Lots of fun outdoors to be had.

Speaking of tying on some running shoes, I did make a certain “commitment” for later this year…a certain day in November.

This all ties in to running and the marathon last year, to Team for Kids, and an iPhone app that Jamie Oliver created with recipes and tips.

This is a screen cap from the app, 20 Minute Meals. It’s really a great little app, lots of pictures and videos, plus updates with new recipes come too. I got the app when I was training for the marathon and decided to forego takeout as much as possible, in addition to it being cheaper. It was so fun making all the recipes that I found myself dining in nearly all the time.

If you watch the video Jamie makes the case that we have not passed to our children the knowledge they need to cook, select foods, and make healthy choices. Even adults, and I count myself in there, do not know their way around a kitchen. David Letterman can joke about “Know Your Cuts of Meat” but in truth that is about all I do know! I could not tell you the difference between a shoulder and a rib roast, chuck, round, whatever, the nomenclature is greek to me. And I come from a family where we had very (too!) regular family meals around the kitchen table, cooked by my mom and by my dad. Fast food was limited to once a week, we’d call it fend for yourself, or ersatz, usually friday.

That’s a cookbook I wrote out as a kid. I liked grilled chees with pickals and a glass of milk. Still do.

The whole Team for Kids mantra is get children moving early and often, because we have an epidemic of obesity going on. Oliver makes the same point in the video above, and he says we are not doing enough in schools to teach kids about food, not doing enough to supply healthy meals in schools, which are often the bulk of the meals kids get, and we are not doing enough to pressure fast food and the  food-industrial-complex to get the crap out of our food that they put there to increase profit.

For you out of town readers, living in Brooklyn I have always observed that the poorer neighbourhoods got the worst food, the worst vegetables, the worst meats. The closest grocery to me has great staff, but un-appealing veggies. I see them trying. It might be me single-handedly buying more veggies than anyone else!? And with more and more people turning to food stamps in this recession, it is only going to get tougher- what WIC will purchase is often nothing I would touch. So it is no surprise that when real food is unappealing, and when you don’t know how to prepare it properly, a family will turn to crap because the kids will eat it.

This is nothing that is sustainable or desirable. Oliver points out that the biggest killers in society today are not violent crime, or ‘terrerism, but the diseases of obesity and bad diet. By a huge margin.

Jamie’s mantra is pass it on, which is what I am doing.

Full story here.

What’s that Crazy Font you say! – Well Sir, Madam, it’s “Eloquent Regular” by Jason Walcott after the long lost Pistilli Roman. Just the perfect Tonic to Pick You Up I say! Peppy? And How! Well, where can I get some? Veer!

There is some confusion on the intertubes about who created it first-either John Pistilli or some other blogs say Herb Lubalin and Lou Dorfsman-I am sure some typophile can correct me. Depending on how it is deployed it can either look playful or ‘eloquent’ or classic like Bodoni/Didot.

It gets a little funky small so I am not sure about the blog header, but I wanted consistency.

And yes, designed by me. The function parts come as before from Slideshowpro and Director, it is based on their layered thumbgrid demo for those that care, with some custom ActionScript thrown in. I posted before about it here.

The site coding is from Freeway Pro. I don’t know of any other web design software that allows a total idiot like me to make a decent website.

Every site is a trade off, for me my goals are to get people to see a lot of work quickly and big if they want to. So the update saw me redo every image for the site at 900 px wide-This is about as large as I want to go.

Also performed an upgrade on the portfolio-

Went for a couple portfolio meetings yesterday and one editor was surprised by the physical porfolio-she was seeing a lot of laptops. Really? Talk about No Plastic Sleeves! Speaking of, yes those are acetate sleeves, the International House of Portfolios kind (iHOP). I’ve read a lot kvetching over there about the practice-but Really? You want to change the order of your book or one image and you can end up reprinting most of the book? And what if you don’t want to print on any of the double side offerings- or on matt paper? I love Harman Gloss. It is what I print on Period. And it ain’t two-sided. You think I’m gonna glue that sh– together? Really? You think acetate is going to lose you work? Really?…I think bringing a laptop in is gonna lose you work. You have no idea what it really looks like.

