Oakley Mini 10k: A PR Amid a Sea of Ponytails

I honestly don't have much to say about the Oakley Mini 10k other than, well, I PRed . . . which would sound impressive except I've only ever raced that distance three other times. None of those races were particularly recent (I refuse to count the ice-skating that I did at the Boston Buildup), so if I hadn't PRed it would have been rather embarrassing.

Needless to say, I've never run an all-female race before, so that was a bit different. Standing in a corral with 5,000 other women on a humid morning smells better than being mixed in with the men, and it's a bit different not to have to seek out the next ponytail ahead of me on the course that I need to catch . . . because they're all ponytails!

The most significant thing about this race, I guess, happened when I looked at the results. Since running with Gotham City, I've met more and more runners of varying levels, from beginner right up to elite. Therefore, I recognize more and more names in the results tables. Imagine my astonishment, I recognized the name of my coach's wife . . . just two slots ahead of me!

Frankly, that fact still seems nearly impossible. This is a woman who raced competitively in college and, when first I met her for a group run, sprinted off so fast that I wasn't sure we had been meant to run together at all. Oh let me add: she was pregnant when she did that. So yeah. I never thought I'd ever be coming remotely close to her times. And maybe she had a bad day, and maybe I had a good day, but regardless of how or why it happened, I have to say that makes me even more excited than my PR. Because who better to judge my progress against than the runners I idolize!

Oakley New York Mini 10k
(Don't ask me why it's called "mini" . . . but rest assured, it was a full 10k.)

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
10k	39:12	6:19/mile	46 / 5,870	Same as overall!	22 / 1,209

J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge: Why So Serious?

Never have I ever been accused of cheating--at anything, as far as I can recall, but certainly not at a running race. Until this week, that is!

Now, if cheating at a running race sounds silly or downright impossible to you, make sure to read the wonderful story of Rosie Ruiz . . . after you finish reading my blog post, of course. (Okay, okay, you can click now. But come back!) However, for most of us runners--myself included--cheating would defeat the entire purpose of running races, which is to beat ourselves. Cheating at a race just makes you look good in front of other people, and let me tell you: competitive runners are not out to look good in front of a crowd. If we were, we'd go into something like modeling or golf, not a sport where we finish with salt crusted under our eyes, snot dripping out of our noses, and, sometimes, pee dripping down our legs.

So. Back to the story of cheating . . . or at least the accusation.

On the evening of Wednesday, June 4th, I ran the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge. This event is comprised of thousands upon thousands of company-sponsored workers running, jogging, or walking a 3.3 mile route around Central Park. Since the organizing body is a financial company and not, say, an organization that knows how to put on gigantic races (think NYRR or BAA), things tend to turn into a free-for all, in spite of J.P. Morgan's best intentions. Honestly, though, I have to say that this year was much better organized than in years past. I made it to my proper corral this time, and I didn't run headlong into strings of walkers fifty meters into the course. For those small miracles, I am grateful, and I think J.P. Morgan is on the right track in whatever they're doing to elevate the level of this race. What I do not appreciate, however, is what happened after I finished.

Due to the time I projected running when I registered for the race, I received one of the very elite-looking red bibs, which put me in the first, front-most corral. This all seemed very exciting to my teammates, being "right up front," but the reality of it was just me standing amid a sea of smelly sweaty men all jostling to get an inch closer to the start line. After about thirty minutes of shifting from foot-to-foot within five square inches of personal space, the gun finally sounded. Off we went.

In spite of the incline right at the start, I somehow managed to run the first mile in six minutes flat. This both freaked me out and spurred me on. I was running fast! Of course, as anyone who has ever tried it knows, running fast hurts. And hurt it did. If technology ever enables us to record our thoughts straight out of our heads, the world will discover that the last mile of any race unleashes the bleakest, darkest thoughts imaginable. But I persevered and, in the last 500 meters, managed to overtake the one woman I had been tailing for nearly the entire race.

