Life Recap (with a miniature race recap too)

I won't even call myself an amateur runner. Running happens to be my hobby and it happens to teeter on the edge of obsession. I can admit it. The past six weeks have been a true test of how passionate I am about the hobby and how much I can juggle without letting one of the balls drop.

Life is about prioritizing. My priorities are my fiancee' Lauren and our families, my job and running...in that order. I won't lie. There have been times, perhaps even recently, where running came before work. But, I am in a position now where that would be suicide. The stakes are too high. On top of all that, I am still in the middle of a major move. Since I have moved to New York, I feel like my life is straddling Charlotte in New York. That's a pretty big distance to cover. Getting moved into our new home in Chelsea will be a big relief once it happens.

Running hasn't taken a backseat. Not in the least bit. But, I have had to get a lot more creative with how I keep my training consistent. Gone for now are the days of regular hours at work. In fact, more often than not, I am working long and late shifts making it impossible to get up for a 5:30am run. This was especially challenging during a recent string of days where New York City saw record heat, with the thermometer reaching 100 or hotter three days in a row. To make it work, I went to bed as soon as I got home at 12am, and made sure I was out the door by 7:45am to get the mileage in before the worst part of the day. Some days, instead of a 6:00am easy shakeout, I'll do a 12:00am easy shakeout. Same concept and benefit, different time.

I've had to get accustomed to doing speed work on my own. If everything lines up right, I can make it to the Central Park Track Club's Tuesday night workout, but so far, that's only happened twice. As some one who likes solo recovery runs, but hates solo interval and tempo runs, this has not been an easy transition. Yet, I'm proud to say I haven't bagged a single workout. In fact, I've had some of my best performances.

The long run requires some choreography. The first hurdle is the lack of locations. When you live in Manhattan there are really only two places to run that don't require a subway ride. One is Central Park the other is the West Side Highway. That's not a complaint. Both are among the best, most scenic places to run in the United States. Central Park for the obvious reasons and the West Side Highway because you can see the entire island if you stay on it long enough. On a given long run, you get fantastic views of the Interpid, the Empire State Building, the emerging Freedom Tower, The Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Battery Park, Wall Street, Chelsea Piers and the South Street Seaport if you make it long enough. However, just like any other running location, they grow monotonous. A change of scenery means a significant time commitment. I loved my 17 miler in Rockefeller State Park with Dan and Val Matena earlier this month, but the travel time is three hours round trip. Van Cortlandt Park is a little closer, but it will cost about an hour's worth of travel time. That's a lot of hours to sacrifice when your work schedule on weekends is 1pm-12am.

I am still trying to figure out how I will work racing into this new life. I work weekends, but fortunately I work weekend evenings. So, I can race as long as the race is somewhere in the New York metro area. This weekend was my first test. I signed up for a very low-key 5K at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. By low key, I mean it was not a New York Road Runners Club event. There were still about 1,000 people in the race. Getting to the park took two trains and about 50 minutes, so I had to be up pretty early. I got there with plenty of time for a three mile warm up. When the gun went off, naturally, I went out with the leaders. Since everyone was a stranger, I figured I'd see how long I could hang with the front pack and go from there. I hit the mile in 5:07 feeling decent, but then ran smack into mile two which is a steady uphill climb. Even though I picked off two runners on the hill, I was struggling. By the time I hit the downhill third mile, I was pretty well spent and not able to take as much advantage of it as I would have liked. I finished in 16:23 which placed me 10th overall. Not a PR, but it matches my time at China Grove last month and on a much more challenging course. It's progression, albeit slow.

The next couple of weeks will be the real test of time management. I am fortunate to have the very knowledgeable Mark Hadley of Maximum Performance Running coaching me from a far, and encouraging me to stick with the plan. I am hoping to be in peak condition for the Newport Libery Half Marathon in Jersey City, NJ on September 25th, the day before I turn 28-years-old. August will be where I hit my highest mileage, peaking at around 85 miles per week. I don't expect to working in the newsroom fewer than 50 hours on top of the running. Oh yeah, and on September 3rd, I'm getting married to the love of my life.

