The NY post-mortem

It's probably safest to write this blog a few days removed from the events, since yes, I was being ungrateful and miserable and disappointed at having run one of the world's iconic events in my fastest time ever.  No pleasing some people.  I've calmed down now, though.

Lindsay has done most of the talking for me (nothing new there then), so I'll try just to write about things she didn't cover.  If I can remember.  All in all, it was a very enjoyable weekend (my first time in New York).

Yes, we might have done a little too much walking on the Friday - but we were being tourists, after all.  It was quite a spectacular introduction to the city to walk along the Brooklyn Bridge, both because of the building itself and the views looking back at Manhattan.  Timing our trip on the Staten Island Ferry at sunset was a very happy accident.  After spending an hour or two nearly as high as we could get in New York, we even managed two or three hours just sitting down playing cards - a proper rest at last!

The pasta party on the Saturday evening was an impressive display of queue management.  It was held in Tavern on the Green, in Central Park, and there were about a dozen separate rooms all containing tables full of pasta dishes, bread, energy drinks, water, fruit...  Yet we seemed to get seamlessly guided through the maze of the building to an available room with empty seats without really noticing what was going on.  The organisation to get everyone to the start line was equally impressive - they must have hired the city's entire supply of coaches to get us all there!

OK, the race.  I enjoyed it, better get that clear.  I didn't enjoy the 3-hour wait in the cold before the start, but I was warned... I just didn't take enough extra clothing.  And there didn't seem to be anywhere to hide from the wind.  We'd had porridge and bananas for breakfast at about 5am, and taken along some more bananas and cereal bars to eat before the start at 9:40am.  There were also bagels available in the start areas, so probably no danger of running out of food... just awkward wondering exactly when to eat it.

The cold weather at least made it easy for me to carry my jelly babies with me, in my gloves.  I didn't want to risk trying out an unknown energy drink too early in the race, in case it disagreed with me.  I probably didn't need to worry, but better safe than sorry.  There was also less need to drink water, so I only did every 2 or 3 miles for most of the race.

And things were fine for about 19 miles, I think.  I started a little too fast: mainly 6:20s rather than 6:30s, and actually that was when I was consciously trying to slow myself down.  Which just proves I'm not very good at pacing, really. But of course it didn't feel too fast (it never does).

It was fun experiencing the huge crowds all the way round the course - with only a couple of areas where the support was thin.  The roads were generally very wide, so even from the start there was little danger of tripping over other runners' heels.  Although the state of the roads left a lot to be desired - I even nearly put my foot in a foot-sized hole, which could have been very nasty.  This was worst in The Bronx, which was where it also started to get hilly, with a few more corners in the course, and 20 miles of running in the legs.  And yes, I got caught out, like everyone else seems to, with the terrain coming up to and within Central Park.

I had thought I'd be able to hold on to my times enough to still finish quicker than 2:55... but I was agonisingly wrong.  Even trying to use my muscles differently to give other muscles a rest didn't seem to be helping, and when the signs said '200 yards to go', that coincided with the gradient turning sharply uphill - not at all what I needed!

So I eventually reached the finish line, slowed down, stopped my watch (I hope it was in that order, but I really can't remember!).  I looked at it, and was absolutely gutted to see it said 2:55:03.

And then I had to walk MILES to get my bag back.  They'd arranged the runnners in order of expected finishing time (for the start, of course), and those with the lowest numbers had furthest to walk to get their bags (which makes sense, in a way).  But it did mean I had to walk past van 49 (49000 to 49999), van 48 (48000 to 48999), van 47... all the way to van 4.  I had to stop for a rest at least three times.  All of that gave me even more time to despair about what I was going to tell everyone when I saw them again.

Incidentally, this baggage system led to about the only case of bad organisation for the whole weekend - if everyone finishes as expected, all the finishers will be using the same baggage vans at the same time.  When Lindsay got to the baggage area, it was completely packed and very hard to get through.

Anyway, we both managed to get ourselves safely back to the hotel, Lindsay happy and me not.  If I'd have been 2 or 3 minutes quicker I'd have been fine.  Even 3 seconds quicker would have been something.  Yes, it was a PB, but over that kind of distance, if you break your PB and the hours and minutes still say the same time, what exactly was the point?

Greedy?  Me?

The next morning we found an internet connection outside New York Public Library, and I excitedly tried to find my official time, to see if it had shaved off the offending 3 seconds.  I was more than disappointed to find that my official time was recorded as being FOUR AND A HALF MINUTES SLOWER!  It even had a set of 5k split times... all of which were kind of close to mine, but not mine.  It's not even the standard problem of recording a gun time instead of a chip time (I crossed the line after about 30 seconds) - I can only assume that my chip has been mixed up with someone else's.

What's even worse, of course, is that I have no evidence at all to back me up.  For all you know, I could be making all this up.  (The athlete doth protest too much, methinks.)

Ah well - that's all in the past now.  I'm having a week or so off, then I'll see if I can run without my legs complaining.  Then what?  I haven't been PB-hunting for a year or two.  No point letting the training go completely to waste...