Broad, where a broad should be broad, Part 1
Yesterday I ran in the nation’s largest 10-mile footrace, Philadelphia’s own Broad Street Run. Though a 10-miler is nowhere near the length and complexity of a 24-hour bike event, I’m still going to borrow a page from Fatty at fatcyclist.com and extend the account of my run into a multi-part saga, just for the heck of it. Each entry will be posted in small chunks throughout the day. (All photos from Independence Blue Cross Flickr photostream.)
September 2008: I decide to attempt the Couch-to-5K program in the hopes of completing a 5 kilometer run sometime in late 2008. While I am in training, I figure that 45 minutes is the long-term ceiling on the length of my training runs, in the interest of protecting my aging, aged knees.
November 2008: I run in my first 5K event in Thanksgiving Day, where I am passed by a family dressed as Santa and a team of reindeer. The reindeer are all legal minors, and I eat their dust. When a jingle bell drops off one of their costumes, I pick it up and place it in my pocket. Since I never catch up with them again, the bell remains in my possession as my first piece of race hardware. The official race results place me in mistaken order and add several seconds to my finish time.
A week later, I participate in my second 5K event. I end up walking through the final kilometer. Due to the number of no-shows, I take home a plaque for being third place in my age category anyway. The highlight of my day is picking up a new pair of running shoes and insoles during a consolation shopping trip on the way home.
February 2009: I experience a sudden and unexpected increase in running speed. Near the end of the month, I run six continuous miles for the first time, and I actually I consider entering a 10K race. It dawns on me that a 10-mile event might be within reach. Of course, I am regularly running over 45 minutes at a time now. My knees are holding up.
I begin shopping for running shorts online in anticipation of warmer weather. My first pair of shorts arrives, and I eagerly try them on. I look like a rhino wearing a diaper. The shorts go back.
March 2009: I register for the Broad Street Run, hoping to finish in less than two hours. When asked to state my anticipated finish time, I check off “1:50 - 1:55″ in a fit of optimism and an attempt to push myself to train well.
I order another pair of shorts online, this time after trying on the same model in a local sporting goods store. Desperate to avoid the embarrassing scrunching that characterizes the Sisterhood of the Traveling Shorts, I look in the men’s section, where shorts have crazy-long inseams. I settle on a pair with hems that graze the tops of my kneecaps. When they arrive in the mail, the shorts stay put.
April 2009: On the first weekend of the month, I run my first 10K along streets, some trail, some hills, and a little bit of stadium track. I make my goal time of 68 minutes. The official race results place me in mistaken order and add over a minute and a half to my finish time. I am happy to know that Broad Street Run results will be determined using a disposable RFID timing chip.
In anticipation of an upcoming trip, I look up possible running routes in Washington DC. Amid the running information that I dig up, I notice that the 10-mile qualifying time for the National Marathon is 1:50. I decide to try to break 1:50 during the Broad Street Run.
I receive my bib number assignment in the mail, and learn that I am assigned to the Green starting corral. Everyone else I know in the race is faster than me, and assigned to another color corral. Green is the new pokey!
The weather on the weekend preceding the race is unseasonably warm, pushing 68°F / 20°C before 10am. I cut short my run out of sheer, dripping disgust. This is the beginning of the “taper,” the reduction in mileage designed to permit the body to rest and build up its fuel stores in preparation for event day. Tapering makes me extremely antsy and slightly grumpy, since my food intake dips somewhat to compensate for the lack of activity.
Race week: As the weekend draws nearer, rain looks increasingly likely on race day. While I have run in faint drizzle several times, I have never run in all-out rain. I realize that I have no warm-weather rain gear. I fret.
I ask someone who has run the race several times what he usually wears on top during the not-cold, not-hot weather.
“Nothing,” he says.
“What, you mean you don’t wear a shirt at all?” I ask.
“Nope, never do,” he replies. While his answer is revealing, it doesn’t exactly suggest any viable new options for me.
I ask some work colleagues who are participating about whether the old garbage bag maneuver works to stay dry. One of them replies that he ran part of a marathon wearing a trash bag, but the bag disintegrated partway through the race. I fret some more.
Next: Part 2 — Who’ll stop the rain?
