Gobbling Up the Miles

If you run, you probably get basted with options for Turkey Day trots.  Many cities, community groups and schools conduct some sort of 5 or 10k family jaunt either on Thanksgiving itself or this weekend.  I even found a few marathons offered as pre-turkey activities.  For those not traveling near and far, the turkey runs offer a nice start to  a day of sitting around watching football (or better yet playing Skylanders or Call of Duty) and then gorging on stuffing and pumpkin pie.  I call it banking the calories as a way to alleviate any gluttonous tendencies.

But for us, the runners of the world, we do not need an organized event to celebrate Thanksgiving and set up our bodies to absorb a massive meal.  In recent years, I have found that picking my own special course is far more rewarding and engenders many more feelings of thanks.  If you love those turkey trots, by all means, keep running them.    But if you are bored with those and the logistics, cost and travel time associated with participating in a planned event, read on.

The NYC Marathon as told through illustration

I wanted to share this nifty live twitter/sketch of the NYC Marathon last Sunday.   Here's the blurb from the post and then follow the link to see the whole thing:

Hot Buzz

New York Times Cartoonist Live-Draws The NYC Marathon While Running It

Christoph Niemann, a cartoonist from the New York Times (remember this), live-drew and tweeted his entire NYC marathon run. 

The First Entry.  Follow the Link for the Rest. It's worth it.  If you like bananas.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/new-york-times-cartoonist-live-draws-the-nyc-marat

Credit for finding this goes to fellow Antarctica and NYC Runner (3:01!) Larry I.  Thanks Larry and well done in NYC!

Success! And some pictures too.

Hello all -

My race bib and finisher medal

Today (Sunday, November 6), I competed in my 2nd NYC Marathon.  Somewhere around 45,000 other runners did so as well on an absolutely gorgeous, sunny, cool day.  In fact, the conditions were so good that the male winner, Geoffrey Mutai, shattered the course record by 2 minutes.   Mutai accomplished a similar feat in the Boston Marathon last April.  The Kenyan must be considered a favorite for the London Olympic race next year - if he makes the team given how strong Kenya is in this sport.

I didn't run anywhere that fast, but that didn't stop me from running my second sub-3:40 marathon in 3 weeks.  The official result shows as 3:37:44.  On the course to support me were my parents, my son Justin, his girlfriend Rachel and friend Michael A.  So, I got to enjoy the experience with them.  I thought I would share some mostly "pre-race" photos.  After they publish the race photos, I'll be sure to put those online too.

Thanks to everyone who sent those wonderful messages and encouragement posts throughout the past few days.

A beautiful sunrise at JFK when I landed on Friday morning.

The NYC Marathon - 1 day to go

I was looking at the NYC Marathon app on my iPhone, and I saw it roll over from 1 day to go to 24:59:59 to go.  And I thought - wow, that's a weird bug.  25 hours to go.  But then I realized that indeed there are 25 hours since tonight we get that hour sleep back from the spring.  Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 AM.

And that's great, because Sunday at 6 AM, I will be aboard the Staten Island Ferry to shuttle across NY Harbor to the start of my 2nd NYC Marathon.  The race traverses across all five boroughs ending in Central Park in Manhattan.

Full course map:  http://www.nycmarathon.com/documents/INGNYCM11_Course_Map_ForWeb.pdf

When I was young, I remember seeing all those people starting the race on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Today you can watch it online at Universal Sports.  But, that's nothing compared to standing there - the helicopters circling above, the fireboats spouting plumes of water into the air.  And then Frank sings "New York, New York" and you are off.  The bridge shakes as the runners storm across the upper and lower decks.  Then you hit an amazing crowd of spectators in Brooklyn.  Tremendous!