Scotland Run

Last Saturday morning I perfectly commemorated my one year anniversary of moving to New York by joining nearly 8000 runners in the Scotland 10K Run!

It was a slightly chilly morning in Central Park waiting for the 8am start but as usual there wasn't the same wind you get back home in North-East Scotland so it turned out to be ideal for racing.
I did need a hot chocolate to wrap my hands round on the train ride home though.

The goody bag you got with the race number pick-up contained a saltire hat and a guide to various running events in Scotland.

Took a chance on my lighter weight Inov8 shoes and they were fine and light for a one-off race but I'd go back to my Saucony Kinvara for training or longer road races.
Enjoyed a slightly mangled version of Flower of Scotland before the start and Alex Salmond wishing us good luck.

Plenty of kilts in action © NYRR

As a New York Road Runners member they have one of my previous race pace times down as 6.42 so I had a reasonable starting coral but it still took at least 3/4 of a mile for the narrow-ish park road to clear enough that I didn't have to waste so much energy concentrating so hard on not running into people, trying to pass others and avoiding the banner tape on one side and the angled gutter on the other.
Thus, mile 1 was easily my slowest at 7.00, whether this is good in terms of forcing me to go off slower I've still to discover.

They had bagpipers before the race and also near each mile there was a lone piper. It did make me mildly homesick for a second, even though it's not like you encounter bagpipers during your regular day, unless you work around the Royal Mile or Edinburgh Castle I guess.

© NYRR

The course was a clockwise (for a change) circuit of Central Park and has a couple of slight hills. My splits after the first mile were 6.40, 6.27, 6.36 then combined with a slight downhill to the south east corner and the run to the finish, 6.17 and a 6.15. I was pretty pleased with my 40.38 finish time and training is going well for the Bear Mountain Half Marathon in May.

© MarathonFoto.com

© 2013 SmugMug, Inc.

I just happened to get dressed in blue and white that morning!
I finished in 330th and 50th in my age group. The winning times were a speedy 30.17 for the men and a course record 33.22 for the women!

Afterwards there were a few little tents with various Scottish based stuff including a Glasgow based band.

© NYRR

Partly due to the chilly weather the freebie race hats were out in force and the sea of blue and white combined with all the Scottish flags in the area was a nice sight.

As usual you're all done and dusted by 9am and get to have that nice feeling of walking through the park and a few blocks to the train when it's nice and quiet out on the streets. You very quickly become a typical New Yorker when you live & work here..... bloody tourists getting in the way!

Above and Beyond

REI has been on Forbes Magazine's annual list of the 100 best companies to work for since they started their list in 1998.
The pay might not be super great and the hours a bit sketchy sometimes but they do offer some great benefits and also try and make sure their employees strike that live/work balance.

I had been tasked with tidying up the footwear warehouse over the last month and now it's probably as good as it's gonna get! Anyway, I was getting some good praise and today was given a gift:

Pretty good eh?

Working the High Line

As an outdoor company, REI likes to give back to the outdoors by conserving and protecting various natural spaces, working with local communities and volunteer groups.
As such, they like their workers to sign up to some of the volunteer projects the store gets involved with in the New York area. One such project that at least I had an interest in seeing as we have enjoyed visiting there on numerous occasions was the Spring cutback on the High Line garden.
The High Line is the park built on a one mile section of the former elevated New York Central Railroad spur called the West Side Line, which runs along the lower west side of Manhattan.

We learned that the High Line’s plants are not trimmed back at the onset of cold weather in the fall but instead the landscape is left intact throughout the winter and as spring arrives, Friends of the High Line staff and volunteers work together to cut back the plants to prepare for the new growing season.
More than 100,000 plants are trimmed back during this process.

Here we are getting our instructions:

Photo by Liz Ligon

After our volunteer date was rained out for two weeks in a row the third and final day was a perfect Spring day.

Photo by Liz Ligon

Working with Heather, one twisted and one cut. Then we used fine trimmed and raked up. Easy.
Oh, and tried really hard not to step on anything that we shouldn't be stepping on!

It will be good to come back to the same area later in the year once everything has bloomed and we can be proud to say, hey, we did that.... little bit there.

Photo by Liz Ligon

Easter sightseeing

Firstly, last Friday at soccer, a couple of us were standing on the sidelines as our game started and were 'lucky' enough to see something like this flying across the sky.

We were a bit shocked as we didn't know what it was. It was super fast, like a rocket, flying straight, seemingly out of nowhere and then disappeared as quickly. Kinda scary at the time but I later read reports of meteor sightings up the Eastern coast of the US that night.

Heather and I went up to Central Park for a midweek run. At the entrance we happened upon some nutritional bar promo thing, nearly as disturbing as the meteor!

Then after our run we checked out some sculptures, United Enemies, at the opposite side of the park.

© Columbia Daily Spectator

The other pic I took was on my bike ride home one day I stopped at one of the piers in Brooklyn where the HMS Edinburgh was on a tour before being heading home to be decommissioned.

The training starts now

This year's main race entry and target goal is the North Face Endurance Challenge up at Bear Mountain State Park on May 4th. I drew up a race training plan as best I could given the type of event it is and the training started today.
They have distances from 5K right up to 50K including a marathon relay but along with a couple of friends we have decided to give the half marathon a go. The finishing times from last year seem to add a good 30 minutes to a 10K and having read a couple of forums and seen the course profile I can see why.

I only ever have work schedules up to the end of the following week and with such differing shifts it could take a bit of planning and getting used to running at different times in order to fit the sessions in if I want to give it a good go.
Although I love trail events and good challenging hills so this should be brilliant, the worst part again will be getting up in the middle of the night to get out there for the 8am start.

