NYRR Fred Lebow Half Marathon 2024

The last time I ran this race, in 2022, I was disappointed that it was a minute slower than in 2020. I didn’t bother to register for it in 2023, because the weather is generally awful for this race, and I don’t need to further grind my nonexistent self-confidence to dust by running another shitty race. My feelings about that part were the same this year, so I wasn’t planning to run it.

But then I learned that NYRR was going to be highlighting that Fred was a Holocaust survivor, and the race is the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and they were interested in hearing the stories of descendants of other survivors. To say that I despise being in the limelight is as understatement, but there are so many idiotic Holocaust deniers out there… someone has to remind them that they are idiots. I am willing to be that someone, even if I feel like an idiot (albeit of a very different sort) myself in doing so.

All of this means that I wasn’t really thinking of it as a race. Of course, I was fully expecting to run my slowest half in years, but because I was only doing that in the first place for reasons unrelated to running, I didn’t think it would bother me so much. (Please note, I didn’t say I would like it. I just might not be as tempted to jump in front of a bus, is all.)

And surprise, surprise: the weather was awful.

This race joined only two others that I completed in full while wearing a plastic rain poncho, the first being Boston 2018, and the second being Lebow 2019. I do not enjoy running in a poncho. More accurately, I do not enjoy the conditions that make it necessary for me to do so.

The course is also really not very nice. Central Park is hilly, okay, but do they really need to design it so that the worst of those hills (Harlem Hill) is there three times?! And it was hard to take advantage of the faster downhill stretches on the east side, because despite what the photo above shows, the wind was coming out of the north, and a 20 MPH headwind is going to slow me down much more than a downhill will speed me up. No benefit of the tailwind on the west side, either, because of the stupid hills.

I did want a negative split. I also knew that probably wouldn’t happen, because I wanted it, and evidently that means I can’t do it. It was too cold and rainy to bother looking at my watch most of the time, but I did take note of the course clock at the 10K marker, then doubled it to see when I’d need to hit 20K, but then I’d have another kilometer after that and the math was getting too… math-y, so I just gave up. It was better to think about how angry I am that people deny the Holocaust ever happened, when I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to (why the hell would anyone want to do that?), because I’m reminded of it every time I hear my name. I’m named after someone who was murdered by the Nazis before she even got to be half my current age, and I don’t even have a photo to know what she looked like, which bothers me to no end.

The 1:35 pace group caught up to me around mile 8. I knew that all I had to do was stay with them, and then I’d have my negative split, but I hate running with pace groups (too many people), and anyway, I just… couldn’t. See: I can’t do anything anymore. I was resigned to not running a NYCM 2025 qualifier, which would mean I’d have to do in at the NYC Half, and that didn’t go so well last year… but I was soaked and freezing and I just can’t do anything anymore.

The misery did come to an end, eventually. It always does. (The physical part of it, anyway. The mental part… not so much.)

Garmin recorded 13.21 miles in 1:36:40, 7:19/mi.

Officially, 13.1 miles in 1:36:36, 7:23/mi. 404/2998 OA, 36/1440 F, and 5/186 F35-39. That last one is particularly irksome, because the fourth woman in my age group… also ran 1:36:36. And the third ran 1:36:11, which I have no business not being able to easily surpass, except my brain can’t seem to remember that I am a big fat slow useless shit now, which is bizarre because it’s been that way for so long.

But it’s a NYCM 2025 qualifier. And not my slowest half in years after all, thanks to the NYC Half shit show of last year.

And then, after I defrosted a bit, I took advantage of the free admission to the Museum of Jewish Heritage afforded to me by my race medal. Feels kind of dumb to be upset about something as stupid as a race after that.

NYS Winter Run Series 2024 #2 (Robert Moses)

Don’t be fooled by the fact that I ran a race… it isn’t because I’m suddenly miraculously no longer a useless heap of shit. It’s because I needed to run one to give us a baseline of just how useless I am, and the Midnight Run couldn’t really do that since it was at such a bizarre hour. This one was also a bit odd, but 11 AM beats 11:59 PM, even if it does effectively kill the whole day.

I was actually planning to run the first race in this series, because the course was a nice simple out-and-back. But the weather last weekend was awful — cold and horribly windy — so we decided to hold off on it and hope for better weather on a less ideal course.

Foiled.

It was cold. So, so, so cold. I am actually fine running in 25°, but not with a headwind gusting up to 25 MPH. Hence the blue part of the heat map (what a misnomer) … I could barely even run in a straight line, as the wind wanted to blow me into the dirty ice piles at the side of the road. I pinned my bib to my tights, because until after I warmed up, I was seriously considering running the race in my jacket, which I haven’t done in… oh, ten years or so. I wound up changing my mind — it was too hot with the wind behind me, and I’d be freezing my ass off the other way anyhow. If I’d known I was going to run in a jacket, I would have brought a different one! I ditched it at the last minute, and by the time I made it back to the start line from my car, everyone had already lined up. Of course, I don’t belong at the front now, but I didn’t need to be as far back as I was… which meant I actually got to pass people for a change. Except I started so far back, I wasn’t really sure how many women were ahead of me. You’d think the amount of turns would have cleared it up — they went by going the other way multiple times — but I kept losing count.

Being that this was supposed to be telling me how much I suck, I was going to run it by feel. Imagine my dismay when I approached the first mile marker and saw a clock there! I considered not looking at it, but that would have been hard to pull off, so I glanced at it … under 7:00, which, if sustained, would beat the 22:00 I said it would take a miracle to beat. But of course that didn’t happen, because then we turned around. Into the wind. And even if I wanted to draft off someone, I couldn’t; it was coming in from the northwest, which would mean I’d have to tuck in right behind their left shoulder, and that would put me right in the ice piles I was trying not to fall into.