Another editor said they were seeing a lot of Blurb books. For the price it might be cheaper even. But then you give away control of colour I would expect, and what you can print in CMYK is nothing like what you can print on inkjet or c-print. Which brings me to my final point; minilab develop and scan. I had a roll done recently just to see what was up, what was out there. Picked the wrong lab. L&I on 22nd. Can you say rip-off? 18$ for dev+scan-get this a whopping 15mb scan. Do you know what that really is? 2 Megapixels. Yes, your iPhone has 2mp resolution. But they call it 15mb-which is a to confuse the point, 1700px x 1100 px is ~5mb per channel RGB- there’s you double digit file size-15mb! Thanks a lot! And colour-don’t get me started! But it did make me think about what I am seeing from the gang rediscovering film-

wonky purple shadows, no detail, stained highlights. Excuse me while I book an ad shoot. Off to look for another lab.

Everyone likes to say it was ahead of its time, and even when that time came, it was still ahead. Yes the date there is 2006, when I ebay’d it. I was not the first owner either. Who knows how many had put data into it’s “soup”. That was how the Newton stored information, in one giant archive. You could search anything for anything and every application has access to the entire soup. The only reason I post about it on the eve of Apple’s announcement of the iWhatever is that it bears mentioning that this idea of a tablet really points backwards to a paper-society. All the metaphor were there, the handwriting recognition, pen input, you could fax from it, you could even email from it but that was not around really when the Newton was new. It was a digital paper pusher. The iWhatever will be very different I am sure.

Room with a view

Pick one

a cloud follows me wherever I go

its just alec baldwin

how many jokes can you come up with that involve Tiger, POTUS, and Putter?

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright in the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? well…Frank Rich has a nice column about Tiger and the decade in the NYT

David Sedaris always makes my holiday brighter. With apologies to Eggleston.

you may recognize the colour scheme from my website. ?

When I let myself drift into the intoxication of inverting daydreams and reality, that faraway house with its light becomes for me, before me, a house that is looking out-its turn now!-through the keyhole. Yes there is someone in that house who is keeping watch, a man is working there while I dream away. He leads a dogged existence, whereas I am pursuing futile dreams. Through the light alone the house becomes human. It sees like a man. It is an eye open to the night….a rather large dossier of literary documentation could be studied from the single angle of the lamp that glows in the window….” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

I certainly don’t have the world’s best photobook collection, in many ways it is not even a collection. There have been no rules applied in its creation. Some are gifts, some were too cheap not have a look. Heteroglot I think is the word. Some are missing, loaned, purloined, misplaced in moves-Mark, you still have my Paul Strand and my Friedlander One Eyed Cat!

I don’t buy as many photobooks now as I used to, even though the availability and selection has never been better. A Photographer’s Place may be gone, but we have our friends now at Dashwood here in New York. It’s a treat going in there, I feel guilty because I rarely buy anything there. Aren’t we all a little cash-strapped? But photobooks are as much for the lookey-loo as they are to to buy and own. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent as a young photographer scanning the spines of photobooks in a variety of bookstores over the years. I was not alone, this was part of “the education” of becoming a photographer. There was a distance and an intimacy that is the paradox of any obsession. Libraries, books and old things can do that. They create a silence, a place to dwell in.

Probably some good work but I will never get to browse any of them. How can I know if I like it? I don’t make friends easily…

Despite it’s inefficiencies, the old school publishing model put books in the pews of this old church and you could go in to worship every other sunday. Or like movie marquees, the titles on the dust-jackets offered a world that was just out of reach. Photobooks in days past had the element of the exotic and foreign about them, a club that you could never join, but aspired to. We don’t like that anymore, it gets labeled “elitist” or “un-democratic” or not “accessible.” And our aspiration has been exploited by innumerable contests where the only path to success is to win!

The photobook of yore was where I learned what is was to be a photographer. As unrealistic as that sounds. Almost by default, there was really no other place. You read Forwards and dust-jackets and biographies, all 606 pages of Shadow and Substance, the life of W. Eugene Smith by Jim Hughes, or the Weston Daybooks, a two-volume set-and you put yourself in their tripod sticks. There was no one telling you how, in art schools you surveyed the same books and imitated your professors, commercial photographers used assistants, so you assisted. Workshops offered a chance at shouldering up next to your idols, for a short while, but the photobook could be your constant companion. And through it you got to know a photographer’s work over time and with respect to what was relevant in your life at that moment. Most of the photobooks I “know” I don’t even own, but have tasted over the years, either in libraries or in stores. Let me share some deep dark secrets; I don’t even own a copy of The Americans! I’m such a fraud! And oh how I wish I had stolen that Life & Work Werner Bischof from the Kingston Public library in 1992! Now its out of print…

Joke: Brett, when you go down to the market don’t forget to get peppers…

December 21. I can’t go on this way.  I must acquire a formula for my portraits. I compromise anyway-and give far too much of myself to an unappreciative audience.

