One good thing about being in the Poland Spring Five Mile with six thousand four hundred and fifty people a week before the New York City Marathon is that you are pretty much assured of being with a lot of people who aren't going to run very fast. After all, a bunch of them are running in the Marathon on Sunday and 1) don't want to get a) stepped on, b) stepped over or c) injured in any way, shape, fashion, form or manner, 2) are running with someone who is going to run the Marathon and so are going to loaf along with them rather than rabbit out and around the park or 3) are participating in their very first race and haven't a clue what exactly is about to happen to them.
The Kickoff as this race is known is a kind of last fun run of the season for most of the serious runners. People show up in costumes, there were several pirates, a couple of cats, one Disney mouse and a guy in a yellow shirt pretending to be Lance Armstrong. (He was running with a pair of bicycle handlebars complete with bell. Ting ting ting!) It's also a chance for the New York Road Runners Club to have one more practice session at the Marathon Finish Line. Yes. The finish line for the Poland Springs Five IS the same finish line that 37,000 runners will cross next Sunday morning, or Sunday afternoon or even Sunday night. (I don't know when they stop timing people.) So, that is part of the thrill, to know that as you come around the corner near the Merchant's Gate, you are on the same quarter mile stretch to the end that all those folks will be on, and yes, it is all uphill to the finish, it's not much of a hill, but still... .
It was a perfect day for gamboling about, blue,blue skies and winds gusting to thirty-five miles an hour. What? Um, yes, gusting to thirty five so all of the mile markers would be at ground level and ... . Thirty Five miles a hour winds?? But, but ... but, at the start you couldn't feel anything like a gust of wind of any kind, just the warmth of standing on a roadway in your shorts with a lot of other underdressed people. I've learned to run with as little on as possible, I generate a lot of heat and nothing slows me down more than a long sleeved tee-shirt full of salt/potassium water.
Off we went at nine am, I had to be at work by 11:30 so I wanted to just run and get it over with, so my plan was to just loaf along with the others holding back their energy for the big race next week.
I apparently was in front of all of them because the people I was running with were charging along as if they were trying to out run the affects of a dirty bomb. We roared along the West Side, up the hill to the reservoir then down, down and around the 102 Street Crossover and then,
then
we turned South... and that was where the wind was waiting for us.
Let's see: insert analogy here .... like being hit with a cold wet towel that was in the shape of a truck... like suddenly there were six thousand four hundred and fifty mimes doing "struggle against the wind".... like there was a solid glass wall constructed across the road. Like... .
People groaned, people laughed instead of cried, some seemed to be on the edge of tears and there were lots of Uffs, ahhhs and several mentions of various deities, none of whom, pardon me, none of Whom, were responding to the petitions for aid and assistance. One man, in an attempt to help his running mate, (OH, so that's where that phrase came from!!) said "Don't worry. You'll get used to it."
Well. Well, yes, if a study I once read about is true, one would get used to it. The study asked boxers what their pain levels were during a bout and a majority of them, even the ones who were losing badly, being pummeled by their opponents, reported feeling less pain as the punishment increased.
So as we tottered towards Fred Lebow's watch watching statue we must have been getting used to it because all the people I was running with seemed to be flying along oblivious to the conditions, completely unaffected by the teeth jamming gale in their face, showing no signs of discomfort except for some really tight grimaces.
Maybe we had gotten used to it. All the water in my breathable running top ($40 at NikeWorld. jeez) had been pushed into my chest so I didn't even have to stop for a water, even a Poland Springs water. Maybe it was because we were finally on the Marathon route, the last three miles of it and the last three of this race are almost identical. (In the Marathon you get to go out onto Fifty Ninth Street for a couple a hundred yards.)
We all zoomed up the hill. Folks gathered to meet their families, people hugged as they ate bagels and apples and drank water. One woman asked her husband if the wind had bothered him. "It wasn't bad." he said. Not one of us called him a liar.
No comments:
Post a Comment