Comments(1) Well, I was supposed to be on a plane right now, but once again, I had a slight change of plans. Yes, I am now three for three in getting myself bumped off plane flights during the past year.
I like to joke that scoring free airline tickets is my secret superpower, but it’s really just a wee bit of skill that happens to land atop a heap of dumb luck. Falling with style, if you will.
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The saga of my first Broad Street Run. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
Afterwards:
I grab a finisher’s medal and throw it around my neck.
Then I immediately pull out my phone to determine the whereabouts of my friend, The G.
“I just finished! I made it!” I blurt out when he picks up the phone. “Where are you?”
“I’m sitting at home. It’s dry here,” he chuckles. Naturally, the parking lot attendant never showed up.
Battling a calf injury, knowing the forecast called for certain rain, and unable to locate anyone who could help protect his credit card, The G had waited for nearly two hours before heading home. He managed to turn on the television just in time to see the final battle between the top two race finishers.
As I am speaking with The G on the phone, I pass a table with a large pile of water bottles. I grab one. Then I pass another table with boxes full of Philadelphia soft pretzels. Pretzels that have been sitting out in the rain for several minutes. People snap them up like hotcakes.
I know I’m still keeping it together when I take a complete pass on the Nasty Chow.
I step up onto a curb. My thigh immediately raises an objection. Still chatting on the phone with The G, I find a relatively dry spot under a large shade tree and start to stretch my legs out.
Once my legs feel a little better, I head to the main tent to pick up an official food bag. I see people walking around with different kinds of fruit. Turns out the food bags are all mix-n-match, with some type of fruit, some type of candy, some type of salty snack, and some type of fruit bar.
I peek inside a couple of bags until I spot one with the prize combo: Dark chocolate Peanut Chews and a snack pack of cheese curls. Really, you should just hang a sign on me now: “Will work for cheezy poufs!”
I snarf down my snacks and keep stretching out while resting underneath the porch of one of the buildings in the Navy Yard. Eventually, I walk to the where the gear buses are parked, relieved that I will not have to battle a line to retrieve my bag.
When I locate my bus, it’s completely empty.
“They took away all the rest of the bags,” the driver says, directing me to the bag tent.
When I arrive at the bag tent, my bag is nowhere in sight. Crap. I spent way too much quality time with those cheese curls. Nobody seems to know where my bag might be.
I head back towards the parking lot, where I see several volunteers walking towards me, laden with armfuls of bags. As I had hoped, I spot my bright yellow bag from several yards away, profusely thanking the man who is carrying it.
Then I hop on another bus that is shuttling people to the subway station. As soon as I sit down, I throw open my bag and started layering up my clothing again: I zip up my vest, pull on my arm warmers, and toss on my hooded jacket. And I count my blessings that I did not show up in a trash bag, now that the temperature has dropped and a damp chill is in the air. Once again, my vanity has saved my hide.
When I finally arrive home, I check my official time online. My chip time does in fact register at just below 108 minutes. To my surprise, my clock time comes in under 109 minutes, the result of a new method of calculating times based upon the corral release rather than the starting gun. Both times are under my stated goal of one hour and fifty minutes.
When my brain stops cramping and I do the math, I am also pleased to learn that I managed to eke out a 10:33 final mile. Perhaps my pacing wasn’t so hopeless after all.
And yes, my knees are still holding up.
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The saga of my first Broad Street Run. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
On the course:
Mile 1 — I remind myself not to go out too quickly, and to try to maintain an eleven-minute mile pace during the first six miles. Unfortunately, I have no way to know how quickly I am actually moving until we reach the first mile marker, except for noting my rate of perceived exertion.
On my left, a tight formation of military runners in matching gold shirts is proceeding in formation, complete with call and response from their female drill sergeant. I figure that staying near them is as good a pacing mechanism as any, and it lifts my spirits to hear them chanting, “When my grandma was ninety-two / She did KP better than you.”
