The first attempt of three at gaining entry into the NYC marathon is always a no-go for me. Attempt number one this time proves to be no exception to that rule.
Update 1 – 4/28/2011 – The above image has been slightly altered due to overly concerned parents (or you can say that they care too much.)
Finding a spot near behind the 9 min per mile starting corral, I catch a glimpse of a woman looking behind her. She looks familiar from somewhere. “Excuse me,” I say as I cut in between two women in front of me. I ask the familiar person if she went to the same high school that I did, and she responds with a “Yes.” I say, “Hi, I’m Joe.”
As it turns out she graduated in the same year as I and has run in two half marathons, the OUC and Gasparilla halves, which I ran in but just now we’ve bumped into each other. “Is this your first 10K?” she asks. “Nah, I’ve run a bunch of them.” I learn that she will be training for her first full out-of-state marathon in November.
They start off the wheelchairs with a 90 second wait before for the runners to take off. Then, it’s running with crowds of people down the brick roads of Winter Park.
The woman I spoke with in the starting corrals jumps up onto the sidewalk, and I squeeze my way through pockets of people. Some people go faster than others as I scan the road ahead for gaps between people. Sometimes I guess correctly and move up ahead; other times I misjudge a narrowing gap and slow down to let them go.
A red digital clock waits at mile marker one. “9:30. You’re looking good!” a lady exclaims. GPS watches harmoniously chime around me. “8:42,” says another woman as she glances at her watch.
I follow the crowd as everyone weaves through neighborhood streets shielded by a large canopy of trees. I believe the only section of straight road is near the start and finish lines. I look ahead to see where the crowd is turning next.
Approaching mile three I descend down a hill. The next digital clock displays twenty-five minutes and change. I try to do the math to figure out how fast that is, but I know that it’s faster than my usual 10 min per mile clip that I do around the neighborhood.
Occasionally, the sun makes an appearance as you work your way around a lake. The course veers right and the road inclines slightly. People breathe a bit harder. Relief arrives in the form of comedy. “Oh yeah!” a guy yells. You never know what to expect when you run these things. The same guy located somewhere behind me yells, “Tacos! Burritos! What’s that coming out of your Speedo?”
The wind is knocked out of me as I belt out with laughter. What can I say? I am easily entertained.
For the next three miles, I enjoy taking my mind off of the road and listening to these people. Every few minutes they find something clever to say. “I think we finished 20 minutes ago.”
… and three miles away, the lead runner crosses the finish line.
The next three miles entails more weaving through neighborhoods, slight up and down hills, and brick and asphalt roads. A family tries handing out donuts near mile 5.
Two ladies talk about pacing. They figure that they are going at a 8:45 min/mile pace with a mile left to go. One wants to keep going at the same speed, the other want to just forget about the pace. “Don’t we have 20 miles left?” the guy behind me asks. “Thank God, no,” I think to myself.
“Isn’t there a park that we run through?” one of the ladies near me asks. Down the road and to the left, the course turns turns off the road and follows an asphalt trail through a park. Leaving the park, I following a brick road and see mile marker 6 with a read-out of fifty-two minutes. Ahead in distance, is a large banner hanging over the street with a yellow digit clock underneath. “So, this is how far .2 miles is,” I think. I widen the distance from the comedians as I make my towards the finish line.
Videos courtesy of mom.
From year to year the cost of entry to the WDW half and full marathons increases by $5. So, if you think that the race is already pricey to run, it will be more expensive the following year. More appealing than the “vote on a finisher’s medal” from 2010, their recent e-mail blast includes a cool to-do list item:
After walk/jogging two marathons in this year’s running season, I naturally wonder “what’s next?” NYC for me is unknown until the lottery is held in late April, and reading this e-mail message makes it very, very tempting to sign-up for WDW. At the bottom of the e-mail I discover:
Register … by April 24, 2011 to save on the race entry fees!
On first thought, I think that they temporarily lowered the entry fee cost which draws me in more, but no, it’s the same $5 per year hike that they do each year. The price of half marathon is now the same price as the full; in years prior I recall the half being $5 – $10 cheaper.