Long story short, I ran my best time ever: 20:09 (which breaks down to an average 6:07/mile). As if that weren't thrilling enough, it looked as though I'd place second overall, too. Second, out of nearly 7,000 women! However, as the night carried on and my friends continued to check the results pages on their phones (my phone is too dumb or I'd have been doing the same) my name wasn't showing up. In fact, even searching for my bib number yielded nothing. It was as if I hadn't even run the race!

Fortunately for me, I have very supportive friends--so supportive, in fact, that they virtually forced me to call the race info line at 10pm to try and get my race results sorted out. No one was there, so I left a message, and the next day I emailed the address listed on the site, too. Finally, at long last, the race coordinator called me.

"I'm sorry, but no one saw you finish," he told me, "so I had to disqualify you."

I'm sorry . . . what?

"Look I understand that your chip registered. But there were five certified US track and field referees at the finish line, and none of them saw you."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. After a bit more back-and-forth, he asked me a strange question.

"Where did you finish?"

I wanted to say something snarky, along the lines of, "Right in front of the girl who you probably have listed as second overall," but I held my tongue. As it turned out, he wanted to know which side of the finish line I had crossed. The volunteers on the race course had shouted to "stay right," so that's what I had done.

"Ah. That explains it. I think I know what happened. See, all the women were supposed to finish on the left. You finished on the right. So no one saw you."

At this point, I was expecting an apology. Instead, I got this:

"Have you run any other races?"

Have I run . . any . . . other . . . races? Is this guy serious?

I listed the HOHA as my most recent, and then asked if he was looking for NYRR races or just anything. As soon as I said "NYRR," that seemed to be the magic word.

"Ah, no that's all fine. If you run NYRR races, that should all check out. Let me just go watch some of the video footage and check a few things, and we'll get your results back up there."

And then I guess he felt he had to explain himself, because he added,

"Some people try to cheat, you know. But you told me you finished on the right before I even said anything. Before you even knew where you should have finished. So you understand. . . ."

I wish I had been mentally present enough to ask the question that, afterward, loomed large in my mind: who in the world would bother to cheat at this race? First of all, it's not even an official 5k distance; it's exactly 0.1 miles too far to qualify as a 5k. Secondly, there are no prizes! It's not as if by winning second place, I was getting some sort of massive check or vacation or Lamborghini, or even anything for my company. So what was the big deal? I just wanted the results to reflect the race I ran! That's it!

What's especially funny is that after another 24 hours passed, my name dropped down on the rankings to third. So the same thing must have happened to another woman. Ridiculous.

I never did receive an apology for all that nonsense. But I ran the fastest race of my life and received probably the most adoration I'll ever get from my coworkers. So I'll take that and cherish it. Screw the rankings.

J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place
3.3 mi	20:09	6:07/mile	TBD	TBD

Snapshot Book Review: Fiend

Fiend by Peter Stenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a book about drug addicts, Fiend really succeeds. The mind and motivations of Chase are exactly as simplistic and yet complex as any drug addict I have ever known or read about.

As a zombie novel . . . it's not bad. Stenson doesn't delve very deeply into how or the zombie apocalypse happened, and since the book is told from the first-person point of view of a meth head, that makes sense, because he wouldn't know more than what he could observe and wouldn't care enough to sit there and "figure things out." Still, I can't help but feel as though it's a bit of a cop out. How did drugs keep this small contingent of people from being infected with "zonbie disease?" How did the disease come about in the first place? I'm a curious reader. I want to make sense of things!

My biggest issue with this book was its pacing. The pace starts out frenetic and really just tries to maintain that level all the way through. Yes, there are "down moments" when Chase reflects on the past or stops to really think about whatever situation he's in, but these feel more like stalls in the action than valleys in a rolling arc of narrative. Essentially there are just too. Many. CLIMAXES!

This might be the first time I've ever said this, but I think Fiend will do much better as a movie than it will as a novel. I hope a producer has the insight to pick it up.