I hear one woman remark to her friend behind me, “What are those young guys doing all the way back here with us?”
“I dunno, maybe they’re planning to just pass people all the way through,” the friend responds.
I feel a slight burn in my thighs as we take a mild uphill in the first mile, and I try to back off a bit.
When we approach the one-mile mark, I look down at my watch. To my horror, it reads “10:21″. According to my watch, I cross in 10:28. I am officially a stupid newbie.
I immediately try to pull back on my pace, and I am puzzled by how many people are passing me. Isn’t this the 11-minute mile corral? As sad as I am to see them go, I fall back from the military formation, their chants slowly fading in the distance.
Mile 2 — As we approach Broad and Lycoming, I hear laughter rippling through the crowd of runners on the right side of the road. When I scan the scenery ahead, I discover why.
Six male runners are neatly lined up with their backs to the street, facing a parking lot wall that is grown over with greenery. This location is apparently the central switchboard when Nature calls. I see a couple of runners ahead of me turn their heads in that direction, then make a beeline straight for big green wall.
I realize that I am starting to heat up and I peel off my vest. I use a binder clip to hold it together around my waist, feeling oddly fortunate that my own sheer vanity prevented me from wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
We come up on the second mile marker just past Broad and Tioga. My watch gives me a 10:33 split for the second mile. I officially suck at pacing myself.
Mile 3 — We reach our first water station. Darting, bobbing, and weaving ensues.
The overpass for the train tracks splits the road into lanes, and under the bridge I pass someone folded in half trying to unseize his hamstring while leaning on a support pillar.
“Where is City Hall? Why can’t I see it?” someone asks behind me.
“It’s there,” the person’s running partner sagely replies.
“Do we still have that far to go?” the first runner asks mournfully.
The clouds, the misting rain, and a slight uphill grade obscure the clock tower and the statue of William Penn from view for several more minutes.
I clock a 10:49 split for the third mile. I don’t think I’m getting better at pacing myself, and I wonder if I’m just starting to fatigue, even though I feel relatively strong.
Mile 4 — We pass Temple University, where clutches of surprisingly bright-eyed students cheer us on. Yikes, I never looked that alert so early in the morning when I was in school. (Then again, we didn’t have Red Bull in those days, either.)
One kid sitting on the stoop of a brownstone rings a giant cowbell.
“More cowbell!” I yell at him. Other people behind me take up the call. “More cowbell!”
“More cowbell!” the kid cries back, vigorously shaking the bell.
Another young man holds up a sign that causes people to cheer when they see it: “No rain, no gain!”
By the end of the fourth mile, City Hall is clearly in sight. I fix my gaze on the Divine Lorraine Hotel up ahead to my left. My split time is 10:55, and I have finally thrown it back into the proper gear.
Mile 5 — Before I know it, I am chugging past the stately, careworn Divine Lorraine, whose intricate interior was stripped out several years ago in anticipation of a condominium conversion that never took hold.
I cover the mile in 10:47. I’m excited to be approaching my own neighborhood in the city.
Miles 6 and 7 — The crowds of spectators are starting to thicken, and a group of young women are blowing enormous bubbles and waving goofy fairy wands while standing atop a road median.
Check out the military formation passing through at 1:08…
I’m in there too, somewhere…
We pass Roman Catholic high school, where a small marching band is playing on the front steps. Then it’s up and over the Vine Street Expressway. We have had the entire width of Broad Street open to us from the beginning of the run, but as we approach the Masonic Temple, we are all guided into the southbound side of the street. The pace slows briefly as runners merge together.
I gradually move towards the far right side of the street in anticipation of seeing Governor Ed Rendell in front of the Bellevue-Stratford. The crowd of runners bunches up again as we approach South Broad, and I barely make it between the curb and some wide-elbowed people coming around the bend at the corner of the Ritz-Carlton.
I am so happy to be trotting through the heart of Center City that I completely miss the time clock for Mile 6.
