Half Marathon # 10, Borough # 3 in 2009

I put my 10th half marathon in the books yesterday---the Brooklyn Half which took me for two loops around Prospect Park and then down Ocean Parkway to the Coney Island boardwalk. For the short of it, it was not a goal race and I went in with few expectations slightly less than a month after running the New Jersey Marahton and I finished respectably in 1:25:59, two minutes off my personal best set in the Manhattan Half in January but still my second best of my ten half marathons.

After arriving at Prospect Park a little less than an hour before the race with one of my running club teammates, we walked around the bathroom, baggage, and start area and realized pretty much immediately that this race was likely going to be a huge zoo. In past years the Brooklyn Half had about 5,000 people in it and this year there were over 11,000 registered. Just looking at the porta potty situation and the narrow start area I was already pretty concerned that the NYRR was not really prepared to handle a field this size for this race. As far as I could recall, they only put on two races all year that are bigger or of similar size, the marathon and what was formerly known as the Nike NYC Half Marathon held for the past three years in July or August through Central Park and down through Times Square and the West Side Highway. The marathon is obviously a huge event in the city and three times the size of either the NYC Half or yesterday's Brooklyn Half and it is very well put on and NYRR has had years of practice at it and the city basically shuts down for the day. The NYC Half is also produced as a marquee event in which registration closes quickly and where one has the sense of high organization/preparedness and that everything is shut down for runners that morning. The big key is that with 10,000 runners in Central Park that the park loop is closed to other users.

After a short warm up jog around some of the woody trails in Prospect Park I lined up near the front of the first corral with my teammate and we were eventually joined by three other teammates who were going to run with us. Standing at the start it was immediately obvious how narrow it was and how many people were going to be lined up. It's at moments like these that I am very thankful to be on the fast side and in the front corral because even back in the second or third corral there was going to be major congestion and the race could be a bit of a crap shoot. My other observation was that it was extremely sunny and warm standing there before the race and I do not run very well in the heat as a general matter. We seemed to stand around forever as the race start was delayed by a good 10-15 minutes as they finished clearing traffic on the course---a reminder of how the New Jersey Marathon had been delayed in similar fashion by 30 minutes four weekends ago. The extra time did allow me to meet up with three runnersworld forumites, DCV, Troutpan, and Got2GetUnder3, though I wish I could have spent more time getting to know them.

Standing at the start with my teammates we came up with a plan to all run together as a pack through Prospect Park and try to help if we could one guy on our team who wanted to automatically qualify for the NYC Marathon by running under 1:23:00. I thought that might be a little fast for me but I figured that was also my "A" goal for this race so I might as well go for it. Normally with the uncertainty I had coming off the marathon I would have played things conservatively for the opening miles but this race really had no purpose for me in terms of time and I didn't mind blowing up a little if I could be to someone else's benefit. Also, even though I belong to a running club, I'm pretty much a solo runner when it comes to races and training most of the time as I tend to just function off my own effort level with my own goals, but I thought it would be pretty cool to kind of go back to my high school cross country days and run as a team in a big pack to a common goal.

Mile 1 (6:17)

When the horn finally sounded, that team plan we had come up with all seemed to go out the window as two of the five guys took off at 6 minute pace, one of them was faster and had just agreed to run with us but the other guy was of similar ability to the other four of us and I didn't quite understand why we weren't sticking to what we had just talked about. Anyway I ended up in no man's land as the two of them went out faster than I was willing to go and the other two guys, including the guy trying to qualify for the NYC marathon, who I had thought had been right behind me faded a bit further back. So I was basically in no-man's land. That was fine with me as I'm used to running alone anyway, but I had gone out faster than I would have otherwise as I followed the two teammates in front of me for the first quarter mile.

Mile 2-4 (6:36, 6:17, 6:18)

I kind of locked into my own race for mile two as I battled the uphill mile and somewhere in there realized for certain that the two teammates who had taken off in front of me had no intention of coming back and running as a pack and that there was no way I was going to try and catch them at this point. So I gave a look behind me and slowed down a bit for the other two guys to catch up as I figured I might as well try to help this guy get under 1:23 for as long as I could even though I didn't really think I was going to be able to hold onto that myself. We settled into a nice rhythm together.

