushy the shoes have become, they feel like flip-flops. Hence the new kicks.

Soon I will have a marathon route preview, my game plan, times, vantage points, media coverage. And a big thank you to all TFK contributors. You can still contribute, they ain’t gonna turn away your dime, and I get some of my greenbacks back if you do. So think of me as the charity from now on…

What a difference a year makes.

I chose to “represent” in full battle dress today. Did 5 from the apartment over the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise to the Ferry Terminal. The scene was the same from last year, several hundred of us filing on to the ferry for the trip across. But the scenario is completely different, this was to be the last long run before tapering, and I was on a 40+ mile week pair of legs. Would they hold? Could I maintain marathon pace for 13.1 or better?

The race directions were simple and delivered by a man whose accent betrayed he was on home turf: follow da guy in front-a-ya. On ya mawks…and the horn. The first mile of this race is along the access road which then twists back on itself and climbs onto the bluff at Richmond Terrace. So what was my goal here? Marathon pace is 7:51 but everyone was clipping along at 7:30 or better (the corral I was in was this pace) so I hung back a bit for the first mile for a total of 8:05. But then mile 2 is all downhill which resulted in a 7:30. I tried to pull it back in in mile three at 7:46 but at this point I had the feeling that this was not going to be a marathon pace day but a pr day for the half, so I settled in with some white rabbits and began clocking off 7:30′s, basically for the rest of run.

It was ideal weather, if a little sunny, but we started out at 45 degrees and rapidly it climbed into the mid 50′s. If this was to be the weather for NYCM then I’d take it. Clear blue sky as we ran under the Verrazano and I looked up, way up to the span where I will be in three weeks. Hard to imagine.

What a difference a year makes. I remember last year just how long this run was, but not this year. The miles kept ticking off and I practiced choosing rabbits, getting in packs to draft, relaxing, running the tangents on corners. I think last year I consumed a couple of gels or more just getting around, but in training I have been foregoing that to learn how to run without it. The gatorade proto-slime was good enough. We get to mile 11 and it the beginning of the hills we came down going out, but my pace only suffers a few seconds, 7:39, and none in mile 12, 7:32, however my heart rate is topping 170, evidence I am working hard. But it feels completely different, I know I can do this or better from the speedwork, so I push through to the end, finishing with a little sprint alongside my last mile rabbit who comes out of my rearview mirror in the last 100, so we duel it out to the end, and I get a shout out by name from the announcer who acknowledges the TFK team alliance!

The time? 1:40:33, a pr by 3:30 over my last in the Brooklyn half which was 1:43:58. And last year’s SI half-1:54:51, almost 15 minutes better than that! What a difference a year makes, and this was on tired legs too.

What it means I find hard to believe, they say take you half time and double it and then add 8 for your marathon time, which means I could clock 3:29 if all goes well…the McMillan running calculator says 3:32:04, which means that it is tight, there is not a lot to spare.

What remains then is to enjoy this two week taper-next weekend I will be doing a “last 10 miles” from the Queensboro Bridge up First Ave. into the Bronx and down Fifth Ave. to the finish in Central Park sponsored by the Prospect Park Track Club. I am looking forward to this to get eyes on the course and that infamous hill on Fifth Ave. at mile 23. No one seems to like it. I took a look at it yesterday and it does seem to go on forever, not too steep though.

And also time to fret and work out race strategies and try not to bore everyone too terribly with this stuff…I know all you hear is blah blah blah when I show up.

Holding steady at 1600 of 2500 for TFK-come on people-represent!

BTW, the winner, Jorge Real, in a time of 1:07:47, is listed as age 39! Also the beauty of statistics, I was 91st in my age group 40-44- TOP 100 BABY!

This is where I will find myself 22 days and a little less than 18 hours from now, poised at the foot of the Verrazano bridge, awaiting the start and 225 foot climb over the mile long span. I got the upper deck route, blue start, which is the same as the professional men and women, who leave earlier at 9:40 and 9:10am. I will be honoured to tread in their crushed water cups and exhaled CO2. Actually they don’t take water cups, they are hydrated by the gods dispensing mead and gatorade from golden chalices held aloft by flying winged monkeys. Or so I’ve heard.

starting to see these everywhere-it’s getting me nervous…

Coming off the week that wasn’t, with my sore semitendinosis- that is a hamstring muscle for those not anatomically acquainted, I had backed off the mileage a good deal. Was supposed to have completed 51 miles total last week but only got in 36-missing a whole speed workout and taking a little off a couple other runs just to make sure the hamstring didn’t get worse. Moral of the story, don’t try to break in a new pair of (different) shoes during your highest mileage weeks, and don’t run your recovery runs any faster just because you can!