Yesterday, I quit-put down my prints on which I had spotted all morning. Poor technique? Yes, but not my fault-finger prints and scratches and bad retouching done by others-retouching necessary to make an American of questionable age look like a vivacious senorita. I quit, I say, and paced the floor the afternoon-the worst reaction to professional portraiture I ever had. It made no difference to me that rent was due and the work had to go on….

Yet here I am this morning at my desk, working harder than ever, attacking this negative almost with a ferocity, as though it were one of the tasks of Hercules. The outward and superficial reason that if it is not done by tomorrow I cannot go to El Toreo Sunday!-and five foot letters announce Silveti y Nacional!

(What was I complaining about portraiture the other day? Same as it ever was!)

Tell me what a twenty-five year old living with his parents in Ajax can learn from Edward Weston in Mexico in 1924 about being a photographer-? Maybe if I figure out SEO finally I can go to the Bullfights on Sunday? But this was part of “the education,” learning what came before. Photobooks were the cathedral of the ancients, but they didn’t seem ancient even when they were. When your only point of reference is the book on a shelf Weston is just as alive as the person next to you. Ansel Adams wrote The Camera, The Negative, The Print in the early 80’s, detailing principles that had been in use for decades. It was neither new nor old, it was just “Photography” and part of the curriculum.

One of my teachers said that a student of his had learned black and white printing mainly from looking at photobooks-he thought that this is what a good print should look like, and since he had no access to actual prints, it was all he had to go on. The point being, photobooks were responsible for many aspects of the craft and it’s transmission over the years. For many it was the sole point of connection to the medium. We now have the luxury of unlimited search the world over, seeing what is going on in Uzbekistan is now possible, in the days of the photobook, you were limited to what was published. Here we have another facet; for better or worse, the photobook was a gatekeeping mechanism. Making it to a store shelf confers a status on the work, it also reinforces status. Now from the point of view of me seeing what is going on in Uzbekistan I much prefer the internet. But from the point of view of separating wheat from chaff there is nothing wrong with a few barriers to entry.

Sadly, I never really internalized these rules.

We take the online community for granted already, but pre-internet, you suffered your successes and failures alone. Or you shared letters with friends and classmates. One photobook that was very important to me early on was Ted Orland’s “Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity”, mostly cobbled together from a correspondence between the author and another young photog-Sally Mann. It is sort of their modern day emails to each other, published. But because they are letters, we get a care and depth of expression that is timeless. In the book you get a picture of what “emerging” photographer meant circa 1973-1984, the drudge-work, the uncertainty, but mostly the idealism. It is not unlike blogs today, at least the blogs that I like to read. Photobooks were web “point-oh” you could say.

Ted’s Photographic Truths: Photographers fade faster than photographs…

The last point I want to make about photobooks is that recently some have become fetishized collectibles. I suppose in a world where images are in infinite supply, we must ration every possible point of purchase in order inflate their value. I don’t feel this is a healthy situation. It is a sad fact that inefficiencies of the old publishing model meant that photographers made no money creating books, they never sold well, and the bulk of them were then remaindered and then pulped. But you can go down to Strand and revel in the exhaust of this process, and pick up copies relatively cheap. In the secondary market they have long lives, like those people I suspect you see at company parties year after year but never find out their names. It is comforting to know that they are still there. Now a lot of good work is going into print on demand- a place where I can’t browse, move in alongside, live in, a virtual marketplace of limited runs that sometimes are created to sell out, be buzz-worthly, and appreciate in value. At least that is what the email blasts are urging me to do, only twenty copies left!

