ING NYC Marathon confirmation

(Sorry about the "grainyness" of the above image. It was really small when I had to cut and paste it from the website)

For a while now, I've had a goal to experience all of the large marathons in and around the United States to see how I liked them and just to be able to say that, "oh yeah, I've run that one...it was fun!" This year seemed like a perfect year to be able to swing in the NYC marathon.

It was a nice flat, fall marathon. Sounds perfect after Ironman Lake Placid and will give me adequate recovery time. (I ran Philly in the fall of 2007 after doing IMLP that year too) So I did a little research and wanted to see if it was possible to get into the 2009 ING NYC Marathon.

Turns out it is a lottery system because so many people apply each year to run it. But the nice thing is that if you can hit them, they have automatic qualifying standards. For my age group you just had to run a sub 2:55 marathon within the past year and a half. Tomorrow is the cut off for registration for auto-qualifiers, so if you are thinking about it, do it today!! :o) I got an auto qualifying time by running a 2:53 in Boston last year and just snuck under the standard and into this race.

I just got my confirmation email and my name will appear in the participant lists soon :o) My goal for this marathon is to PR, but seeing as how that is sub 2:53, that might be tricky. We shall see though. I still think I am capable of a sub 2:50, so only time will tell. Wish me luck in the fall, but for now it's still prime time for Ironman :o) Sit back and enjoy the show ladies and gentlemen. This year in Placid, there's BOUND to be some fireworks! Cheers and JFT folks, I gotta run...

Spring Forward 15k report

So as most of you that read this regularly already knew, I had to take what I like to refer to as “forced rest” two weeks ago because I came down with a bout of bronchitis.

I’ll start out by saying that I’m not really a fan of doctors… I tend to NOT want to go to them even when I am deathly ill. This instance was no different. I’d taken a rest week the previous week and trained outside some on the bike and come down with what I thought was the general spring time sniffles and coughing. Well after the rest week, I still couldn’t shake it (despite my attempts to drown myself in Vitamin C…)

Yes it does have 1000% DV of your vitamin C…and it tastes good to boot!

So about a half week later when I realized that I hadn’t gone to a full day of work in 3 days because I kept leaving early or coming in late in order to rest, I reluctantly went to the doctors. Turns out he diagnoses me with bronchitis and gives me a Z-pack (?) of some antibiotics.

The last day of the antibiotics was race day for the 15k. No fun. I still wasn’t feeling well, but still wanted to test out the legs to see if maybe my 2 weeks of “taper” as I was referring to it at the time, would pay off. I had some ambitious goals for the race, I had wanted to break 55 minutes, beat a great competitor who constantly gives me crap (and I return it…) Mr. Carl Johnson among other goals that I had already figured in my head. Spoiler alert!!! That was not my day…

The race started off and it was a little chilly. I made a last minute decision to take off the fleece lined tights that I was going to wear because the sun was out and I knew as soon as we hit the hills; it was going to turn steamy. I had on a pair of radioactive yellow/green gloves, a thin winter hat, and long sleeves. It was a good day to run.

The race went off and I flew thru the 1 mile mark with Matt Keefe (local GVH runner) in about 5:38. We laughed and tried to back off, but I ended up going thru the 5k split in about 17:30 or so and knew it was going to be tough from then on. About mile 4-5 my power seemed to wane a bit and I remembered a conversation that I had before the race with this guy who told me he raced once with bronchitis and it turned into full blown pneumonia and he was laid up for 2 months, so I was okay with backing off a tad because I definitely didn’t want to share his fate.

Around that 6 mile mark Mr. Johnson decided to soft pass me and we hit the 10k in 36:3X, still pretty quick. I passed him back, but he is like the energizer bunny of runners, he’s always right there and I gave him some motivation as he went by me again. From there on in, I didn’t want to push too hard and kinda held back. I really could’ve killed myself out there and ran a smoking fast time, but by the time I hit the finish, I was thru in 56:33 and that was good enough for 10th overall and 3rd in the age group.
It was a RROY (Rochester Runner of the Year) series race, so it attracted some deeper talent. I’m happy with my placing and all being sick, but I know if I had been healthy I would’ve been under that 55 mark and likely broken my college 15k PR. Oh well, there is always next year.

But that’s the story of the Spring Forward 15k. For anyone who cares, I’m back and healthy again too. I just did a 15:49 training week last week and for the first time in 2009, I made it to all 3 masters swim practices that week :o) It’s hard getting out of bed that early to jump into a cold pool… Now that the weather’s nice, I hope you all have been enjoying the roads and trails and getting out there to JFT. Cheers folks, I’ll check back in later on.

Bert's Grand Opening!!!

Stop on by! They will have a bicycle "flea market" next door with all sorts of surprises and absolutely EVERYTHING will be on sale in the store. If you haven't checked it out yet, now is the time to stop in to see dealers and reps from all the product lines in the Henrietta Berts location. 100 Jay Scutti Boulevard, right down the street from Marketplace Mall. See you there!