-29 days; 2.5 miles. Running With Love

From the post on October 2 of last year: Geb ran a world record marathon and predicts that the record will be broken again soon, and that a sub-two hour marathon is within our lifetimes. And he said: "If I can break the marathon world record again, I'm sure it will be in Berlin."

So he did. I first found out about the new record at the start line at the 18 mile Tune Up race in Central Park. It was Mary Wittenburg, CEO of NYRR, who made the announcement. There was at once cheers from the crowd around me and high fives. Andrew pointed at me and said "that's you, next." I laughed. I instantly felt slightly less dorky about being about randomly happy about a record that most people in the world wouldn't give a damn about. I love running. I love those who love running.


29 days. 29 days before the St. Louis Marathon, I went on the 20 mile run through all the CHS training courses. It had been the most important run that secured my confidence in running the big race. It was also the run that secured the importance of orange cars and whatnot.


It's one week out from Chicago. John is now well into his taper and seems to be rather antsy with the energy accumulating for his race on Sunday. He regained a bit of confidence for the marathon after finishing all 18 miles (which he didn't planning on finishing for the sake of tapering) at the race Sunday in surprising great shape and a fourth place finish in the age group. This was after a disappointing attempt at a 20 mile run a couple weeks ago where hit hit the wall hard and could not continue back to campus after Time Square.

I went on a slow run to 96th Street and back next to the ball fields on the riverbank today. I came to appreciate how much the fall semester has become another full blown sports season for me. The sense of continuation and synchrony with cross country is uncanny, complete with ritual races every weekend. For the past three weeks and the week following this one there's been some long running event every weekend: first came Queens, then our 20 miler, then the Tune Up, followed by Norwegian Festival, and finally Staten Island next week.

This is my long running season. And this time, I feel, for the first time since cross country, that my training isn't entirely lonely. It's hard to overstate how much distance running has become a centerpiece in my life. The people who do it with me, John, Kari, Lauren, Andrew, Kelly Ann, and a handful others who show up time to time, mean ever more to me as the Marathon draws near and I will be up for the challenge that, for the past two times, I've largely failed.

Much has happened since the last post in running. Most notable was the 20 mile run with Kari alongside John and Lauren, both of who kept pace with us for parts of the run. The weather has been remarkably cooperative with training, which is a hallmark of fall marathons. I've clocked my first 50 mile single week last week, and this week I will accumulate 60 miles in a single week, assuming that I finish the race tomorrow. New routes and novel ways of staying motivated have been found.

Yesterday I ran north along the Hudson to 181st and across the GW bridge to New Jersey with Kari. The view from the bridge was quite simply breathtaking; the sky was an endless swath of late-afternoon dark blue with heavy white clouds dotting the entire canvas well beyond the horizon, all of it overshadowing a beautiful, profile-lit Manhattan skyline where every single spire of every skyscraper could be singled out and counted like bristles of a big, jagged comb. The Hudson was rough and a deep blue-black churning under the shaky suspension bridge. And the wind--the wind brought the crispest, freshest, coldest air that I've inhaled in a long while. That wind, combined with the precariousness of running at a 8:15 pace two abreast side-by-side along a narrow sidewalk with the Gotham-bound traffic on one side and the dizzying fall into the Hudson on the other side, the offset footsteps on a rumbling footpath suspended above nothingness, it was a feeling that was, in words not my own, "rather disconcerting."

My Brooks Adrenalines are officially retired now as of the beginning of the month. At a rough estimated average 20 miles per week through the past 11 months, the Adrenalines have accumulated a shocking 960 miles total. And they are still in amazing shape with seeming minimal wear even on the inner side of the upper, where my shoes are always the most beat-up. They've run in Clayton, Forest Park, Central Park, around Manhattan, through Brooklyn, and up the hills of Taipei. I'm quite certain that my next pair of training shoes after the Elixirs blow out after the marathon will be another pair of Adrenalines, my fourth pair of that model since I began cross country four years ago.

No tally today; I'll post a full account of the milage in the past two weeks tomorrow after the race.