When I approach the Bellevue-Stratford, I don’t see any sign of the Big Kahuna. In frustration, I literally shout (to no one in particular), “Hey, where’s Ed?”
But then I see him. He’s a little hard to spot because he’s wearing a coffee-colored velour track suit. I run up and give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “That’s for Arlen Specter,” I tell him. Gladhanding is no easy job; Ed smells like he’s been exerting himself far more than I have this morning. I potch his tuchus on the way out, adding “And that’s for the casinos!”
In what seems like no time we’re done with the seventh mile. I am at 21:44 for Miles 6 and 7 combined. I haven’t take in any energy gel or Gatorade yet, and I feel my stamina beginning to flag.
Mile 8 — I tear into a packet of gel as soon as the mile starts, and begin slowly taking it down, mouthful by mouthful.
I find myself working harder and harder to try to keep my stride tempo in place. I am starting to count the number of minutes to the finish. “Save it, save it, you still have twenty-seven minutes to go,” I remind myself.
The watch is proving to be a godsend, with my lap times helping me to determine how far I am between mile markers. I wonder whether there is still any chance for me to finish with a clock time of less than two hours. When I realize that I would have to complete roughly two-and-a-half miles in the next twenty minutes, I resign myself to being saddled with yet another bloated finish time.
I pass by Broad and Snyder and I am sorely tempted to make a detour to the Melrose Diner, even if they don’t have chocolate pudding.
My watch gives me 10:55 for the eighth mile. I am definitely starting to run on fumes.
Mile 9 – I’m waiting for the energy gel to kick in, but it doesn’t seem to be happening yet.
A college-age woman next to me turns to her friend and says, “I wonder if I’m going to make it.”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “You’re already eight miles in, so you’ve got it.” She considers this, then smiles.
I know that I’ll also finish on my feet, but the rain has really started to come down steadily at this point. I notice an increasing number of people taking walk breaks.
I try to concentrate on my cadence, but there is a woman nearby nailing each stride with the clomp of a Percheron. She is wearing headphones, so she can’t hear her own thunder. (On the upside, her gait is extremely rhythmic.)
I wind up with a 10:58 for the penultimate mile. Will I have anything left for the Navy Yard at the end?
Mile 10 — The sides of the road are thick with cheering spectators. I don’t dare let up for fear that I won’t make my “reach” goal: 108 minutes on the chip, which would be averaging the same pace throughout a 10-miler as I did in the 10K I ran a month earlier.
I know that I’m close to my target time, but I’m not sure exactly how close, given the late start. At this point, my brain is totally incapable of doing any math. (Running the numbers? Hah! Numbing the runners is more like it.)
Much to my surprise, I see the same group of military runners from Mile 1 up ahead, still moving in formation. I slowly make a move towards them, but my legs are toast and I can only close the gap a few inches at a time.
Someone with a megaphone warns us about what I learned very early from talking to race veterans: The finish line is not at the gate to the Navy Yard. You have to keep moving for another quarter mile.
As soon as I pass through the Navy Yard gates, I begin working my way around a number of people, but I don’t have an entire quarter mile left in my legs at that pace and I drop back slightly again. I cross the line just a few seconds behind the military formation.
The clock reads 2:08:11.
I forget to record my final split until I am well past the finish line.
Next: Part 5 — Afterwards
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In the start area: I arrive at the starting area early enough that the plastic corral separators have not yet been raised. The stretch of Broad Street behind the starting gate is still largely empty, with people congregating on the nearby grass and sidewalks. I pace around, trying to stay warm.
I am trying to gauge the timing of two important activities: turning over my gear bag and using the portable toilets. If I do either one too soon, I will end up chilly and uncomfortable. If I wait too long, I will miss the race start. I opt for earlier rather than later.
“We guys always have the last-minute option of just hiding around a corner somewhere,” says an affable man standing in line behind me as we chat about the niceties of timing the necessities.