So trying to put it all back together again after being out of town I did get my 10 in on friday, and that left sunday, where I had forgotten I had signed up for and paid for the NYRR long training run. 18miles, not the 20 that was on the schedule, but coming off the potential injury I thought, if I can make it, all will be well.

Well that was before the weather decided we needed 2 inches of rain on sunday.

When you do these long runs the objective is to maintain an even pace, to keep your heart rate where you want it, and to try out different clothing and feeding options to see what works. They are dry runs for marathon day. Did I say dry? The other possibility is that you get up race day and Noah is waving at you from the Ark saying, “I warned you….”

Worst Case Scenario. I suppose toads raining down is one possible WCS but unlikely, rain or wind or heat or cold is more likely, assuming you aren’t dealing with injury, GI issues or flu. So the rain Sunday morning was WCS #1, steady rain and wind. I decided to leave as late as possible to avoid standing around at the start, and also I decided not to drop a bag since it was going to get soaked anyway. Just show up and run. I left the ipod at home, left the gels at home, so lets just see if I can deal with Gatorade Endurance formula for 18 miles and nothing else. Not that I really like that stuff, salt and HFCS blended with a hint of artificial lime. It looks like radioactive toxic slurry and probably is. But it is what is on the course officially. You can carry your own, but I would really rather not on race day. The fuel belts, the gizmos, I would like to leave most of that behind except for the garmin. I didn’t even wear the HR monitor although I probably should have just to see where I was.

Prospect Ave. had only one other crazy person at 6am when I boarded. One other person at DeKalb. Union Square is where most of the zombies got on, and more up the East Side to 103rd Street where it was a frontloading half mile to the start. I didn’t even bother to get in my right corral, I just lined up at the end and we were off.

So it is wet. A steady soaking rain. You don’t really know what to wear, it was borderline warm enough I think to lose the jacket but it worked for the NJ marathon so I wore it, plus a zensah short sleeve shirt. It is sort of like wool in that it stays warm when wet, but it also stretches, so eventually it was hanging down like a skirt. Not a great result. I think what you want is a single layer that has some warmth when wet and also some wind stopping ability. I have not found it yet.

Periodically, you let your arms fall to get rid of tension in your shoulders. As you do, water rills down off your fingertips like a garden sculpture. You feel water being squeezed up between your toes forcefully as you run along. This for two hours and thirty nine minutes, or three loops of the park. But somehow you get it done, and this being the third “twenty” miler in the schedule it is not so bad. My splits were not fast, but I was never working that hard, even to the end. I think with the rest before hand it sort of approximates what it will be like running after the taper and with others around to support you.

There is one twenty left on the schedule next week, and the Staten Island Half after that. I also want to do a “last ten miles” which is up First Ave and down Fifth Ave into the Park to see what the hills are really like.

We are at $1490/2500 for TFK with one month to go. All you fence sitters time to donate.

From Ms. Deane- photographer Ӧzant Kamaci has two projects, Pause, and Landing. From the statement:

Pause

In ‘pause’, the work depicts the juxtaposition of powerful machines which are symbols of advancement and technology against nature which is widely accepted as precious and untouched. The medium of photography provides a visual dichotomy of reality and illusion through the aesthetics of plane and tree and their spatial relationship. Planes behind trees as individual objects are familiar and common, but when combined and interrelated, the viewer moves to a new space to behold the unexpected.

Obviously I really like these- I like the scale distortion, the idea of a plane caught in a tree like a kite you might say, the unexpected visual merging of two graphic entities. I could see variations on this where tail markings and other insignia become part of the result. I also like how you can have an idea and someone else will have a similar idea but a completely different take on it. There is no end to the difference you can generate.

Early on I had some failed attempts where I was playing sort of in this garden:

But the results are completely different. And I didn’t have all the technical things worked out.

I think they might have worked best printed large from 35mm negs.