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Snapshot Book Review: The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch: A Novel by Donna Tartt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can absolutely understand why this novel won the Pulitzer Prize. It is extremely well written, with an astounding level of detail that is--as a resident of the New York City area, I can verify--very accurate. The scope, subject matter, and themes of the book are those that resonate today and will stand the test of time--all hallmarks of a prize-worthy book. Each character is nuanced and believable, and the narrator Theo is both reliable and unreliable in ways that any reader can identify the way they would a slightly neurotic but still endearing friend.

My feelings about Theo waxed and waned throughout the duration of the novel, which is an aspect I actually liked. It's difficult to enjoy a book where you don't particularly like or sympathize with the narrator, and my feelings for Theo shifted continually as the story progressed. He's essentially a sympathetic jerk, a stubborn pushover, if you will. His friend Boris is the perfect foil: a guy who is clearly trouble but with a good heart and a zeal for life that is addictive to both Theo and the reader. And who cannot relate to Theo's idolization and obsession with Pippa? She represents the obsessive adolescent attachments we label as "love" and pine for all our lives. Nothing resonated more with me than that subplot.

Of course, I had my qualms about this book. Sometimes the detail I found so impressive got to be too much. "Just get on with the story!" I found myself thinking periodically. Also, the very end was a massive disappointment. I don't mean the ending of the story itself; that was appropriately bittersweet. Life doesn't work out perfectly, and I think Theo's story ended on exactly the right note of an "almost" happy ending. However, those last cluster of pages are what really did me in. My opinion is that if the reader didn't understand Theo's mindset and the themes of the novel by the time he or she reached the end, then no amount of tiresome, explanatory exposition was going to give them a better reading experience. I read those last twenty pages only because I felt that I had to; I had come too far not to finish the book to its absolute conclusion. Were I the editor, however, I would have lopped them right off and finished the book where the story itself ended, leaving the reader to speculate on his or her own.

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La Jolla Half Race Recap

I never thought I'd say this, but second place never felt so disappointing. And not for the reason you'd expect, either.

I never had any illusions about winning this race. After looking at the course and the race times from last year, I honestly never even thought I'd place at all, outside of maybe an age group award. So placing second woman overall was, frankly, a huge surprise. It was such a surprise, in fact, that it upended my plan to hurry back to my hotel in order to get ready for my (already delayed) workday. But really, I had to stay. How many times do you get to accept an award in front of an audience? Not many.

The thing was, though, I'd have gladly traded my second place plaque for a PR. I went into this race with my sights set on breaking 1:28:00, and the bottom line is that I just didn't do it. I wasn't even very close. So second place woman or not, I was disappointed.

The one thing I can say, though, is that the lack of PR was not for lack of trying. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, so it's tempting to look back and say, "Oh, at mile 7 I should have just sucked it up and picked up the pace. I was probably just being a baby," or, "I should have taken it out slower, and maybe then I'd have had more energy for that outrageous hill at mile 5." But the fact of the matter is, I gave it everything I had.

My race started before the gun even went off. I got to the Del Mar Racetrack parking lot, did a bit of warmup jogging and drills, and realized that I definitely needed to hit the Port-a-Johns or there were going to be problems. So I got in line. Fifteen minutes later, the line had barely moved, and we were five minutes away starting the race. So I did the only thing I could do: I found a nice array of bushes, wedged myself between them and, well, that was that. Then there was the national anthem, the gun--which was actually just an announcer saying "Go!!!"--and we were off.

I took it out as close to tempo as I dared, aided by the fact that the very beginning of the course tilted a bit downhill. I was feeling pretty good by mile three, pretty confident that I could hold this pace. It was a lovely day, the breeze felt great, and I was closing in on a small cluster of girls in front of me. Then there was an uphill, and the 1:30 pacer passed me, which gave me a bit of a scare. But that was followed by a long downhill overlooking the Pacific where I just let my legs spin. That put me back in front of him again, where I belonged, which would have felt nice if I hadn't been staring straight ahead at the mountain that we were about to climb. And that's when the race got hard.