Mile 5-7 (6:39, 6:38, 6:18)

This is where the fun really began. I had been right about the poor course design and my fears about lapping slower runners on their first lap came true, only even worse than anticipated. Since the two loops of Prospect Park were not quite identical and runners on the second lap had to go an extra half mile to mile before rejoining where they were on the first loop, I figured that I would catch the slowest runners somewhere around mile 5 or 5.5 and just have to deal with lapping people for about a mile before I exited the park. Wrong! Because the start had been so packed and narrow there were throngs of people just entering the main loop for the first time, hardly a half mile into the race, by the time we rejoined the loop around mile 4.5. This made for a mess. There were designated lanes for each lap, with the faster runners forced to the outer lane but this only worked slightly. For one I'm sure people on their second lap ended up running much further than the course was measured for. Secondly, many slower runners and walkers drifted out into the outer lane (and vice versa as I'm sure many of the faster runners went inside trying to avoid taking a much longer route around the park, even though I'm not sure how that would work very well trying to go around slower runners but some tried nonetheless). Thirdly, water was out of the question, because it was on the inner part of the loop where the slower runners were. Given that there had only been one water stop in the first 4 miles that was a bit annoying. Finally, the biggest problem was that in the outer lane we were sharing it a lot of the time with the general users of Prospect Park, including cyclists---not a good or totally safe combination. As I said before the park needed to be closed to other users as Central Park is with the NYC Half for this race to work. In any case I was just waiting to get out of the park and onto Ocean Parkway where there would be free space. My hamstrings were also bothering me and I could feel the fatigue from all of the hills in my legs which were still worn down from the marathon.

Mile 8-11 (6:28, 6:32, 6:31, 6:37)

Finally we got out of the park and onto a nice downhill on the entrance to Ocean Parkway, which was then of course followed by another uphill even though I thought I had seen that last of those in Prospect Park. At this point I was starting to suffer from a side stitch on my right side. I don't know why it happens to me so frequently, particularly at the half marathon distance, but I really wish I could figure why I get these side stitches and why they are so incredibly painful. I have tried everything with pushing into them, deep breathing etc. but when they come on I just always end up in worsening pain which is only alleviated by easing off the pace. I honestly think it is more than a simple side stitch because they don't go away completely after the race and I can still feel the muscle soreness and spasm there after the race when I breathe deeply and sometimes there is some lingering soreness in my diaphragm for several days after the race. Anyway so that was what happened to me yet again, so even though my legs were feeling better to be rid of the hills and I was ready to push the pace I couldn't really do it. On a different day maybe I would have battled through it more, but I really wasn't prepared to embrace the pain and push through it today since it wasn't a goal race and it was just between all my hard marathon training and the short-distance training I was getting ready to embark on. So I struggled through these miles, for awhile with my one remaining teammate who I was still with until he faded behind (the guy going for sub 1:23 fortunately had forged ahead of me just as we left the park).

Mile 11-13 (6:37, 6:54, 7:08)

When I hit mile 11 I tried to put in the surge that I had been holding back on because of the side stitch but the pain just intensified and I didn't really have much left at this point anyway as I think the marathon from a month ago or the heat of the day had really caught up with me. So about mile 11.5 I more or less called it a day as I was passed by a friend from my office who always seems to pass me late in these longer races. I looked at my watch and figured I just wanted to break 1:26 and I didn't really have to push much at all to do that and if I didn't do it I didn't really care a whole lot. As we entered the Coney Island boardwalk for the last half mile, a lot of people passed me but I really just didn't care. As I finally hit the last 100 or 200 meters I could see the clock and saw it was going to be very close with 1:26 so I picked it up just because I hate finishing in one or two seconds over anything and 1:25 just had a better ring to it, so I crossed the line in 1:25:59, with one very sore right side and a pretty blistered up left foot.

Post-Race

While I sincerely hope that NYRR makes adjustments to this race for the future because the situation in Prospect Park was pretty bad, I did really like ending at Coney Island. I'm usually not one to care and hang around the post-race festivities but I did for awhile yesterday and it was pretty fun. First I met up with some people from my team and others I knew and we chatted. The guy shooting for sub 1:23 had made it by four or five seconds so I hope the one cup of water I handed him and the four miles I ran with him in Prospect Park may have made some bit of difference but I'm sure he could have done it without me. I also met up with Morissey from runnersworld, who turned out to be a friend of a friend I know from the real non-internet world. So after going to stick my feet in the ocean (which was pretty painful walking around barefoot with blisters!) and buying a smoothie and chicken taco on the boardwalk I headed home! It was a good day and an OK race, about what I expected. Thinking back on it, the race was a lot like the Bronx Half in February when I was coming off a great time in the Manhattan Half two weeks earlier and still felt a little beat up and didn't really have a goal and care a whole lot about my time and kind of just went for it anyway a bit in the early miles to see what would happen and then suffered a good bit at the end. Only this time I was a minute and a half faster so maybe it means I was in better shape than in February even post-marathon. Whatever the case, I don't really need to be in long distance shape for awhile as I embark upon my fun-filled summer of shorter races (maybe even next weekend if I feel up to it but probably not). I don't really like training for shorter races, but I do like racing a lot and the races themselves. More than anything you just get to race more often and don't feel as beat up the day or two after and can get right back into training. Also there are no side stitch death marches for 3-4 miles which right now feels like a huge plus! The change of pace should be good in any case, before I hit up the NYC Half in August, the Queens Half in September, and the Staten Island Half in October and then probably embarking upon the NYC Marathon again! 3 out of 5 borough halfs now complete!