NYC Marathon Recap
I watched the New York City Marathon on the big screen at my local running store with some fellow runners and it was an awesome experience. I ran an easy 5 mile run before the race started and I was feeling pretty good sitting down and enjoying the show.
The race started and we saw the elite women running at a blistering pace. Well it was a blistering pace for us, lowly amateur runners but in reality the pace at the NYC Marathon was pretty slow this year. There were no course records broken despite ideal running conditions and there was a huge lead pack in both men’s and women’s races at the half way point which is a clear indicator of a slow starting pace.
What I noticed during the race was just how much the camera angle would affect the perceived pace of the runners. When they showed them from the front they all looked like they were jogging at an easy pace. And honestly it is not far from the truth. To those guys/ladies, running 5 minute per mile pace probably feels pretty easy. But as soon as the camera showed them from the side you could see the tremendous length of their strides and just how long their reach was. They looked like gazelles, a truly amazing sight for anyone to see. Their form just seemed truly incredible and effortless. I could not get enough of it. Made me feel like a total slow poke, which is the truth when I compare myself to these elites.
The race didn’t really get interesting until the second half when tactics and surges started to develop and the lead pack started to fall apart. I greatly enjoyed the women’s battle for first where US marathon debutante Shalane Flanagan ended up with the shorter end of the stick and finished second. I was watching the race in the company of former marathoner and Olympian Kyle Heffner who qualified for the 1980 Olympic Marathon team with a 2:10:55. It was a true shame he could not go to the Olympics as the US boycotted the 1980 Moscow games. He shared some great insight about marathon racing strategy and how had Shalane had some more experience with the distance she very well could have won the race.
The men’s race’s big event was when Haile Gebrselassi, arguably the worlds best long distance runner, dropped out of the race at mile 16 on the Queensboro Bridge. He stopped running and he was out of the race. At that point we did not know that this would be the last time to see him run in a race as an hour after the marathon finish he announced his retirement from running. Haile was such a nice and genuine guy, it broke my heart to see him fighting back the tears as he announced his retirement.
The two other men that most people were following were Jared the Subway guy who allegedly ran over 550 miles to train for the NYC Marathon and Edison Pena, the Chilean miner who ran a daily dose of 6 miles in in the mine while trapped underground and decided to run New York City Marathon as a publicity stunt.
As Dennis Miller would say, now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but.. well, here is my brutally honest as usual take on Pena and Jared:
Jared never wanted to run a marathon. He is not a runner. He did it because of his binding contract to Subway and because the corporate monkeys told him to. I an interview in March this is what he said:
Any plans for doing other races?
I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out what this whole runner’s high is all about. Maybe next I’ll train for the national ping-pong tournament. I might have a shot at winning that one. I’m joking, of course.
Just a week before New York this is what he said:
Do you think you’ll do more marathons?
Jared: I love to run but I don’t see myself doing more marathons. I will continue to run, doing 5 or 6 mile runs because they don’t leave me so exhausted {as the long training runs} where the day is shot. Before this year, I had never run a mile in my life. I am excited to do this once, but I’m not sure if I like the long distance.
These words are obviously not a runner’s sentiments. These are words someone who’s forced into doing something against their will would say. Now mind you that it’s not a sub 4 hour marathon or a marathon at any pace that makes you a runner. It’s the constant pursuit of getting better and striving for improvement and running with that in mind. I think Jared absolutely lacks that commitment and hence he’s not a runner.
As for his training, he and the corporate PR engine behind him, they half assed it. He ran 3 times a week, one easy run, one “tempo” and one long run. That’s it. He never built up the endurance for a marathon. Not on that schedule. He is a Subway ambassador and this was his job for the last 5 months; to get ready to run New York and promote Subway along the way. He had no 40 hour work week outside of it. He had all the resources he wanted. Hell, he met Meb Keflezighi and got pointers, whatever good it did for someone like Jared.
So Jared put in a half assed training effort and got a half assed marathon result. I think it was to be totally expected. Last year almost half a million people completed a marathon. Out of that, about 278 thousand were men. Of those 278 thousand, 78.1% of them ran the marathon under 5 hours. That puts Jared smack in the bottom 20% of marathon finishers times. If that’s not abysmal I don’t know what is. But quite honestly for the people who are inspired by Jared it does not matter whether he ran a 5:13 or a 3:40. It would have been all the same. Jared is a marathoner and that is all that matters to them. Never mind that the average 32 year old guy who finishes a marathon does so under 4:18.
As for the Chilean runner, I’m not at all surprised that he finished with both knees iced and barely hobbling it in for a 5:40. Running 6 miles a day every day, if it’s true, is not a bad mileage base. It’s 42 miles a week which is right about the same weekly mileage I averaged for my marathon cycle. But the lack of any kind of run longer than 6 miles will only get you so far. A 6 mile run does not prepare you for a 26.2 mile run. His publicity stunt was probably just as stupid as Jared’s but at least he has the excuse of not getting the training and support that Jared received.
I guess I’m a glass half empty guy and all I see is two pathetically failed publicity stunts but in the case of Pena, as someone told me today, he should just be happy to have a glass, regardless of where the water level lies. He survived that terrible ordeal living under ground and barely escaping death. Running a marathon somehow does not come into my mind when I think trapped miners.
Feel free to agree or disagree with my assessment of these two celebrity runners, as Dennis Miller would say: of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
A week ago
I’m not much of a rebel but today I did something naughty. I drew graffiti all over my neighborhood. Well don’t think for a second that I suddenly turned into a right brain artist overnight because I didn’t! I just simply had enough of the inconsistent distance measurements and estimating paces that could be off by 7-10 seconds per mile because of GPS and/or footpod discrepancies. So I went and bought a 