The weekend finally arrived: my first time pacing with the New York Road Runner's Pace Team. Very excited, since I need to prove myself to have any realistic chance of being part of the team to pace the NYC Marathon at some point.
I made my way into the City on Friday afternoon to pick up my bib at Runner's Central. The walls of artifacts they have inside are pretty neat.
Just inside the main entrance is this spread:
Fred Lebow (miniature of his Central Park statue) and Ted Corbitt (bust)
Further back is the NYRR Hall of Fame, Samuel Rudin Trophy, and medals from all of the previous NYC Marathons:
Finally I made my way down the 53rd & 9th to have some Chinese food at my favorite NYC Chinese restaurant - Mee Noodle -- only to discovered that the location closed! Ugh! I had been going there since the mid 1990s, if not earlier. It's been replaced by a deli. No!!!
Researching for another Chinese restaurant in the vicinity or relatively close to the hotel I was in, I came upon Sky Pavilion, located directly across from Port Authority on 42nd Street. Very good. Their menu is a novel at about 59 pages. LOTS of authentic Szechuan dishes -- a little too exotic for me. I wound up having someone more conventional dishes: pan fried (pork) dumplings (photo after I ate one) and shrimp chow fun.
Somehow I actually managed to get to sleep a little after 9pm, and woke up ahead of my 4:15am alarm to get ready. I got out the door before 4:45am and walked crosstown to Lexington Avenue to catch the 6 train uptown to 103rd St. It was just a short walk west a few blocks to get to Central Park whereupon I meandered a little bit to get to Race Central for the day, well before the other runners arrived and sat at the Coach's tent to await the pace team lead's arrival (to get my pacer's singlet and pace sign).
It's rather a marvel at just how much they pull together for something as basic as a training run. They had a sizable tent with at least 5 lines set up for same-day bib pick-up, a tent for volunteer supplies, and more.
These are the reflectors on the vest of the volunteers that had arrived by 5:30am and were gathering to receive their respective assignments. Something as simple as this run takes LOTS of volunteers to help put it on -- an essential part of the 9+1 Program for being able to earn an entry into the NYC Marathon without dealing with time qualifying, lottery, or charity bibs.
Having finally got my pacer singlet and pinned my bib to it, I checked my bag (in which I had a chilled Muscle Milk for post-race) and made my way to the corral. Slowly but surely, everyone lined up in the corrals -- supposedly somewhere around 4-5k people total. The course was two loops of Central Park -- very difficult to properly pace because there was rarely a flat portion; there were a couple of large hills, and several moderate rolling hills across the course.
Both in advance of toeing the line and after crossing the finish, I answered various questions for a few of the runners. But during the run itself, the group was pretty silent, not being overly responsive to any of Ben's or my prompts re: what questions they might have or tips of their own they wanted to share with the group. Given how hot and humid the day was, my of their energy was understandably being spent dealing with the racing conditions.
I had one of NYRR's regular coaches (Ben) as my co-pacer, and we both "kept each other honest" in terms of making sure not to be too fast at certain points -- doing our darnedest to keep at 9:20/mile average pace. Doing so would give us a final time of 1:52:00 - 1:52:08. We wound up being a touch too fast, at 1:51:46. Not too shabby!
One of the people who started out at a faster pace (if I understood correctly) and wound up joining our group part-way and stuck with us for the rest of the time was VERY happy for the assist in getting through a tough day. Her taking a group selfie with us was even captured and posted on NYRR's own FB page.
Also post-race, there were even a couple of people that I saw taking advantage of ringing the qualifier bell (similar to the PR bell):
I had plenty of time to make it back to my hotel to shower, change, and relax for a little while before checking out and grabbing lunch prior to meeting up with my mom to go to see a show.
Very good show, even if a bit on the depressing side.
Other than looking forward to my already set schedule of races, I'm looking forward to being able to pace for NYRR again. Will it be a training run or one of their marquee events? Only time will tell. Hopefully it doesn't take *too* long before I have the opportunity to pace for the NYC Marathon.
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