Woo-hoo, 5 star scenery! I always trip off-road when I try and look at something like the view though.

Today I had my first encounter with any kind of American health care as I had to get an eye-check up to get more contact lenses. They had real trouble finding my health benefits as there were no details  listed under my plan. I called my provider and got them to email the details and apparently I just get some kind of discount plan on eye care.
It was also maybe the first time I had heard the phrase "at your age", as he recommended getting the eye drops thing so he could see behind my eye. I definitely think it's a very American thing to be referred to a specialist for everything. So now I have to see a retina specialist to take a digital photograph of the back of my eye to give them a baseline record in case anything changes. And even with my discounts it was around £53 just for the eye test and contact lense checkup.

Back to the park

I took most of this week off after last weeks running, partly due to the poor weather, work schedules and sleeping in!
Got back into it on Friday by deeming it safe to resume the 5am bike ride into work. It was a bit colder than the last time I did it back in December and my hands and toes were cold by the time I got there. It didn't help that the manager on duty was late and we had to wait outside for nearly twenty minutes! Did my warehouse shift then cycled back home.

Two hours at home and I was off on the train to the New York Road Runners office on the upper east side to pick up my number for Saturday's race. I then ran across Central Park and then took another train down the west side to where we play football, as Friday night is 'soccer' night.
The new pitch we use is a lot wider and firmer than before though, and it kills my muscles. It's funny, I can run up the Empire State Building and race ten miles with no pain but a game of football leaves me with a real sore hip and two sore ankles from a bad tackle and a blocked shot. The fact we do no warm down and sit on the train for 40 minutes home doesn't help, I could barely make it up the subway stairs!

After Friday's 4.30am start, Saturday's 7am alarm was like a lie in. It was the Al Gordon Classic 4M in Prospect Park and with an 8am start I jogged over at 7.45am just in time to jump in the appropriate coral before they closed it off to others.

It was about 5º with drizzle in the air but with little wind this time. Waiting at the start line, the announcer made reference to the number of Scottish hats he could see and how the weather may well have been imported from Scotland. I had noticed at last weekends race that there were a few Saltire hats, probably given out in the NYRR's Scotland Run. Coincidentally, another upcoming (April) race I have just entered.

From the photos on the Road Runner's website I made a little compilation of the hats on show:

The first half mile was pretty tough making my way through the crowds but after that I got into my own pace and finished in 26.48, around 6.42 pace. There were some fast runners out there as this was 180th place out of the 3605 finishers.
Pretty shattered now but thankfully I have Sunday off too before another opening shift on Monday.

My strong finish ©Marathonfoto.com

According to the Road Runner's website "Saturday morning's Al Gordon Classic in Prospect Park was a four-mile tribute to a man who lived for 107 healthy, active years.
Gordon started running marathons at the age of 80, proving that it really is never too late to start. And it's never too early, either: More than 200 of the finishers in the four-mile race were between the ages of 12 and 19."

Cherry Tree 10 Miler

I just completed another race, Sunday's Cherry Tree 10 Miler in Prospect Park. I didn't really fancy doing a ten mile 'race' at this time of year but it was only £15, didn't start until 10am and the start is about half a mile from our house!
It's organised by the Prospect Park Track Club and they call it 'the race for the hardcore' because of the time of year. This was proven by the -3º temperature combined with winds of up to 30mph thus giving around 650 finishers from an entry of around 1200.
It was an unusual race preparation for me this morning. I got up and had some porridge, then went out and up the block for a 5min walk to the high school where the registration was. I picked up my number and free gloves and then came back home.

Fleecy!

Actually, I also carried a bin bag full of still packaged Aberdeen 10K (2010/2011) t-shirts that my dad used as packaging for my shipped goods. They had asked for donations to be sent to runners in Belize so I guess soon there will be some Belize runners running about in City of Aberdeen race tees complete with The Running Shop logo.
I decided I would take a chance on wearing my long shorts and compression socks along with  a thermal top, short sleeve zip and hat & gloves.
So I waited at home until 15 minutes before the start then jogged over. It was perfect for just walking down to the start and with only a 3 or 4 minute wait we were off.

The course is basically 3 laps of the park. The profile is this:

There is a long slight descent, flat and then shorter steeper climb, nothing major but three times and of course the wind was in our faces for this part!!
At some point I actually even noticed my glutes feeling numb from the cold, they were already partly sore from Friday's hard soccer pitch. I was also constantly pulling my sleeves up and down as one minute the wind was behind us and it was sunny, the next it was in your face and shady.

This photo of the start makes it look sunny and warm with some of the fast guys in their shorts.

The start ©Lynus Ly

And then this is what most other people were wearing!

Anyway, I ran negative splits and finished strongly, the downhill helped, and without even trying if you know what I mean, finished in 1.09.59!
I was 89th out of the 650 and 17th in my age group. Really pleased that I have held onto the endurance I built up last year especially as I am just getting over the cold again.

The walk back to the top of the park was so cold, into the wind I had to hold my hands behind my back. I slowly jogged home, stretched, got changed and then walked back to the high school to pick up my free bagel, hot chocolate and the free ice cream sample they were giving out, ha ha, what I'll do for free food.
This was the coldest race I've ever done and although I have probably overdressed for winter races in the past this was on the line for being a bit too much on the cold side.

Then we went back out in mid-afternoon to try a new pizza place that just opened on our high street. Pizza slices, some with some non-traditional toppings. So I tried the thicker square sicilian style where the sauce comes on top, a philly cheesesteak slice (steak, onions, cheese) and a sausage stromboli, while Heather had the chicken salad slice. I'd never choose that but I had a bite and that wood-oven taste you get on the bread actually made it really nice. It might take a while to try them all, but I'll certainly try.

© windsorterrace.patch.com