Do Or Do Not (It Wasn’t A Tri)
Ah, the coveted sixty-fourth percentile.
Let me be frank: I was neither properly prepared, nor properly trained for Sunday morning's race. Heck, I wasn't even properly rested. I'll chalk some of it to the length of the event (a 2.1M run, 10M ride, and 2.1M run don't quite constitute The New York City Marathon type preparation), and some to hubris.
Whatever the case, I was out 'til nearly midnight the night before during which time -- yes -- I had at least one (possibly three) Brooklyn Lagers; all the better (I reasoned) to complete ...
Sweet Carolina (Or, Living In The Fish-Eyed Lens)
I've heard about this sort of thing, but rarely really witnessed it first-hand.
I'm at a bar called Brother Jimmy's on 31st & Lex. Apparently, Murray Hill is the new post-collegiate neighborhood because everyone looks straight out of Central Casting.
"Jimmy, get me a dozen Zeta Psis and a coupla' Tri Delts, stat!"
I haven't seen so many copiously made-up, sweatshirt-wearing teenagers preening, posing, smoking cigarettes and hair-flipping, like, ever! (Well, since college.)
Anyway, we're watching UNC/Duke basketball. Apparently, ...
2009 Miami Marathon (Or, Pull The Sunlight Through Me)
The last time I was on Miami's Brickell Avenue Bridge, it was midnight.
Hurricane Katrina was lashing the city with crushing wind and stinging rain. Nonetheless, my Video Music Award colleagues and I thought it a lark to stand defiantly mid-span, leaning into the gale drunk like teenagers.
Some five years later, I was mid-span again. This time, though, a different sort of storm raged: a twenty-fifth mile, endorphin-fueled battle between running and stopping, accelerating and collapsing, laughing and weeping.
My road back to ...
Rookie Mistake
I was never much with a shotgun growing up.
Not that I had a ton of exposure to firearms, but they were around. My father's family, most of whom still live in Waterloo, Iowa, frequently spent weekends hunting pheasant, duck, rabbit and deer. Invariably, they'd let me tag along on a hunt, even if I did get squeamish when someone actually shot a living thing. And somewhere along the cold, tedious walk through some frigid, Midwestern field, someone would set up a few tin cans, position that shotgun in my arms, and laugh as the recoil tossed ...
The Band Goes Commando (Or, The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Laser-Sighted Paintball Gun)
It was an unusual text message, even for 8:41 on a Friday night.
"Man up, son!"
Ends up Chris Abad's little bother, Gabe, was celebrating his fifteenth birthday on Saturday by gathering a few friends downwind from a landfill to pepper one other with gunfire. Paintball bullets, but still.
"Tony and Jamie are coming," Chris followed. "Think of it as a team building exercise for the band!"
I was enticed by the invitation, sure. What guy doesn't want to spend an afternoon rolling around in mud and leaves taking potshots at his pals? ...
Five Boroughs In 4:25:01
I don't care if I ingest another PowerGel for as long as I live. Or Gatorade. Or Cliff Bar. Heck, I could even go without Gummy Bears (at least for a few weeks).
Yesterday was my ninth New York City Marathon. Over the course of all that running (1,194 miles in 113 races alone, to say nothing of training), I've developed a number of tactics to keep four hours of monotonous, concrete-pounding, bone-crushing, mind-boggling running manageable.
Accordingly, in an effort to a) beat last year's abominable 4:42:00 and b) finish alongside ...
A Post About Running Twenty Miles On Saturday Morning
The first few blocks of a twenty-mile run are populated by disbelief.
"What the hell are we thinking?" gives way to, "If this creaky, old ankle feels sore already, how's it going to feel in three hours?"
Such was the case as Abbi and I ran through the shadows of the gargantuan Time Warner Center and into the early-morning light of Central Park Saturday morning.
"At the minimum," I thought, "We'll see a lot of New York."
Which, in our 3:35:36 New York City Marathon training run (pausing frequently to stretch, hydrate, gel and snap ...
The Dust Cloud Disappears Without A Trace
Two weeks ago this afternoon, I was in surgery.
This morning, I was back on the road, running 4.87 miles in just over 51 minutes.
Abbi and I rose in the dark, stretched, and started slow. We ran west towards the river, north along Hudson River Park, then up into Riverside Park.
It felt great to be outside, breathing fresh air, and watching the sky wake up. I had some pain in my right knee (still, three years after that rogue playground accident) for a second, but that subsided once I warmed up. I could feel some tightness in my ...
The Lost Weekend (Or, Entropy 101)
I called my sister-in-law from the lobby. My nephew answered.
"Where are you?" he asked in his hushed, adorable phone voice.
"I'm on my way to the park to meet Aunt Abbi," I replied.
"So are we!" he said, only slightly-more enthused.
"See you at the finish line!" I said.
I called my dad from 57th Street.
"Where are you?" he asked. "Sounds like you're playing in traffic."
"Doc said I can't run 'til Monday, but he didn't say anything about the bike!"
I entered Central Park at Columbus Circle and merged carefully with ...
Eighteen (More) Reasons To Love Her
I figure it takes a special kind of someone to wake up at 5:30 on a perfectly good Saturday morning, lace up the Asics, and run around the city for three hours. The really special someone, though, is the teammate who runs it with you.
Yup, that was Abbi and me this weekend.
Increasingly bored with endless loops around Central Park, I was itching to get off the island. I studied Google Maps and Map My Run, and drafted a suitably ambitious foray into Brooklyn. Not too far into Brooklyn, mind you; my intended course to and around ...
