Manhattan Half-Marathon

Finally, a minute to sit and talk about the Manhattan Half Marathon which took place this past Sunday in Central Park. It was my first time doing this half which is part of the 5-boro series known as the "Grand Prix" that takes place every year, but I have done the More Half which is also 2 loops of CP. If I remember correctly, the More was in a clockwise direction that year.. Anyhow, the Manhattan 1/2 was to be 2 counter-clockwise loops of Central Park on a brisk January morning. It was about 36 degrees at the starting line with no wind, IDEAL.

For many of my NYRR races I line up alone or with a youngin' from my running team, but Sunday was different- I had real company! I lined up in the corral with two of my new twitter running buddies RunAnskyRun and NYCBklynGirl (EG) with the hopes of joining Ansky while he smoked his PR and earned himself a sub 1:50. That was the plan and with EG's internal stopwatch, we set off at a great 8:28 first mile. We fell into some fun conversation about whatever it is runners talk about during 13.1 miles of hilly fun and the miles just disappeared behind us. With the first lap behind us in around 50 minutes, we knew we had sub 1:50 in sight if we kept it up. We stopped for a little GU/water on the second lap which slowed our 8th mile a bit (8:24) which meant when I glanced at my watch as we cruised down the west side I got to thinking "ooh we're going to need to pick it up a bit if we're going to make our goal". It was as if we were all on that same wavelength, and before I knew it we were cranking out the last two miles at a ridiculously consistent pace of 7:44 and 7:43.

Official finish time: 1:48:46!

Avg pace 8:18

Age place: 129/1045

Overall Place: 1984/5464

Gender Place: 425/2153

Rock on. So now for the silly stuff. I can't quite remember where it first started happening, but at a certain point it became clear that I was running with somewhat of a NYC running Celeb. It seemed like at every corner there was a small group of people cheering for my new friend EG. About halfway through the first lap I commented that I didn't know this was an official EG fan club event :) It was fun to hear all of the people cheering for their fellow Reservoir Dog. While EG was being cheered on, I think someone snuck a sign onto my back that said "Get in front of me then slow down to a crawl" and another sign on my foot that said "wait until I lift this foot and then kick me". Luckily I think the second sign fell off when the second person in a 2 min period kicked me on the sole of my foot! It was ridiculous. It was a crowded race, but thats no excuse to be stepping on me! Sadly, the first sign managed to stay on through the entire race, there was even one man who appeared to be using a "sprint then walk" method who repeatedly got in front of me on his "walk" interval. Ahh!

Anyhow, the race was an absolute blast, we ran a smart, really consistent race and I feel really good about the fact that we were able to kick it out sub 7:45 for those last 2 miles. It was really fantastic to have so many other people out there running from our twitterverse and I really enjoyed running with Ansky and EG. I told them I'm never running again without them :) A special shout out goes to Michelle who rocked the half from the sidelines with her Pom-poms and megaphone all the way from the ends of the earth (or Brooklyn) on a cold morning!! What an awesome, magnanimous friend! I definitely recommend checking out her blog Runnin' Down a Dream asap. Another person who deserves some kudos is J, also known as SpeedySasquatch who cheered us on at the final turn of the race after finishing his own. The 3 of us did a workout with him last Tuesday (4x1mile repeats) that definitely contributed to our success on Sunday.

When all was said and done, we threw on some warm clothes and headed over to brunch together, a big sweaty, hungry bunch! Congrats to everyone who ran, especially to those who PRed, thats quite a feat in CP, especially considering its early in the season and cold! Special thanks to EG and Ansky of course who made the miles fly by and endured my endless chatter once the caffeine in the GU kicked in.

And finally, the numbers (stolen from EG who hit the 'lap' button at each mile)

1 00:08:28
2 00:08:17
3 00:08:12
4 00:08:24
5 00:08:28
6 00:08:11
7 00:08:18
8 00:09:08 (gu stop)
9 00:08:10
10 00:08:48 (water stop)
11 00:08:09 (time to get cooking!)
12 00:07:45 (let’s do this!)
13 00:07:38 (time to put down the hammer!)
14 00:00:45 (fly for the last .11)