I know what you’re thinking. Race reports are all fun and games, and let’s be honest, I’m pretty good at writing them. Still, I’m not going to bore you with the details of every race I run.
In fact, I’ll probably only write about two types of races:
- Half marathons (maybe) and above
- Times I run with Jess, my wife
Jess will be the first person to tell you that she hates running. More often than not, she will say to me, “I have no idea how you got so into this hobby, but enjoy that miserable long run on your calendar!” But occasionally, she’ll stumble across a signup page and get excited about running a 5K, which makes the whole thing fun for me, too.
For better or worse, I hire myself as a de-facto running coach every time she starts training for a 5K. Leading up to the 2018 Washington Heights Salsa, Blues, and Shamrocks 5K (what a mouthful, right?), she heard me say the following things more times than she could count. And for that, I am very sorry.
- “You’re leaning forward too much! Shoulders back, or you’ll cramp!”
- “Watch your heel strike! I will explain ‘heel striking’ once we’re done.”
- “How are you feeling? Do you need water?”
- “No seriously, do you need water?”
I like to think my badgering came from a good place. The elevation chart made it obvious that it would be the hilliest 5K that Jess had ever run, so I didn’t want there to be any surprises. Neither did Jess, who met me after a long run a few weekends ago and said that she wanted to do hill repeats in Central Park.
“You want to just…run up and down a hill a few times?” I asked.
“Yeah, you do them all the time and claim it works, so prove it to me!”
Overall, her training plan for running a 5K went really well, and I was very proud. The day before our race, I hoped to get in a 15-mile long run. But two miles into it, a gnarly wind nearly brought me to a complete stop on the Queensboro Bridge. I thought about getting to 6 before calling it a day, but I didn’t want to come home and tell Jess, “Boy, the wind is really miserable today and you’re going to hate it tomorrow!” To avoid having that conversation, I powered through the rest of my work out. Thanks, Jess!
Race Day
I’m going to fess up to the fact that my “plan” for running a 5K in the morning, in hindsight, was not awesome. The night before, I decided that taking a cab was a much better option than riding the subway all the way from Queens to Washington Heights. On paper, it made sense. A 25-minute drive and an extra hour of sleep. Who says no?
Things were mostly fine, but then our driver decided to try and find a shortcut around traffic…and almost drove us over the George Washington Bridge. After we hollered at him for a while, he eventually turned around and dropped us off a few blocks away from the porta potties. I was worried that we’d have to rush into our corral, but thanks to the staggered start, we got settled in plenty of time.
While we waited, at least a dozen people taking a dozen different selfies crowded our personal space. I wanted to say, “I’d be happy to take this picture for you if you’d stop stomping on our feet,” but I guess people prefer the race-day-selfie over the nicely-posed-race-day-shot-in-portrait-mode. Whatever, I guess.
After what felt like three hours, we were off. The race started off with a pretty nice downhill stretch. We would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been for the kid in front of us who kept darting back towards us whenever he lost his buddy. If we had been watching the race, it might have been cute to watch. But we were running it, and he nearly tripped us three times in the first quarter mile. I wanted to scream at him, but…not my kid, so I kept my mouth shut. Even with the little brat doing whatever he wanted, we managed to navigate through the clutter and run the first mile a few seconds faster than we had during our recent training runs together. Success! By the 1.5 mile marker, I remembered that we’d get to run through the Cloisters.
“This is my first time here,” I said.
“Mine too,” Jess replied. “Let’s come back another time when we’re not running a 5K.”
By the end of that short conversation, we finished the 2nd mile faster than the first. “One mile to go,” I proclaimed as we up one of the bigger hills of the morning. I re-hired myself as Jess’ coach as we began climbing, which is where I would have gotten very annoyed with me if I had been in her shoes.
“Can you see the mailbox halfway up the hill?” I asked.
“Yes, I can see the mailbox.”
“OK, let’s get to the mailbox!”
“I think we need to get to the top of the –”
“Get to the mailbox!”
She, of course, got to the mailbox. She also crushed the entire hill, and the one after that. And before we knew it, it was all downhill to the finish line. I was pretty surprised by the amount of crowd support in the last few hundred meters. “This sounds like stretches of the marathon,” I said.
“Really?” Jess replied. “That’s pretty cool. I kind of get why you do this now.”
“Would you want to train for a half marathon this year?”
“Let’s not get crazy now.”
In the last 50 meters, I saw that Jess was still looking strong. “Let’s pass a few more of these people,” I said. “Can you sprint?”
“Yeah, let’s sprint!”
And just like that, we were done in 36:26. I think if we hadn’t had to deal with the annoying kid and all of the walkers at the beginning of the race, we would have finished a couple minutes faster. Jess also told me that she felt strong at the end, which I credited to the fact that she agreed to carbo load the night before. It might not be a full marathon, but you still need those carbs, I argued. Plus, I make a killer tomato sauce, so everyone won the night before.
We treated ourselves to brunch back home, which is where I realized that we didn’t take a lot of pictures. I’m the worst, and will be much better about selfies when we run the Queens 10K this summer.
I didn’t want to come home and tell Jess, “Boy, the wind is really miserable today and you’re going to hate it tomorrow!” So funny! Yay for the Queens 10K. Cheer Squad will prepare so Jess will reallllly want to run a half after that!