I am not a powerful runner. I never have been, and I while I might be someday, right now I have a really hard time sprinting up a hill, never mind a mountain. So I compensate by taking it slow going up and then I make up time coming back down. That was my plan of attack on this course, too, but I knew that to average 6:42s per mile, I couldn't slow down too drastically. Therefore, when the 1:30 pacer passed me (again!), I decided that the least I could do was keep him in my sights. That, surely, would be good enough. But then a woman passed me, charging up the hill like it was nothing, and I began to doubt how the rest of this race was going to go.

A mile and change later, I began repeating the mantra "shut up" to my brain, which was having a panic attack over the fact that I couldn't seem to get my pace back under 7:30/mi. I had averaged something like 8min/mi up that terrible hill, and now I couldn't get it back down, even though the course had flattened out. "You're never going to make up that time," my brain kept saying, "and your legs feel like they were just beaten by heavy wooden mallets. AND you're only halfway done. How are you going to even finish the next 6 miles? You're toast." Shut up, shut up, shutupshutupshutupshutup.

Around mile nine, when my brain had moved from doubting this race to doubting all distance races--"Maybe you don't have it in you anymore to run distance. Dropping time used to feel easy; you didn't even notice until you'd done it. Now you're running all this fancy extra stuff and what's it gotten you? One, maybe two minutes faster? Pathetic. You think you're going to PR in the Chicago Marathon? Dream on."--a tall shirtless guy appeared beside me. We'd already exchanged places a few times throughout the race, him passing me on the uphills and me blowing by him on the downhills, but now we were on the flat and and I was struggling to get my legs moving again. But no way this guy was faster than me. No way.

That thought was enough to help me get moving again, at least to keep up with him, even as my breathing became more and more ragged. Miles nine and ten weren't nearly as terrible as the ones before had been, and when we hit another downhill, I closed in on the woman who had passed me on that mountain. "Third woman!" spectators kept shouting, holding up three fingers. Third? Really? Me? I wasn't even running very fast!

With another downhill, I caught the woman and trailed her halfway through mile eleven before I passed her . . . only to be passed by the 1:30 pacer again. "Shit!" I panted aloud. "Don't worry, I'm ahead," he shouted back over his shoulder. He'd better be, I thought, because if I finish over 1:30, I am going be super pissed. Things seemed to be going well now; I was pretty sure I'd dropped my pace back down and I could keep this up for the last mile . . . and then we hit another hill. All I could think, as I charged that hill with my arms pumping furiously, was She's right behind you. If you let her pass you on this hill, it's over. Are you really going to accept third when you have second right now?

As someone who's run a fair number of half marathons, when you're giving a race your all, that thirteenth mile feels endless. Where's godd*%$ the finish line? is all you're thinking as your legs scream and your chest feels like you're having an asthma attack and a heart attack all rolled into one. The race ended with a steep downhill, which I should have been happy except my legs felt so out of control that it was all I could do to keep them from flying out to the sides or buckling beneath me. But she hadn't passed me. The woman hadn't passed me. And now we were on a downhill. I was going to take second!

When I crossed the finish line, the clock read 1:30 and change. I was gasping; I could barely stay upright; I felt like this was the hardest half marathon I had ever run; and I hadn't even come close to the 1:28 goal I had set for myself. Awesome.

Winning 2nd definitely redeemed this run for me, because otherwise, there'd have been no silver lining. I started out feeling determined and excited, and ended feeling like crap. Still, whether it sounds crazy or not, I really do think I can break 1:28. Just not today, I guess. Next time.

La Jolla Half Marathon

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
13.1 mi	1:29:08	6:48/mile	32 / 5,891	2 / 3,058	n/a* / 543

*Note: When you place in the top 3 for your gender, you are automatically removed from the age group rankings. It's my first time to be excluded!