Obviously I have mixed feelings about this. I love that anyone can self publish a great book, except for the fact that it will have little impact beyond an even smaller number of people that the old publishing model serviced. But I’m ready to see the end of the day dominated by a few large imprints publishing yet another book no one needs to see. Taschen you know who you are. Breasts. Really? And I am a fan of the breast, clearly. But I am not a fan of the last few years of pseudo-porno photobooks depicting behind the scenes of any number of moral low-tide pools. Publishers think or know these books sell well enough to justify their production. And photo books where magazine fashion photography is paraded as art. Ya know, without the typography these pictures are BO-RING.

But I think the photobook does not serve the same purpose now. It is not the wooden church of the photographic, the point of first contact. It is becoming a quick status symbol. A collectible to flaunt your discerning taste. A tick box on the list of photographic things you try when you are starting out, like toy cameras and tilt-shift. None of them will be around long enough to show the next generation of photographers what it was like back in your day.

Following on the heels of a story in NYT here, I made a few changes, added the Flyover States video, and a random function to load a few images at launch. Yes I had to do a lot from scratch because blah blah blah Flash CS3 is not Flash CS4. Its 2:35am…Just pay for a site is my advice…

I feel like we have gone back to the time of Matthew Brady, not in the least because men seem to dress like they are late for a nearby civil war battlefield, short stovepipe pants, felt coat and millitary cadet hat covering unwashed hair mingling with steamboat captain beard and mustache, a fleck of loose pipe tobacco at the corner of the mouth, but I digress. Considering the snapshot above, I should not offer opinions on fashion.

The decisive moment is now a good half minute. I believe it would be sufficient for Brady and his eight-ten on a sunny day.

…people are waiting everywhere…I see them. Like in that movie, I see dead people.

Bidden by the outstretched Franken-Camera they are immovable, locked in a death mask, waiting, waiting. If it was a subway they would not be so patient. I think the idea is, if I can just out-wait this camera, it will do what I want it to do. It will make that perfect picture of Me.

I watched a woman use her cell phone to make a self portrait on the B37 bus recently. Obviously the light was good or she was bored, her boyfriend was not proving to be an arresting subject. It was a curious case of mirror-mirror on the wall, except for the maddening fact that the mirror was turned the other way. With each picture she had to turn the phone around to see if she got what she wanted. I desperately wanted to intervene-hey this is my job didn’t you know?- I could see the image on the LCD that she was about to make. Higher, left, ok, don’t tilt the head, less smile. This will be the FB status update for when you dump this brohunk and move on…. I really don’t understand why some enterprising cell phone manufacturer has not simply made a camera exactly like a make-up compact, they are already small, shiny and colourful. Bury the lens in the mirror!  Then you could see yourself as you made the picture. Fait accompli.

The camera has now become an accomplice in our efforts to attain stardom and we are the lead character of our own lives! Born of two worlds and with a compelling personal narrative! We deserve a picture that confirms this. Head tilt, fish lips, squint. There. We need to control the media, even our own. Balloon Boy. Creepy White House Party Crashers.  I really don’t know why we worry so much about media censorship, when we edit our own stories much more heavily. Gone are all the random moments. Delete that. And definitely delete that off your friends phone or facebook page. Please do not tag me in someone else’s photograph. That is not an “official” photograph of Me™.

I miss the snapshot. I realize that what I am calling the snapshot and “snapshots” are very different things. Winogrand liked to point out when asked about his “snapshot aesthetic” that the garden variety snapshot was not very haphazard or uncontrolled, what his frames seemed to be suggesting, but actually a very staged and formalized genre of picture making, a subject in front of some object, owned or mastered by the person depicted. Like the photograph above. What I mean by snapshots refers to the vernacular use of snapshots and the lack of control and  innocence that film allowed. When you can’t see what you are doing instantly, you can’t be that self conscious. Or styled or controlling. The snapshot was a memento, like found beach glass, and it is made with the speed of our reaction to life, instantaneously. And permanent. I think this is why digital compact cameras have never really done it for me, they can’t focus and shoot fast enough to matter in this way.

If a camera cannot keep up to wit, can it say anything meaningful? And if you could take back what you say, as if it never happened, what does that do to our sense of selves?