In training you have three variables, volume, intensity and frequency. Volume is the how far, intensity is the how hard, frequency is how often. Depending on how you combine these elements you can produce different results. All seem to lead to being tired however.

I was thinking of photography too, your mind wanders off a lot when you are tired. You could describe different kinds of photographers or kinds of photographers with volume, intensity and frequency. Volume would correspond with the amount of work produced, for example, stock shooters produce a high volume of work. Intensity could describe the effort required to make an image. A high intensity photographer might be like Gregory Crewdson. Low volume, but high intensity, with the film lighting, etc. Frequency would describe how often the photographer gets to make images. Crewdson in the last example, would have low frequency. Editorial photographers used to have high frequency. You could also say the intensity was moderate, and the volume was low, usually a page or several pages. Advertising photographers would generally have Low Volume, High Intensity, and Low Frequency. Paparazzi would have High Volume, low intensity and High Frequency. You could make venn diagram or a scatter chart to plot us all!

Well in my training we are nearing the highest volume, the highest intensity, but moderate frequency. I am not running twice a day like olympic hopefuls. And those highs are relative, about one half or one third what serious serious runners do. And I’m getting my butt kicked.

I did mile repeats again on Thursday. Going in this is the workout that I really don’t like, but coming out, it is something that is very satisfying. I think it has to do with how well signposted the workout is. You have a 400m oval. Two straightaways, and two curves. A mile is about 4 laps or 1600m. The workout called for a warmup, 2 miles, and then 4x1mile @7:00/mile. This is nearly a full minute faster than my planned marathon pace of 7:54/mile, which yields 26.2miles in 3:28:23, or sub 3:30:00. Loyal and devoted readers will remember that my first marathon in rainy Long Branch NJ clocked in at 3:49 and change. So this goal of sub 3:30 is pretty ambitious.

There are all sorts of predictors of marathon times, I won’t go in to them. One of them is a recent half marathon time. My last half was the Brooklyn half in late May, which was three and half months ago. Taking that time the prediction is 3:38:00 or so. How to find those 8 minutes? Speedwork.

So this is the drill. I do the warmup and end up back at the RedHook track ready to go. Another high school age group is doing 400m repeats and nasty situps. A football team is scrumming on the inner field. Round we go. The splits are 1:45, 3:30, 5:15 and 7:00. You then get a 800m cooldown before the next interval begins again. Somehow the body knows exactly how fast to go to get around this oval in 1:45. Don’t ask me how or why. It might have something to do with the fact that my heart is pounding out of my chest and I can’t go any faster but I think it is that mental fight or flight thing again. Your body will only give you enough to do what you ask it to do. So I have these goal times already in my head. It will not give me any more. Dumb body, thinks I am being chased by a cheetah and might have to run for miles. So as long as I just stay ahead of death, that is ok. If it thought I was being chased by an old lady on a motorized scooter I guess I’d get 15 minute miles?

These are the splits: first interval 6:52, second 6:55, third 6:59, fourth 7:02. This is only the second time I have run this workout, and it surprises me how close that is. Well the first one is too fast but that is understandable. Perhaps more telling is the rest interval which grows each time, I take my own sweet time to do the 800′s in-between. They are the coaches little gift. I suspect a real coach would not let me take a full five minutes between the third and fourth interval but it has been a long week my friends.

So as I said, you hate it going in, but clocking the last interval, those numbers when you see them on the clock, 1:45, 3:30, 5:15, 7:00 become your little friends, they tell you actually doing it. You get cozy with the pain because it tells you the worse it gets the closer you are to the end. So you sort of bend yourself to it. I did raise my hands at the end in sweet victory, or perhaps trying to relieve that cramp in my side , probably reaching for the imaginary beer I was fantasizing about at the end just to get me through, but it felt better than running a twenty even, which is just long slow death. This is more like wedging a brick against the accelerator and going over a cliff death. Whee!

43 days till NYC Marathon. I live to paint the world red it seems.

This weekend is the Queen’s Half marathon which is most known for it’s inaccessibility from the outside world. There is a bus at the ungodly hour of 5am to get us all there. And no, this is not more punishment, actually it is a relief, the “official” workout was 16 miles, this is a piddly 13.1, and features water stops, gatorade, and maybe some dancing bears. It is a gift really.

Really.