They have also figured out a way of increasing the price in addition to their $5 per year increase :
Goofy’s race and a half challenge, consisting of finishing both the half and full marathon races, has double the price increase for registering “late”:
Update 1 – 4/19/2011 – In an another e-mail blast, Disney is introducing a new women’s half marathon in Walt Disneyland (California), called the Tinker Bell Half Marathon.
Although the Tinker Bell Half Marathon is $20 cheaper than the WDW half marathon, it features the same price increase if you don’t sign up earily:
There are advantages to having a dailymile account, a social networking site dedicated to exercising enthusiasts. First is that you can see what everyone is doing in your area. If I feel like slacking off and read about people running 10 miles on a Saturday morning when I chose to sleep-in, I feel guilty and am slightly more motivated to head outdoors and hit the pavement. So, there this built-in peer pressure to keep up with everyone in your area.
Secondly, it’s a great resource to get answers to problems. For example, my heel began bothering me late last year leading me to post an entry about it. A lady in Lakeland commented on my post with how to work around the issue that I had. Problem solved.
However, the system requires that you record all of your workouts into it which is cool for the first year but it eventually loses its appeal. Like e-mail it becomes another thing to check, another thing to maintain. I didn’t need to do this prior to mid-2009 as can be said with most social networking sites that surfaced in 2006. So, it gets my “spring cleaning” treatment.
Yes, I’ll miss you too.
Unfortunately, this social networking void of mine will simply be replaced by something else. It’s just a matter of time.
Update 1 – 4/11/2011 – Removing your Dailymile account does not remove your account or your data. Your running logs are accessible via http://www.dailymile.com/people/user_name/entries/archived/four_digit_year. Signing into Dailymile after removing your account will “reactivate you.”
Update 2 – 4/25/2011 – One method of removing your data is to edit each workout and click on the delete link. If there is no data associated with the workout, click on the add details link and then click on delete. This process is painstakingly slow as you need to do this with each one. Ironically, after I delete all of them, I have a net negative mileage in their system.
Earlier this week in a computer lab like temporary room, the co-worker at the far end of the tables gets up and walks a few tables over to me. “I think I have the perfect marathon training plan for you,” he says.
“Oh really? What’s that?”
He continues, “There’s his guy who’s training for a marathon and is eating nothing but McDonald’s food for the last 30 days.”
The scales of thermodynamic equilibrium tip in favor of “calories-in.” At first thought this sounds like a runner’s version of Super Size Me; however, after closer examination of the Food Diary in progress, this person, Joe, is tightly clinging onto the healthier side of the menu, a wise choice in my opinion.
Link to his blog: Confessions of a Drive-Thru Runner
The guy behind the counter notices me with a medal hanging around my neck and before I can ask him to unlock doors to take the elevator to the tenth floor, he asks me about it. Even though I’ve lost 6.8 pounds, most of which I sweated away, I don’t mind happily taking about how awesome the race was.
He mentions that his brother did the half marathon today. I dwell on the common highlight of the race, running through downtown and the approaching turn off. “Yeah, there’s a decision to make.”
He asks, “A decision?”
“You go either left for the half marathon or go right for the full marathon, but of course you already decided when you signed up months before the thing.”
He just listens.
“There’s, um, these kids holding these arrows that point to the left and to the right. You go around the corner and then you see it.”
“See what?” he asks.
“They have these two big inflatable archways. They’re orange. One has Half Marathon on the top of it and the other one’s for the full.”
“Which way did you go?”
I say, “I went right.”
* * *
Passing under the archway, reveals a road with four to six people scattered in front of me. The music from downtown quickly fades away. After experiencing that awesomeness of downtown, you return to the normalcy of the race. Climbing another bridge, a sign awaits me at the top which reads:
This downhill
Is brought to
You by
ING
I just smile.
Around mile 14 there’s an older lady running. People around me talk to her, and I learn that she’s running the marathon for her birthday.
A girl asks, “How old are you?”
The woman responds, “Seventy-five.”
People around me congratulate grandma marathoner and applaud, as well as I. Her husband is in his late sixties and is running the marathon with her.
The same girl comments to the older lady, “I wish I’m still running when I get to be your age.”
Keeping my running routine up for over twice my lifespan seems unfathomable. I am sure that if an older version of me hobbled out with a cane from one of those Back to the Future DeLorians, he’d say, “Stop running, you fool. It’s bad for you knees.”
