Spectating not racing

Heather and a couple of friends did the Running Of The Balls 5K and or 10K today. I went along to spectate, support and have a little jog around Roosevelt Island cause it's a funky little island to visit!

And of course you get to take the Tram thing back across to Manhattan. I did nearly 4M of light jogging around in prep for tomorrow's Queens 10K. Just watching the weather forecast now though as it's supposed to be rain for sure and chance of a thunderstorm. Aggggghhhhhh, humidity!

Music x3

After seeing the Maccabees supporting Mumford & Sons at Coney Island, they announced they were doing a little show at Le Poisson Rouge, the intimate Bleecker Street venue that we seen Mumford & Sons earlier this year.

We got there about 35 minutes before they went on and timed it just right to get a great view from the left of the stage. It filled up nicely and there seemed to be quite a lot of fans who knew all their songs going way back.

Heather even asked nicely just before they came back on for the encore and the sound guy was nice enough to give here a copy of the setlist to add to our collection.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday night I got to go to Radio City Music Hall for the first time as we saw Belle & Sebastian.

The sound was awesome. The large screen behind them was pretty cool the way it was worked into some songs. They had a few dancers on stage all the way from Scotland and then even brought a little bagpipe action into the end of one song.
It was all seated but pretty much everyone stood after the first song. Combined with last night and running a hard-ish tempo that morning on the way to work killed my quads and calves though, ha ha.
After the next 10K I am definitely getting a massage or two.

Then the following Wednesday we took our camp chairs over to Prospect Park to see, well, listen to Damien Rice. It was a paid Summerstage / Celebrate Brooklyn show so the fences went up but you could obviously still hear it, quite well it turned out.

It was a cold-ish 14 or 15 degree night, combined with it being Damien Rice, meant it was pretty quiet where we decided to sit off to one side on the top of a little hill.

Amazingly when he came on stage he stood right in the gap between the poles and bandshell frame so we had something to focus on rather than just hearing the sound. Sitting in your camp chair, drinking and eating a snack is more like it. Although we left with about 4 songs to go as we were just too cold by that point.

The view in front of us

The normal view

The megazoom view!

Definitely looking forward to going back for more free cheap seat shows, Interpol, Punch Brothers and Willie Nelson to come.

Al Goldstein PPTC 5K #2

Last Wednesday was the next round of midweek 5K racing.
I tried my lighter shoes this time and the weather was a little cooler so I had hopes of going close to my 18.19 from a couple of weeks ago.

There was a bit of a course change though as the park was heaving last Wednesday.
National Running Day meant NYRR had a stall at one entrance, no doubt enticing a few more out for a run.
More importantly it was the first in the Summer Concert Series at the Prospect Park Bandshell so as well as the line to get in being insane there were a crap tonne of people all over the top end of the park and even food carts stuck in the pedestrian/running lanes.

So it was two lower loops. A very slight uphill, downhill then the regular flat-ish run along the bottom of the park.

The start was a little funny as there were about a dozen kids who all lined up right at the front. Although when the gun went they were a bit all over the place as kids tend to be and a few runners were a bit put off as it was a little crazy for the first 200m.

The slight downhill led me to a crazy 5.38 first mile. But I managed a 6.03 2nd mile and another strong 5.53 finish. 23rd out of 318 and 3rd in my age group.

So I ran a PB of 18.17 on National Running Day. Nice!

Coney Island in the rain

It had sounded so good at the time. The Maccabees and Mumford & Sons at MCU Park, a small minor league baseball stadium just on the other side of the beach at Coney Island. A nice Summer night in June, shorts, tee....
Well, it was nice weather the few days before but it rained heavy the night before and it lingered all day long making it a little bit cold and damp, a bit of a novelty at this time of year as it's normally still warm when it rains as it's more thunderstorm weather.
I'd never seen so many ponchos at an event!

Anyway, it didn't ruin the gig. The venue was really cool with the Coney Island theme park stuff in the background. Both bands sounded awesome and after a bit of initial shuffling position we got a really good view off to the side.

Al Golstein PPTC 5K #1

Wednesday night, yup, four days after the half marathon I ran the first in the local 5K Prospect Park series. Through the PPTC speed sessions I got free entry into the series too!

Some PPTC'ers, I know two of them!

I jogged the nearly two miles to the start and my legs, especially my quads were sooooooo heavy and tight.
For a seven race series and one that didn't cost anything either, it's not like I was wasting money on it or that I wouldn't have a chance to run faster later on in the series.
I didn't look at my watch for any kind of pacing and just went for it as normal.
I ran strong and finished the last mile with good strength even though my quads were really tight the whole way round and especially when I crossed the line!