A Camera, a Real Camera, is a subversive object. Robert Frank (I think) described carrying the Leica felt like having a gun in your pocket. Photographs threaten politics and vanity equally. I find this surprising since everyone has cameras and everyone takes pictures. Surely if everyone is doing it it means nothing? Yet still. I brought this contradiction up at a recent shoot and the sitter reminded me of the camera phone video of Neda’s Agha-Soltan’s death, the female Iranian protester, and how that video has gone on to be a symbol of the Iranian Resistance. The Youtube Revolution as it is called. Another Nick Ut moment. I am not so sure about this, I am not sure that the world can be galvanized for very long by such imagery, still or motion. Both moving. But are we moved? I am not old enough to know if the same questions were asked of the photographs produced during the Vietnam War, yet we tend to acknowledge that the images coming back from that War did much to change the course of our involvement there.

Photography is subversive, but it is subversive everywhere, which means nowhere. It is no longer the tool of one government, on ideology, but of all governments, and all people really. And I think this means that we assume all photographs are staged fakes since we are busy now staging our own lives for social media. The snapshot is dead, and we are all waiting for face detection to locate our true selves.

Do not bore me with your protestations. I have heard them all before. Yes I know Karl Lagerfeld photographed you recently and better, barely containing his joy behind those dark sunglasses and tight white collar. Ryan McGinley similarly found the pale of your flesh fetching as you tumbled out of your jeans in the soft desert night aglow with sparklers, a bitten peach spilling juice down your pimply chin.

And you D_____ , never do candids I understand, who would want to see your ample jowels mid-sentence frag-one eye drifting off to points unrelated to the other-

I agree wholeheartedly H____, posing for pictures is emphatically not art- i really don’t know what all those other artists might have been thinking, wasting their time like that when all along YOU had the answer-OH!-YOU are not comfortable, we must do whatever we can to make YOU comfortable, sedate even, we could go for tranquillized, I mean, tranquil- don’t worry, all that preparartion and equipment I brought with the intention of doing my very best, that will go unused in my back pocket, we will go with your best idea, I am sure after seeing yourself so, so many times and from so many angles, never from below of course, (you know who you are) that you really have exhausted all possibilities, thoroughly, and have calculated the best pictures come at an angle of 36 degrees with the north light in a month that contains an “r”.

And you are not interesting enough- we all see that now, something you suffered your whole life I expect, nobly, and I know you never look good in pictures, not a one, narcissism does do that to a person.

I concur, photography is the most cruel thing one human being can inflict upon another, perhaps second only to the indignities one might suffer in a foreign prison. I promise I will make this brief, your time is money isn’t it, not like my time which is spent like a found penny, and no, I don’t need to take so many just to get one-the true artist needs but one master stroke of the pen or brush, one fragile sheet of film, one hand coated glass plate sweated over mercury fumes by hand, with which to capture all that is so very

human,
famous,
noble,
beautiful,
glamourous,
witty,
urbane,
rebellious,
grisled or gamine about YOU.

Because this portrait is nothing if not about YOU, there is no one else in the room is there? That Mona Lisa really tells us a lot about Mona doesn’t it? I really don’t know why she agreed to that picture, definitely was dealing with some weight issues and depression, could this poor chap not come back at a more opportune moment, perhaps when I’d had a little more sun, these northern Italian winters are brutal on a woman’s skin after all.

I guess it is the paycheque, these Photographers all make a lot of money don’t they, another face in the rogues gallery, another payday, dining out as Jennifer Aniston likes to say, on my fair countenance.

Dear recalcitrant portrait subject, please indulge me.

Your humble servant,

Robert.

I spanked that little pansy Ed Norton (3:48:01) scrubbed Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards, 4:08:45) and left Alanis to take the jagged little pill (4:28:45)…

After all that emotion of the last post you are probably wondering what the hell I have to complain about. A personal best (first marathon was 3:49:10) on one of the most difficult courses there is. Is it not enough to take 11 minutes off in 6 months?

If I take the “extra” time off the last six miles, assuming I could have at least maintained 8:00/mile, I add up 7:20- leaving 3:31:13. Still not sub 3:30:00. And probably more agonizing to have missed by a minute-thirteen. So how does this happen, how do the wheels fall off by almost eight minutes?