Rounding another corner, I see runners coming at me from the opposite side of the road en-route to the finish. One guy next to me shouts at them, “Sub 3:30 baby!”
The course ducks into some neighborhoods with two lane roads. A group of guys discuss marathons; one of them gathers that they are ahead of the 5 hour pace group.
This is good.
Another guy mentions how these are hard to do and that’s why so few people do them. Someone asks how his friend is doing, and his friend admits that he’s trying to stay with them.
Thoughts creep into my mind such as:
Eventually I reach the turn-around-point. It passes through an area called Coconut Grove. A large banner hangs over the street, announcing an upcoming Art Festival in late February. There are a few local bars with patrons lounging in outdoor patios, watching us in amusement.
“The 4:45 pace group is just around the corner,” some guy at the street corner beckons to us. Shortly after this point, I realize that I am slowing down. The run 5 minutes / 1 minute routine deteriorates into run 4:30 minutes / walk 1:30 minutes. I begin fabricating excuses to walk more, but I try to snap out of it.
A guy riding a bike alongside a girl tells her that it’s a mile or two to the bridge, and encourages her to keep on going. People near me whisper that he should get off his bike and run with her.
More thoughts creep into my head. I remember that there is an out-and-back stretch on the map before you get to the bridge. Where is it at? How long is it? I wish I had a map with me. No, it’s better not to know.
A clown peddles a stationary bike in a driveway. The clown looks at us and exclaims, “I don’t know how you guys keep going!”
For some reason, I think that I’m at mile 24. An orange sign ahead displays a different a number: Mile 22.
I’ve got four more miles out here.
Most of the course beyond downtown has been thankfully shaded by trees and tall buildings. Banking right around a corner, the sun comes into full view and relentlessly beats down on you. There’s a small patch of shade as I pass under a toll plaza.
The area opens up into a small strip of road bordered by the ocean, and it’s so bright that you wish you had a pair of sunglasses. Runners, some of which are quickly melting into walkers, cling to the rightmost side of the road where tall palm trees provide a small sliver of shade. A few times, I have tried running around noon on a warm summer’s day which has proven to be a bad idea. Running in this area brings back a similar feeling; however, I’ve been out here for four plus hours.
I encounter a family running the marathon a mile down the road. The father turns to his son and says, “Let’s take a picture of you with the parrot.” I look around and don’t see parrots; I think I saw a large replica of one a dozen feet ago.
“Oh, come on,” the father eggs the son on. “I really don’t want to,” says the son.
To my left there’s a person in a parrot outfit in this heat. “You’re beautiful!” exclaims the father. She’s smitten by his compliment.
Shortly thereafter, the course U-turns underneath an ascending bridge. An idling red rescue truck awakens from its slumber and races down the road. I move over the rightmost side as its sirens roar.
Another bridge awaits me just before mile 26. People in front of me slowly run up it and I think to myself, “Yeah, I can run up it too,” but as I get closer my auto-negotiation mechanism kicks in. “Nah, I’ll just walk up the bridge; I’ll be going just as fast as they are.” As I reach the top, I see a sign that reads:
This downhill
Is brought to
You by
ING
Unlike mile 13 I don’t find this sign nearly as amusing. A boat passing under the bridge honks at me, and I resume plodding along. Around another corner, I hear music and see an archway of balloons around the next bend.
That must be the finish.
Spectators are trying to help a runner up off the ground through a white fence. I keep going and following the course as it bends to the left. I increase my pace a bit faster, ignore any walk breaks that my watch beeps at me about and cross the finish line from my eighth marathon.
* * *
After the typical prolonged walk through the extended finish area is an area of food and beverage. Beyond that is a stage with rows of white fold-out chairs. “This must be where the party meets the pavement,” I think to myself, “or was that back at downtown?” At any rate, I just want to go home, as this is the usual feeling after most marathons. I walk into a touristy shopping area, back out of it, and orientate myself in the correct direction.
“He [my brother] said to walk north to the yellow tower,” I think. It stands out from every building in the area, and I locate it. Behind the tower is a working escalator to Miami’s metro-mover, a mass transit shuttle system that gets you from point A to point B without having to move your feet. After waiting for five minutes, a shuttle appears packed with people, and I squeeze myself into it, whisking me away closer to my brother’s apartment.