I don’t believe in fighting Mother Nature. You will never win. I tried plugging the stats into the Runworks calculator, but I can’t make heads or tails of the result. All I know is that yeah, I would have run faster without the headwind. Because I wouldn’t say I felt great, but I didn’t feel utterly awful either, so if I hadn’t been running against a wall of wind…

Garmin recorded 3.17 miles in 22:30, 7:06/mi. (That wouldn’t have happened last week without all the crazy turns, I bet.) Officially, 3.1 miles in 22:25, 7:13/mi. 31/747 OA, 3/396 F, 1/50 F35-39. And fingers that were in agonizing pain for many, many minutes afterwards as they began to regain feeling.

I don’t even feel disappointed anymore when I finish a race. I’ve numbed myself to that. There are only so many times you can fall into a suicidal spiral if you’re not actually going to manage to do anything about it. Instead, I just get overwhelmed with disgust, because it is so pathetic that a 5K at slower than my old marathon pace is supposed to be an accomplishment.

It’s been so long since I’ve finished a race and not experienced that. I don’t even really remember what it’s like to actually feel like I’ve achieved something noteworthy, but I miss it so badly it physically hurts. All I’ve managed to do in attempting to get that back is turn myself into a fatter, slower version of myself. (I’m not saying I’m slower because I’m fatter. The slowness came first, so I can’t blame it on the fatness. But it sure doesn’t seem to be helping, and I’d be more amenable to being repulsed by the way I look if I also got something useful out of it, but as it is… I’m just fat and slow. For no reason.)

NYRR Midnight Run 2023

It should go without saying that I have less than zero desire to run Harry’s Handicap, though the whole “freeze outside a church” thing never made me too excited about it. But doing this race is pure idiocy, which I openly acknowledge.

First off, I am old, I go to bed at senior citizen time. Why would I choose to run a race at an hour when I would normally be snuggled up in a nice warm bed? Why, in fact, would I choose to run a race at all, when, as previously established (see: 2022 and 2023), I can’t do anything but suck at it?

But, as also previously established (see: my date of birth until now), I am very often quite dumb. And so here I was. Arriving super early to avoid the horrific security lines of which I was warned, only to find that they didn’t exist. Or maybe they did. Later. While I had ninety minutes to cycle in and out of various porta potties, because what else was I going to do? Stare at all the people bundled up in tights and long sleeves and jackets, fretting about how horribly underdressed I appeared to be? (In my defense, I did purchase a long-sleeved shirt on which I plan to put the NJR logo. I just haven’t done it yet.) No, apparently a better use of that time was to have a panic attack. Because it makes total sense to do that before a race that means less than nothing.

All that time in porta potties, and then when I gave up on the idea of a warmup (it was just way too crowded for that, and any egress points were blocked off), I couldn’t even make a final trip because the lines were too long. My long trek from there to corral D — the only way to get to the other side of the roadway and the corral entrances — and back to A would have to suffice.

There was no real goal for this race, because it’s hard to set a goal when I have no idea anymore what I can or can’t do. I was supposed to go out at a 7/10 effort and try to negative split, which would be an interesting experiment since I almost never negative split anything anymore, and I can’t determine what constitutes a 7/10 effort since everything feels like 10/10. And I wasn’t planning to look at my watch. So. An experiment indeed. (All I really wanted to do was run a sub-7 mile again. Remember when I was realistically shooting for an entire marathon at that pace? Let’s not go there, it’s too depressing.)

The start of this race is really cool, I will admit that. Fireworks instead of a starting horn was pretty awesome, and we were running out right underneath them, so there was a kaleidoscope of color over the whole roadway. But then we ran away from them, and up Cat Hill we went, and while I’ve never particularly minded Cat Hill, a speed bump these days might as well be Everest to me, so if I’m expected to run uphill, I’m screwed. Ergo, it wasn’t surprising that when I came across the first mile marker, it said 7:35. I knew my actual pace was a little faster than that, but I hadn’t taken note of the clock when I crossed the start line, so I wasn’t sure by how much.

The second mile is, to me, the only really friendly part of Central Park. I figured if I was going to squeak out a sub-7 mile, that would be the one. I’m not sure if I actually did (officially), because I don’t remember what the clock said other than that it started with a 14, and there was a non-straight number after that. 14:2x, 14:3x, 14:4x, 14:5x … who knows? I’m leaning toward one of the latter two because I seem to remember thinking that if I finished in under thirty minutes, it would be a negative split.

The third mile is the worst. I have always hated the West Side Hills, and they hate me back. I believe it was just over 22 minutes when I passed the third mile marker, which meant that barring a disaster (not unlikely), I’d be able to finish in under thirty minutes. Which is sad when I was once aiming for under 26:00, but whatever.

At least I did run an official sub-7 mile, because I finished in under 29:00 by the clock. And I even had a pathetic kick, which is only because it was a downhill finish. I assure you that was 100% gravity, 0% me.

Look at that… two sub-7 miles. Much speed. (Much sarcasm.)

Garmin recorded 4.04 miles in 28:48, 7:08/mi.

Officially, 4 miles in 28:46, 7:12/mi. 188/4794 OA, 20/2541 F, and 2/285 F35-39. That last one is a surprise, but then, this isn’t a race people tend to run for speed, it’s more of an experience thing.

And I am glad I had the experience. I’m less glad that it was exactly two minutes slower than my PR, but the more time that passes with me being useless at races, the more I believe that’s all I will ever be able to do, and I’m getting to the point of being too exhausted to even care.