If you look at the 5K splits and their average minute per miles it breaks down like this:

5 Kilometers Time: 00:23:41.00 Pace/mile: 7:36

10 Kilometers Time: 00:47:32.00 Pace/mile: 7:39- for reference my PB on 10K is 47:45…

15 Kilometers Time: 01:11:39.00 Pace/mile: 7:41

20 Kilometers Time: 01:38:22.00 Pace/mile: 7:54

Half-Marathon Time: 01:43:50.00 Pace/mile: 7:55- for reference my PB on this is 1:40:33

25 Kilometers Time: 02:03:59.00 Pace/mile: 7:58.

30 Kilometers Time: 02:29:27.00 Pace/mile: 8:01

20 miles 8:47

21 miles 8:47

35 Kilometers Time: 02:57:06.00 Pace/mile: 8:08

22 miles 8:38

23 miles 8:56

24 miles 9:24

40 Kilometers Time: 03:26:06.00 Pace/mile: 8:17

25 miles 9:45

26 miles 9:03

Finish Time: 03:38:33.00 Pace/mile: 8:20

The 5K splits tell a gradual story, the mile splits tell the gory story, wheels coming off pretty quick in the last 10K. And look at those early splits, I have a new 10K record! Set during the Marathon! You are not supposed to do that! Clearly there was nothing left in the tank after 20 miles, and those early miles are responsible.

I think 3:30:00 was probably not a possibility. There was no margin for the course or the unexpected. And the unexpected in this case was the course, I did not expect to be so unfocused and running like a scared deer. Oh Bambi!

Looking at those final mile splits I know how bad I was feeling, but I see that I was moving, and that I had a little surge even in the final mile. It certainly did not feel that way. I can accept that this was the best that I could do on that day, and that it reflects the training I put in and the experience level that I (don’t) have. Sure, I could have run a more balanced race and felt better in those final miles, I doubt however that the time would have differed by more than four or five minutes. But everything they say about banking time early and giving it back double is true. I was ahead almost 4 minutes by the half and gave it all back and then some by the end.

In terms of training I really focused on speed this time, and next time I will focus a lot more on marathon pace runs or progression runs, some going past 20 miles or past 3 hours. The last 30 minutes of the race is really “the race” and I need to experience running more on heavily fatigued legs.

Next time? Guess I am not that upset.

Finally something to add about Team for Kids: They came through Big Time in this race: the volunteers and organizers are all amazing, the buses ran smoothly, they did their best to shepherd us through the start on Staten Island. And at the finish, they were there with people to help you to Cherry Hill, they bring your baggage and a beverage to you and give you a place to rest and collect yourself. At that point, they were like sweet sweet beer angels, minus the beer:) I do not want to think about having to negotiate the baggage line and mile long walk from the finish line. We were treated like Rock Stars and they really deserve a lot of thanks for that. If you have googled this to get info for next year, run don’t walk to sign up for TFK, they really have your back.

Sorry that may be a little creepy to associate a marathon trophy with a rifle but this race was all heart and no head.

Early on it was shock and awe though.

We are at the head of 10,000, squeezed between double decker busses topped with young children. In the distance ahead, through the trees is visible a bridge leading up with the first wave departing. You see it on TV but it is different when you are next. They are small and colourful and rustling uphill like the back of the leaves in a storm wind. I point this out and the woman standing next to me is thrilled, she leans over and touches my arm, we feel connected in the two minutes we have been standing in the corral. We wish each other well, she is a triathlete but running is not her best sport. She expects to finish in a little over four hours. The canon goes off, the race starts, and we are instantly dissolved into the flow and she is gone.

You don’t notice the uphill when it comes, although others are already breathing heavily. Some jump up on the divider to take pictures of the runners and Manhattan in the distance. Coming off the bridge there are about three families waiting right there, a small cheering section. You could be at any suburban off-ramp, a car could be pulled over to change a flat, and it would be the same folks, waiting by the side of the road.

“Go NYPD!” The guy is not actually NYPD, but his friend his, so he joined the escort and got a t-shirt, which is why he is getting the shout-outs. From the looks of him however he is not a first-responder. He is actually a podiatrist from Florida. Greying, 45-49, if he was NYPD he would have been retired by now, unless he was a captain or a detective. He doesn’t have the build of a police officer, but this goes unnoticed. He is trying to qualify for Boston, needs a 3:30 to get there, which is why I know his age range. We run together for five or six miles. At about mile five he spots his girlfriend off the side and runs to her, he says, “I am running with Robert!” I slow down a little, we are very ahead on time and am starting to get worried that I am not hitting my goal pace.