I had splits of 6.04 (up the hill), 5.53 (along and down), 5.54 to the finish. 5.56 pace for an amazing 18.19 time. I would have settled for close to 19mins the way my legs felt.
11th out of 218 and 3rd 40-44.
That pretty much equaled my PB so I hope to run faster when I have fresher legs... and put a vest on and maybe try my lighter shoes.

In other news, we finally bought a BBQ. Put it out on our fire escape and have already BBQ'd twice.

And we went to our storage unit and I swapped over all my winter clothing for all my summer shorts and tees, etc.

Brooklyn Half Marathon

A kind of main race for the year but not really... but kind of.
I entered this race before I had fully committed to doing the marathon at Bear Mountain but then thought with all that training I could get away with doing very little in the two weeks following the marathon and have a crack at reducing my PB from 2013.

It hadn't gone wuite to plan in the build up. I had gotten the cold again two days before Bear Mountain and although it was just in my nose and didn't affect me that much during the race I was laid out for the two days following, even having to take a day off work on the Monday.

The race, the cold and bike to work month meant I biked the 14mile round trip 9 times in the two weeks but only managed three runs of 4-5 miles during which I felt pretty shit and heavy legged.

Race day night I decided to go for it from the start and see if marathon training could keep my form and legs going towards the end. I also decided it was easier for me to gently cycle the 1.5M to Grand Army, lock my bike and jog the other 3/4 mile to the wave 1 check in area for the 7am start!

With the size of event it was, 26,500 finishers, pretty much the largest half marathon in the states, you had to check in your bag, go through security then enter your coral where the toilets were (no outside toilets), then wait. I think partly for security and partly to get people into the corals early instead of them hanging about.

I got near the front of my coral and in the end I was standing beside the 1.20 pacer which was a bit too much as the gun went and they disappeared into the distance. Indeed, the 1.25 pacer went past and slowly pulled away which was a little disheartening as I was running strong for the first three miles with some good splits of 6.18, 6.17 and 6.05 heading into Prospect Park. A 5K split of 19.26 was a nice surprise as all I could remember from looking at 2013's even splits were they were around 21 minutes.

The start is nice and scenic, slightly downhill, slightly uphill, round Grand Army Plaza and back downhill and into Prospect Park.

Grand Army circle

The Brooklyn Library at Grand Army

Some good signs on the course again, didn't really see many as I was really concentrating on this one, ha ha.

Up the dreaded hill in the park, but with the downhill exit out of the park onto a dual carriageway road, Ocean Parkway, ALL the way down (6miles) to Coney Island.

Park entrance/exit

I passed through the 10K split just before exiting the park in 40.17.

Once on Ocean Parkway I was determined to not look at the Avenue roadsigns that basically count down from Avenue A all the way to Ave Z and try and just get into a focused straight line run aiming for 6.30 pace. At this point there is much more room to run so I moved out a little and just did my own thing.

Rocking the PPTC kit

6.25, 6.30, 6.22, 6.28, 6.32, catching the 1.25 pacer, now in sight but feeling really tired. The last mile was pretty tough. I just wanted it to be over at this point.
I didn't feel I was going any faster but managed a 6.17 split up onto the boardwalk and as the 1.25 mini group crossed the line I gave it everything and finished not too far behind them and cracked 1.25, taking nearly two minutes of my last time in 1.24.46.

The last few hundred metres on the boardwalk

Really struggling

Am I gonna puke??

380th place but 29th in my age group which was fairly decent I thought.

It had been a little humid during the race but a nice temperature. There had been a chance of rain and indeed just as I walked to get my bag it started to rain. By the time I got my bag I was fast walking to get some shelter as the heavens opened. The other runners and especially wave 2 which didn't start until 7.40am got drenched. Although the way the weather is here, by the time I got the train back to my bike it was around 24 degrees and bright sunshine.

The family meet up and post-race 'party' was inside the MCU Park (minor league baseball) stadium.
It looked like this when I entered to take a sneak inside.

And when I seen the pics from later it looked like this!

Took the train back to my bike, bought a danish pastry at the farmers market and enjoyed a leisurely cycle home. My legs are sorer then after Bear Mountain though, must be the roads!

The novelty of an empty train

The winner

Friday nights alright for fighting

Little post to say Heather took me to Friday Night Fights.
Her gym had a couple of fighters in action that night and she'd been to a previous one and said it was fun so I went along this time.

It is Muay Thai fighting, in the Broad Street Ballroom which was basically like an empty bank, it was down the road from the Stock Exchange after all.

We were super close, although we were in there for nearly 4 hours and it got so hot in there.
Tonnes of fights, all slightly different rules and styles and like boxing they all turned out slightly different in the way they went down.

Bit of blood flying about in one fight which the crowd loved. Certain fighters got really loud support from their gym/teammates and it's definitely something I'd go to again!