Guest Race Recap: Manhattan Half Marathon

As predicted, I made the executive decision around 5:45am Saturday morning to wimp out of the half marathon. Whooping cough plus fever just seemed a little too aggressive to run on, even for me. Whatever, man, I paid my dues at last year's Manhattan Half! Kim, however, braved the Arctic conditions and is here to give you this week's race recap. 

I'll be stepping in to do the race recap for the Manhattan Half Marathon.  Dearest Monica has been stuck inside with the plague lately, and as any cautious runner (or Runner's World's Twitter feed) will tell you, there is a simple guideline for running while sick: head colds are fine, but as soon as you have a fever, you need to give yourself time to recover sans running in the cold.  

NYRR photo of the winter wonderland...

And Saturday morning's race was definitely cold.  At the 8 am start time, the temperature on the CNN building read 15 degrees.  After cabbing it to the starting line because of a slight failure to look at where the starting line actually was (65th and CPW, in case you were interested--a bit far away from the usual 102ish/UES starting lines for most of the other races we've done in the park), I walked into a crowd of people wearing various amounts of spandex and realized that I participate in a sport full of CRAZY PEOPLE.  There could be no other explanation for why 4500 people were milling about in the snow wearing nothing but a couple measly layers of clothing, getting ready to run 13 miles.    

Going into the race, I knew that it'd be a challenge.  From the temperature (which had managed to nudge up to 16 by the end of the race) to the course (two loops around the park, which meant facing the dreaded Harlem Hill twice), to my lack of preparation (eh, standard), the bar was set pretty low.  That being said, I probably shouldn't have gone out the night before.  This inevitably meant explaining why I wasn't joining after the Fancy Museum Party and a round full of reactions to running a half in January which ranged from "that's awesome, you're crazy" to "why would you do that, you're crazy".  After flashing some of my over-competitive credentials and possibly challenging MM to a triathlon (?), I went to sleep with the idea to just make it through the race. 

OMFG SHORTS?!?!

Standing in the cold made it slightly hard to take the race at the pace I wanted to, and I spent the first 6-7 miles cruising along at 10 min pace (which is in fact cruising given the fact that I hadn't trained).  The first run up the Harlem Hill wasn't too bad--the competitive spirit came out again and made me realize that it's fun to pass all the people who are walking (also, that walking up hills=giving up, and who wants to do that?).  Unfortunately, this ambition quickly translated to "ok seriously what are you doing" around mile 9.  At this point, I think my muscles were actually freezing, as were my hands.  Time to slow down and put my hands in my pockets so I don't get frostbite.  Check. 

The last 4 miles passed in a run/walk haze, as each time I stopped to thaw out my hands a bit, the rest of my muscles would get increasingly more angry about being forced to run again.  The second time up the hill I still refused to walk, but remembered talking about how the hill basically inspires illness and hatred in people and definitely felt it the entire way up.  By the time the race was over, it was all I could do to slowly struggle to get more layers on and walk the mile back to my apartment.  

Took a look at my time after the necessary 3 or so hours of thawing, and turns out I was 2 mins away from a PR.  Huh.  Guess my claim to be extreme (mainly used as an excuse for why I was running) might turn out to be true after all? In the end, now I am intensely motivated to finish the rest of the Grand Prix (the other 4 halves in the remaining boroughs) this year, so I never have to run this race again.