For some reason I really don’t know what to do, I cannot stop checking the sides of the road to see if I know anyone. I want to focus and just run but the spectacle is too engaging, too distracting. When we go past Sixteenth Street I tell NYPD, this is my street, and he shouts to the crowd- “he lives here! he lives here! this is Robert’s neighbourhood!”  It is funny and warm. Even though we are going too fast I continue on, I think there may be some folks at Union Street I know, I can peel off there. I say to NYPD, “if I clock another 7:45 I am going to have to dial this back-”. Union Street comes and goes and I cannot find anyone, NYPD goes ahead, I let it be.  He is no longer running with Robert. I didn’t get his bib number so I don’t know if he bq’d or not. Three minutes ahead of schedule and growing, still not hitting the splits. I am running like it is a half marathon.

I have run seven hundred miles in training, and never gotten a blister. For some cosmic reason, I am getting a blister. It is on the top of the second toe on the left side, the one with the black toenail from the first marathon, since healed perfectly. This little piggy. But the sock, the one I hand picked out of a dozen as being the newest and softest is rubbing a bare patch. Either I stop and deal with it or figure it will eventually go numb. I retie my shoelaces twice in mile eleven, but it is not working. I hit the med tent at mile twelve and ask for some vaseline. There are no emergencies here or traumas, just people like me with blisters. Time is passing but I am so much ahead I think it will not matter. There is no blister, just an abrasion. It makes no sense. The aid worker takes my bib number and ailment. Statistics? Accountability.

Finally the volume of the course ebbs a little through the middle miles leading up to the Queensboro Bridge. I do an internal check and figure I am at about 80% considering. I am running marathon pace finally and figure the uphill on the bridge and the downhill will all even out. I find some friends at mile 14, still optimistic, still unaware. I have no idea what I said but I know I was here, there is a picture-I am beatifically happy. All this leads up to the Queensboro Bridge.

A first sign of trouble, I see some course marshals coming my way, picking their way through the stream, someone behind me is stopped, bent over, another person holding them up. I know I am not 80% anymore. The mile uphill and crosswind has shown me that my achilles is not happy any more, it is sore, beginning to complain, to stiffen, and compensating is my left quadriceps, slowly getting more beat with each landing. The next mile is all downhill, will make hamburger out of my thigh, another sharp turn at the bottom, gingerly on the achilles, they put hay bales on all the sharp turns as if a runner could be going so fast as to miss the turn and need something soft to crash into.  The beginning of the mob noise coming up from the street below. This is Manhattan and the last ten miles.

First Avenue seems as wide as it is long when there are no parked cars on either side.  I may have checked my mile splits here but it was beginning not to matter, I was drawing inward, conserving, doubting, getting scared. I knew exactly how far it was to go, the ten miles was not something impossible, a routine rest day run. I tried to tell myself, it was work to be done, no more no less.

We run past a large grey facade, Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital. I look right and they have wheeled out two children, still in hospital beds. They are very young, a full battery of I.V’s and monitors is behind them, they are pale and I imagine bald from Chemotherapy, wrapped under blankets to keep them warm. They are here to see the marathon. All this stuff about how running a marathon changes you, when it is only the fact that you are living that matters. If change was what comes from running 26.2 miles then these kids would not be in beds. How does one regard another’s suffering? Who was here for whom?

The Poland Spring Hydration Zone at mile 17 distributes green sponges-on a hot day a cool sponge might be a good idea. Under grey skies it looks like a plague of toads has recently fallen, thousands of dark green sponges lie flat on the street. You would not want to step on a toad and turn an ankle.  In the fluid stations the spilled gatorade forms a slick glue that adheres to your shoe for several dozen yards after, and each step skitches as you peel your foot from the road.

Towards the Bronx the noise abates and the crowd diminishes, getting up and down the bridges is about all I have left now. I ask someone what the real time is and they give me the time 11:45am, but they have forgotten to set their clocks ahead-it is 12:45 and this means I have actually hit my goal time for twenty miles more or less. But I know there is no way I can maintain pace for the rest of the race. I am going landmark to landmark, block to block. Finally we are at 139th Street in the Bronx and I know that it is a countdown now to 90th Street and Engineers Gate where we enter the Park. I cannot or neglect to do the subtraction and arrive at 49 as the difference.

In Harlem a church choir and small band are playing something uplifting, another man and a piano dealing the STAX tracks. After all the volume of the race course so far, these sounds are incredibly soothing and mellowing and I pass through them and them through me to 125th Street and then Marcus Garvey Park. More children are out to greet us, youth from the TFK programs. I have nothing to pass back as I am saving it all for the hill up Fifth Avenue to come shortly.

