Grete's Great Gallop Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

Spent the night in Hoboken, NJ at a friends apartment so I would not have to drive far from NJ to get to Central Park. Start place was on 72nd st. Took the subway into the city and called Coach Adam and Ram.

I knew the weather report was calling for 70% chance of rain. They somehow missed the other 30, cause it sure did find us. Race start was at 8:45am. It promptly started raining between 7:30am and 8am. From there it only let up once til the end of the race. Then of course the sun came out. Seriously. The race had finished and the sun came out and was gorgous weather.

Prior to that just 10 mins before the race it started to RAIN!. I met up with Coach Adam, Ram and a ton of other Team For Kids members in the park. We went for a light warm up jog and then the whole group did some stretching in unison. I felt like I was a worker at a Japanese auto plant.

Team For Kids really has their timing down. As soon as we finished our stretching we all jogged over the start and the gun had just gone off. My wait time from the pack to timing mat was only about 4-5 minutes. Very short. So the race began.

It was surival mode in the beginning to maintain a pace to stay with the whole pack. This has been only my 4th running race without swimming or biking done before hand. In Tri's when we go to the run portion there's usually not 4000 people along with you.

The rain was really coming down now. I ran the first 3 miles in sub 10 min miles. I was worried I was going blow up too soon. I soon lost some pace people Adam had thrown me to at the start of the race. I was on my own. But not for long.

At :57 minutes into the run my Garmin 305 went Fubar'd on me. But before that I was spotting other TFK runners and running up to them to introduce myself. I brought my new Zen V Plus mp3 recorder with me on the run. So I started small conversation with them and usually asked them their name and how they were fealing. We would talk for a bit and then I would spring ahead to catch up to the next green TFK jersey I saw. I think I got about 8-10 people from TFK on tape.
Some of them even knew who I was, thanks to Coach Adam. You Da man!

So at :57 minutes my FR305 went nutz, the timer just decided to stop on it's own, the HR was not displayed and the pace was way off. So I decided to totally go it alone on HR after that came back after a bit.

When mile 8 hit, I felt GREAT. I really hauled butt right up to mile 12. Along the way I met up with Cliff, I think he is the Executive director of TFK. Then I met Allan and we had a nice talk at Mile 12. I told him I think I could bust 2hrs. He looked at his watch and agreed and said to "Go For It". So I turned it on.

I passed Coach Adam and he snapped a pic of me at about 300 feet from the finish. I had my mp3 player out and recording everything. I felt I was going to PR it. My old 1/2 time was 2:09:00 I did it 1:58:11. In the rain!

Afterwards the sun came out. Doh. I made my way to Coach Adam to chear on other TFK'rs coming still coming in. Then I made my way back to bag check to get into some warm dry clothes. My girl, Special K was in FL waiting for my call. I saw a text message from her that she was at the start line looking for me. She's a little smart butt. For those that don't know, I missed her coming across the line in her 1st half marathon in Philly, so she was giving me a little ribbing. I forgave her by the way. :)

Do a rain dance in the morning. Sacrifice a small animal so it wouldn't rain. Pray

Ate a hot dog at Columbus Circle.


DNA


Soon to be a podcast of the run. Itunes. Lookup keyword Jetpack to see the podcast. Recorded my whole run and more.