Awards, Part Two: The Building Tomorrows 5K

Saturday morning, like I said earlier, I decided to forgo the Brooklyn Half and instead ran a small 5K in Bloomfield, NJ. Everything went well - the weather was perfect, I got there well ahead of time, saw lots of friends, and got a good warm-up run in. There were only 300 people running the race, and some walkers behind them. I collected my race packet and goody bag... and what a goody bag! Take a gander at this:

First there's the usual ugly race shirt, and some advertising propaganda. Two pens, a useless plastic water bottle, four packs of m&ms (4!), three types of energy bars (SoyJoy, Promax, and Clif Nectar - all disgusting, by the way, but that's not the point), a sample of Propel powder mix with a coupon for a buck off a box of ten (which I bought today), one of those red blinker lights that you can clip onto clothing (something I've actually wanted for awhile), and a real glass pint glass. Oh yeah, and the canvas bag that all the stuff came in. Can you believe it?! All for a 17 buck registration. These are some kickass sponsors.

Could it get any better than this? Oh yeah, I still had to race.

I have to say, I was optimistic. I ran a 5K last year in 20:11, and this time I figured I could break 20 minutes for sure. I was all ready to go... the race was at 10:00 AM and it was 5 to. I asked someone where the starting line was and they pointed me in the right direction. I went around some trees and saw the crowd ahead of me. In hindsight, I'd say about 75 feet away, behind some shrubs. That was midpack, the front of the field was further ahead, maybe by about 50 feet or so.

Then I heard the race director announce "Runners, on your mark..."

I looked at my watch. 9:57. Huh?

The horn went off. Oh, shi...

Now let me add that this was a small race. No chip timing. All based on gun time. That was not going to work to my advantage here.

I probably lost about ten seconds just getting to the start, where I was caught in the elbow-to-elbow of the mid-pack runners. This was ridiculous, I could hardly get going. I jumped to the outside of the first turn, over the curb and onto the grass. I was technically off the course, but I wasn't cutting the course. I was actually making it longer, but at least I was passing the slower runner. Then I got pinched off between the runners and some parked cars, where I had to actually slow down. At this point I thought to myself about actually dropping out because my time was going to be so bad.

But all that happened within the first two hundred meters of the race. Then I managed to clear the slower runners, and the course opened up, and I got going. Unfortunately, I panicked and took off like a cannon, and when I hit the 1st mile marker at 6:23 (which really meant the considering my slow start, I was probably doing a 6:05 pace) I knew this was going to be bad. At a mile and a half, I hit a big uphill, and started to burn up. Second mile was something like 6:49. Then a big downhill, and I laboured to keep up some kind of strong pace in the last half mile. One of my teammates almost caught me, but I managed to kick a little at the end and get him by two seconds. I finished in 20:24, and 19th overall out of 302 runners. And while I didn't get the sub-20 that I wanted I did place second in my age group and got my very first piece of hardware to take home.

Lessons learned:

1. Be at the start before the gun goes off.
2. Stick to chip timing if you want to shave seconds off a PR. Still, you might get an award.
   
3. Go for the goody bag

Awards, Part One

Alright, the tapir's cute, but even I'm getting sick of looking at him. It's been a busy week... again. Not sure what happened, but ever since just before Christmas, things have been moving a little faster than I like.

Busy, but a good week. Last Tuesday I went to my New Jersey Club's Awards Night. It was great to see a lot of the old faces again, and catch up. I haven't been very active in the club lately, especially with my new commitments to the Flyers, as whipping boy...er, I mean, Secretary.

Anyway, a big suprise to me was that I actually received an award from the club.
And here it is:

Yep, the Marco Polo Award. I think the award actually reflects my activities from '05 more than '06, but hey - I'm not complaining. I'll take any award I can get. They are few and far between for me. Or so I thought...

An awarding - but more importantly, rewarding - event

The New York Flyers Awards Gala was a fun Saturday night, although a bit too much fun in some ways. Note to self: open bar does NOT mean "drink as much as you can". Yeesh.

I recall dancing badly: inebriation and coordination may rhyme, but they don't give you good rhythm. A fellow Flyer told me I was dancing like a Ukrainian. She's good at making those little comments that don't quite insult, but definitely don't come off as compliments, either. Oh, and she, like myself, is of Ukrainian ethnicity. No comment.

I did get an award though, and it capped off a very good year with the club. There were friends I wished could be there but weren't, and there were others I hadn't seen in awhile that were good to see again and share the event with. It was a fine night. I even bought a new tie for it.

I needed the break from work. It's been so busy at the office these last two weeks, and on top of having to assemble the monthly newsletter, I've suddenly been deluged with e-mails copying the exec board on everything from the weekly Flyers updates, to member surveys, to comments on meeting minutes. I never thought I'd hear the word "policy" so much in my life, especially when it comes to what basically amounts to an athletic hobby. It's a running club folks, not Parliament! We're here to run and have fun!

I am partly kidding with those comments, of course. I do realize the huge effort involved in running the largest local running club in New York City, and that there are a lot of members to make happy. Everyone involved put together a hell of an awards party, and they've done a hell of a job with the club in its twenty years of existence. As our esteemed lifetime achievement award recipient said last night, "Look how far you've come."

Indeed, and I hope to also contribute, so as to take us even farther, wherever that may be...

Congratulations, me!

Given my recent pathetic physical condition, and the fact that I can't run for the time being, I decided to pick up my spirits and, well, head over to Jersey, of course!

My other club, Essex, had their monthly meeting last night in Montclair. I missed the meeting in April, which is the anual awards dinner, and of course, given that it was the first awards dinner that I missed in four years, I got my first Essex award: Most Improved Runner 2005.

Getting the award placated my need to run for the moment. It almost felt like I received it for just finishing a great race. And it was good to see old friends in NJ again, and hear the many congrats on the award and the great race times I had (You know, back in the day, when I used to run). They also had a good guest speaker: a young elite runner named Aiden Walsh, who shared some interesting running advice and tips. It was interesting to hear that he and Paul Tergat have been to MacDonald's together... something you'd never thing an elite would do.

As a bonus, there were quite a few injuries at our table, where we swapped war stories over beer and pizza. We covered plantar faciatis, trachonteric bursitis, and a broken leg. Normally the PF would be the cool injury in the group, but the guy with the broken leg trumped the rest of us, because he actually broke it on a long run. That's a pretty cool injury, and he should've really gotten some kind of award for it.

He just can't have mine.