Then I start the mantras. Engineers Gate. Engineers Gate. Engineers Gate. Whatever I can do to dissociate from my physical state. I have few memories of this section, there are spectators but I don’t see them, all the way up to 90th Street. Waiting for the mirage of Frank Lloyd Wright’s white beehive to appear.

Engineers Gate. More hay bales. Where do you get hay in New York? I try to feel like I have achieved something by getting here, that it is all as the saying goes, downhill from here. Except when it is uphill. Breaking the Park down into blocks does not work. It is just winding green turning turning on itself. For a long while I hear over and over “Crazy Daisy!” “Crazy Daisy!” Someone near me has written this on their jersey. I do not look around to see who it is. It takes me a while to associate this, crazy Daisy is the nickname of a little girl I know in Omaha, who not incidentally has endured more in her short time living on this earth than anyone might want to endure, a double transplant, nearly a year in NeoNatal intensive care. At least a dozen operations. How is it that I hear this, right now, here? It is all bizarrely about living, this marathon.

We roll downhill in mile 25 and this is about as much as my leg muscles can take, my left side is twanging like a banjo string, I have never felt this before, and then a partial cramp, and then a real cramp, my left side freezes up in that spasm where you don’t know if you should straighten it or bend it or what- I haul off to the left side of the road, I have no idea what I looked like. A lady with a British accent leans over the cyclone fencing and says, “well you cahn’t stop naw cahn you then? Gota t’keep gowin’…” and she is perversely right, I am startled by her clarity. Just what are you going to do now? So I put weight on it not knowing what is functional and what is not and manage to generate a stride and then another.

The last mile and two-tenths was complete focus on putting one foot in front of another. People around me who are having a different day are pumping their arms and high-fiving the crowd along Central Park South. I really don’t like them and imagine they are all from France or Spain or Portugal and probably enjoy shopping in New York but think America is full of stupid fat people. I stay dead center and aim for the statue of Columbus. He had the right idea. It is a washing machine of emotions, I feel I have so badly bungled the race, so obviously ignored the simple facts of going slow early, I cannot believe this is how I am going to get across the finish line. All heart and no head. This is not my way. I lead everything with my head, the heart has no place in rational matters. And if it is to be heart, it is all triumphant rock guitars and explosions and drum solos. It is not- this-? My first New York City Marathon, that I have watched for thirteen years from the sidelines, have said to myself as we all do, “I’d like to do that one day…” and now I am a mile from finishing, have not a jot of energy left to jubilate, ululate, do the robot, a funky break, muster any sense of triumph-it is just going to get done-

Making the turn to Columbus Circle we bottleneck into the Park, someone is shouting my name over and over and over and I realize who it is-another picture tk- yes I look happy, it breaks me out of this tunnel, and now the last 800 meters. I remember from mile repeats the time 3 minutes 30 seconds, I have at least that and more to go. Remember to raise your arms and look up for Brightroom to take your picture, the clock is there, 3 hours 51 minutes, less the offset which was around 16 minutes means I am still under 3:40 at least, I hope it is not that close because I am not capable of sprinting to close a few seconds gap if it is. Across the mats and it is done. Someone reaches out from behind me and congratulates me-the man at the running shoe store-was I faster than him? I think I squeezed his hand very hard, there was just so much I could not express at that moment. Someone asks me if I need an escort, no, I am fine, really, barely holding it in, you pass the medals, I pick a very young hispanic lad because no one seems to be picking him, he places the medal over my head, I bend down low, I thank him, I hope I thanked him. I pose for a photograph, you could tell I think that I had been weeping, but I stand there, just stand, this is it. I have no idea what that looks like, defiance, sadness, passing through sadness. Next they give you the silver heat sheet and a sticker to keep it on in case you can’t. I pull it up over the bridge of my nose to hide and let the rest out.

If all this sounds like a lot of emotional handwringing it is because it is, because you don’t always know what to make of things when you make them. But this is what it was as I did it. So much different from the first, I think they are all probably very different, all like different lives even, no two the same, all flawed, all unique, all unexpected. I will tie it up in a brighter bow next post.

and can we not rain on sunday, pleeese?

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.

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.