Race Report: 2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope

This will be a pretty quick report. It was the usual 4 mile route traveling up the east side of the park, across the 102nd St transverse, down the west side, and finishing on the 72nd St transverse. I warmed up with a rather long 3 mile run from the starting line up and around the reservoir, and back to the finish line. The weather was near perfect, calm and about 50 degrees to start the run. After running a few races without pre-race announcements I’ve come to appreciate NYRR’s announcements and the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner”, which was beautiful, even if the lyrics were messed up again. As this was the Japan Day Run for Hope (planned before the earthquake and tsunami) there were officials from the Japanese Embassy who addressed the runners. This was probably the saddest part of the race largely because the ambassador felt the need to stress that Japanese food was safe to eat. The scientist in me wanted to scream at this point. Of course it’s safe to eat, there hasn’t been that much radiation. Ughh. Anyway, back to the race.

As usual, we had that strange start stop thing before the starting line. I’d love to model that as a multi-agent system to see what causes this crush, but whatever. It probably took about a 45 seconds to cross the starting line, which seemed long for having a red bib. Most of my miles were pretty even, or at least better than last time. First mile looked like it was about 7:40 thanks to the crush of runners, mile two was a little over seven miles, and mile 3 and 4 were pretty decent at 7:26 and 7:12. Now, last 4 miler in the park I complained about going out too fast in the second mile. But I never bothered to actually look at the elevation. Mile two is almost entirely downhill, so it makes sense that I’m faster. I’ll keep that in mind for future runs.

2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope splits from RunKeeper

2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope Elevation and Pace

As we came along side the lake toward the 72nd St transverse I was tired, but not exhausted. Toward the finish line I saw the clock ticking toward 30:00. I knew I’d finish under it because I didn’t cross the start for about 45 or so seconds, but something about beating the clock still resonates with me. I don’t think I actually made it. Probably crossed the finish at 30:01 where I was immediately greeted by Mary Wittenberg, who had also just completed the races and told me and all the other runners to keep moving along. The final results, a PR, but not by much. I’m moving down my 4M time incrementally, from 7:20/mi to 7:19/mi and now 7:17/mi. At this race sometime in the next three years I might break into 6:59/mi range. That would be awesome.

2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope Results

Incidentally, I’ve noticed that this is best age-grade percentage that I’ve had in a race yet, which is encouraging. It means that at least if I’m not getting much faster, I’m not getting any slower and doing better than other people in my age bracket. And now, six more weeks of training until Grandma’s Marathon. I’m stoked!

Keep Running!