Juggling isn't easy. If it was, everyone would do it. I'm going to juggle as long as I can. Right now, I see no signs of backing off and hopefully that is the case for many years. But, it's always important to know in the back of your mind which balls you can drop when your routine starts to slip, and which ones you always want to have in your hands.

The Run Around over my Run Around Richmond

My recap of the Richmond Marathon concluded with a mystery. Will he be placed in the official results, or will his time only exist in his head forever? The answer is the former. However, it didn't come easy.

The pre-race dinner should have been a precursor. When the attendant at the front desk of the Day's Inn told us the hotel restaurant was having a pasta dinner, we thought, "What could be easier?" So, instead of venturing out into the town, we simply made our way downstairs. I expected there to be a buffett with spaghetti, meatballs, sauce, bread, salad, etc. But, when we walked in there was no buffett. We sat right down since the place was half-empty and when our waitress came over, we immediately ordered. We both wanted the spaghetti special. Easy enough, right? Wrong. Now, I am no chef, but I have cooked spaghetti. The longest its ever taken me to make spaghetti is eight minutes. That's including the amount of time it takes to get the water to boil. When 20 minutes passed, both Aaron and I started to get a little annoyed. We ordered bread to fight off the hunger. It came...15 minutes later. 40 minutes and still no spaghetti. The waitress kept coming by and saying things like, "it's almost here," and "I've never seen it this busy." There were maybe 15 people in the restaurant. Not to mention it was no secret there was a marathon in town the next day that started four blocks from the hotel. Perhaps some planning might have been beneficial. At the 50 minute mark, the pasta arrived. Instead of being plentiful, it was puny. I think both of us finished the entire plate with the side of mystery meat balls in 1/10th of the time it took us to get our food. Still, hungry and overcharged considering the service and the portion size, we left in search of more food. We found ourselves at a minimart down the street. To say it was shady would be a compliment. Bars were on the doors and windows, and the odor of gasoline inside was so strong I thought the whole place might blow up were my cell phone to ring. (Note: it was not a gas station.) Fortunately, we had already bought peanut butter at a real grocery store. But, we needed jelly and bread to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We found some high fructose corn syrup concoction and some suspect looking bread and walked back to the hotel. Paul could only laugh when he came back from his nice dinner with his family to see us stuffing our faces with PB & J.

That's my anecdote.

My calls and emails to the Richmond Marathon organizers began roughly 17 seconds after I learned I had been dropped from the results. Since it was a Saturday night, I got no answer. Sunday was much of the same. On Monday, I finally got through to a person. They said they understood my concern and the problem would be fixed in one to two days. Later that day, I recieved the same response in an email. One to two days. Tuesday, I got an email from the timing company. They weren't so optimistic. I was told they would begin looking into the matter, but would need photographic evidence and testimonials from other runners. Sigh. They really suspected I cheated. I again told them that if I were going to cheat, I would cheat to a place higher than 11th. Heck, there was cash five deep. I thought they suspected me not only of cheating, but also of being stupid. Coach Hadley wrote them a strongly worded email, Paul affirmed that we ran the first seven miles together. I sent pictures and the electronically generated email Caitlin got when I finished. By Thursday, I was starting to wonder if this race was never going to officially exist for me, and I had poured months of work into something I had nothing to show for. It was a daunting feeling. Friday, I was on my last nerve. I called both the race director's office and the timing company. I left messages at both places. The timing company had an assistant call me back to say it might be several more days. In the midst of my anger, I saw that the Richmond Marathon Facebook page had reposted Theoden's blog about all the Charlotte runners and labeled it, "Charlotte Runners love the Richmond Marathon." Maybe I shouldn't have commented, but I had to. I wrote that not all Charlotte runners loved the Richmond Marathon, this one in particular. I put it right there on their public page that I was disappointed with the way this was all handled. They wrote back within minutes, clearly irritated with my squeaky-wheel attitude. That must have been the right move because it was that afternoon I got confirmation that my time of 2:40:28 was official and would be placed in the results. It's still not online, but it is supposed to be there Monday or Tuesday.

Now, I can head back up to Richmond on April 2nd for the Ukrops Monument Avenue 10K.