“Well, that’s where you have the advantage,” I reply. “Not so easy for us females!”
“No way, I am soooo shameless,” interjects a perky, teenaged girl standing in front of me. “I just get out there and drop my pants and go!” You gotta love Title IX.
Once inside, the portable toilet is immaculate — and still has paper. I am stunned, and mildly triumphant. I think this qualifies as some sort of personal best. Hooray for little victories!
After returning outside and walking around for several more minutes, I begin to head towards my corral area, and walk right into one of my colleagues from work. She an her husband are both wearing garbage bags. We laugh together over the odds of seeing anyone familiar in a crowd of twenty-six thousand people, and wish each other good luck.
When I finally walk towards the school buses that will transport our gear bags to the finish line, I discover that the each bus corresponds to a sequence of bib numbers. The buses are nowhere near the matching corrals for the bib numbers, and I need to walk to the end of another corral area to locate my bus. I am having better luck than another runner, whose bib color reveals that he can sustain a rapid sub-7 mile pace. His bus is more than a quarter mile away from where we are standing as he tries to hand over his gear.
After finally peeling off my extra layers of clothing and dropping off my bag, I make my way into the Green corral. As I begin chatting with some of the people standing near me, I learn that the woman on my left who looks to be in her late forties is actually 59 years old, and the man on my right is one of the lead volunteers for this year’s Philly Livestrong Challenge.
I tell them both that they should be on the lookout for Team Fat Cyclist, and then he says the magic words: “How does someone like you belong on a team called that?” Egads, two victories already in one morning!
We hear some sort of roar going up from the crowd near the starting gate, which is several hundred yards away. A glance at my watch reveals that it is 8:30, and we guess that the starting gun has just gone off. I begin running the timer on my watch to measure how far my own start lags behind the official start time.
The rain, which has held off at the start area for most of the morning, now begins to drizzle softly. We continue to chat and wait, and I mention that most people who finished in around two hours last year had an 8-10 minute gap between their clock time (on the board at the finish line) and their chip time (measured by the timing device on their shoes).
The woman then shows off her Running Funky tights, which are a fantastic riot of color in a Pucci-style pattern. She jokes with the man about eating wheat germ — and being old enough to remember when wheat germ first arrived on the nutrition scene. I make a note to myself that I should eat more wheat germ.
More time passes. I eat some electrolyte strips. The man tells us that his son is also running today, and hopes to finish in just under an hour. I look down at my watch. Over fifteen minutes have elapsed since the race officially began. I pull out my course map.
“I think your son is at Allegheny Avenue right now,” I tell the man.
“Yeah, and the leaders are at City Hall,” he laughs.
Eventually, our entire corral is asked to move up to the starting line, since the faster corrals have already been launched onto the course. We all wish each other good luck as we finally step forward.
While someone with a bullhorn announces the start, the crowd smoothly surges ahead. I see numerous people jumping up and tapping the banner dangling from the starting gate as they pass through. Being far too short to reach the banner without a ladder, I shuffle underneath and tap my watch to start recording the first mile split, just over twenty minutes after the official starting gun.
Next: Part 4 — One foot in front of the other
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The saga of my first Broad Street Run. Part 1.
The day before the race: I go to Lincoln Financial Field pick up my race packet with my friend, The G, who will also be taking part in the Broad Street Run for the first time. The line of people waiting to enter the building stretches for over a hundred yards when we arrive, and does not move. It begins to drizzle while we are standing outside. The line nearly doubles in length while we are waiting.
A woman standing in front of us heads to the building entrance to learn why the line is not moving. When she returns, she reports that people are being sent into the building in groups of 150. We thank her for scouting out the situation, and joke that the line will be brought to a stop again just as she stands a few feet from the door.
Fortunately, when the line finally does move, we all make it indoors without incident. After picking up our race packets at one end of the exposition area, The G and I start walking clear over to the opposite end of the open hall to pick up our complimentary t-shirts. We assess the fitness level of most of the people we pass and deem every one of them faster than ourselves.
Along the way, we wind through a veritable souk of fitness gear: shoes, clothes, food, gadgets, gizmos. At this point, I am obsessed with locating some rain gear. When we leave the building, The G departs with a SPIbelt to hold his gargantuan car key, and I make off with a new tank top, some portable electrolyte strips…and a water-resistant vest. My fret level drops considerably.
Since we are already in South Philly, we make a pilgrimage to the Melrose Diner to begin fortifying ourselves with carbohydrates. At the end of our hefty meal, I see a waitress bring another customer a piece of pie covered with a voluminous tower of whipped cream. I have a sudden craving for chocolate pudding slathered in whipped cream. This is when I learn a most inconvenient truth: The Melrose Diner does not serve chocolate pudding. I am crushed.
When I arrive home, I take a brief nap, then run out and pick up some pre-race food: dried apricots (for potassium), bananas (potassium again), electrolyte-enhanced water (you get the idea), and some nut bars. I manage to eat a little more pasta, and then begin assembling my outfit for race day.
First, I follow the instructions for attaching the timing chip to my shoe. Then, I put on my clothes, and lace up my sneakers. I look in the mirror and see…the circus.
One unintentional side effect of never paying full retail for sporting goods that my running wardrobe spans a very wide gamut of colors. Generally, I manage to look okay. But when I gaze upon the mix of berry purple, neon lime green, putty, black, white, powder blue, and rust orange that adorns my body, I have to draw the line. The long-sleeved purple base layer is out, replaced by a neutral gray t-shirt with short sleeves. I no longer look like I just stepped out of a clown car.
Since I am not a morning person, I go to bed in my race clothes, sparing myself the confusion of trying to pull myself together when I am half-awake. My race bib is tucked inside my right shoe so that I don’t forget where it is. I begin lying in bed around 9pm. I fall asleep shortly before 11pm.
Race morning: I wake up around 2:30am. And stay awake. I’m simply too wired, and cannot fall back asleep. I will have to run on less than four hours of shut-eye.
Though I have planned with The G to consolidate all our gear into a single bag to simplify post-race pickup, I dig out an old gym bag that is a bright shade of spot-it-a-mile-off yellow. I figure we can use this bag, or just carry separate bags if need be. I fill out a claim tag to attach to the bag.
Around 6:20am, I get a call from The G saying that he is on his way. About 20 minutes later, I get another call from The G, who is trying to park his car at a pay lot near my house.
“You are not going to believe this,” he says with exasperation. “The credit card reader at the gate just ate my card.” Through the phone, I hear a voice jump out of a squawkbox at him. The voice says that they will send someone to help fix the gate.
“When will you be able to get here?” asks The G.
“Right away,” squawks the voice.
The G and I agree that I should just go ahead and catch the subway to the race start by myself, and that he will try to catch up with me once he gets everything settled with the parking lot people.
Having heard horror stories from other runners about being passed on the platform by fully loaded subway cars, I flag down a cab to take me to the subway station. As we draw closer and closer to the subway stop, I have to laugh. The otherwise empty sidewalks look as though they have been taken over by a subspecies of dumpster-diving zombies, with steady stream of young people covered in garbage bags converging on the subway entrances. In my hooded jacket, I feel overdressed.
I head down to the stairs to the subway platform, where a uniformed employee lets me and the Zombie Nation through an open gate. After several minutes, a train pulls into the station — completely empty! Score!
As soon as I get off the subway near the start line, I pull out my cell phone and call The G again for an update. He is still trapped at the parking lot, awaiting assistance, and unable to locate anyone who can freeze his credit card over the phone in the early hours of a Sunday morning. There is more than an hour remaining before the starting gun goes off. He says he will try to make it to the race as soon as the parking lot attendant shows up.
Next: Part 3 — On your marks, get set…
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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?
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