Sri Chinmoy Thanksgiving Day 10K 2025

It’s quite the turnaround from someone who fell in love with racing before falling in love with running, but … I no longer find any sort of joy in it. It’s hard to find the joy in something that is essentially just you banging your head against a brick wall repeatedly.

And yet… when Hershy decided he wanted to do a Thanksgiving Day race, even though I was absolutely free to sit it out, I idiotically registered as well. The 10K, obviously, because a pathetic pace looks slightly less pathetic when the distance is a little longer. (I was regretting this decision roughly six miles into the NYC Marathon, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Come Thanksgiving morning — which dawned bright and crisp and cold — I wanted nothing more than to stay in my nice warm bed. But we managed to make it out the door in plenty of time, and picked up our bibs, and then began the bathroom circles, which allowed me to come to the conclusion that I simply did not have the words to describe how very little I cared about this race.

It says it was 45°, but that is a lie. It also says it was cloudy, but that is also a lie. In reality, it was in the upper 30s, felt like the upper 20s, and was ridiculously sunny and windy.

I started the race in my superhero cape (AKA, heat sheet) because it was so cold. It wouldn’t have surprised me if I finished with it, too, except it was one of those crinkly ones that just gets so annoyingly loud, I couldn’t wait to get rid of it. And once we were no longer running into a headwind, it didn’t feel so brutal, plus I was smart enough to wear merino wool, so I dumped it in the first easily accessible trash can I saw, less than a mile in.

Because the 5K and 10K started together, I had no idea of my placement. I refused to look at my watch; even though I genuinely did not care, it would still sting to see myself running at my usual easy run pace during a race. And it kind of felt like that’s what I was doing, but then, I sort of always feel like that nowadays — my body just refuses to do anything else.

After I finished my first loop, I actually caught sight of the lead female in the 10K. She was probably about three minutes ahead of me… and over the course of the second loop, I cut down on that significantly. Once upon a time, I never, ever, ever would have let her beat me. But that was back in the days when I was something other than a completely useless shit and I actually could do something about it. Maybe I didn’t care this time… but it really wouldn’t have mattered if I did.

I managed to pick it up a little bit in the finishing stretch to finish under 45:00, which is really sad, considering how I nearly broke 42:00 here in 2021. It’s like a completely different person did that. There aren’t any words that can adequately describe how painfully I miss her. And she’s gone for good.

Garmin recorded 6.22 miles in 44:52, 7:13/mi.

Officially, 6.2 miles in 44:51, 7:13/mi. 28/286 OA, 2/122 F, and 2/100 F0-49. If I had been paying closer attention, I wouldn’t have run nine seconds slower than I did at the Brooklyn Beach 10K in June, except that’s a lie because A. I didn’t remember what I ran there until I looked it up after the fact, and B. I can’t do anything anymore anyway.

The finish time is not to my liking at all, obviously. But I’m actually glad I finished second, because first place also got a bunch of cakes or something, and I didn’t have the patience to try and figure out how to offload a bunch of stuff I can’t eat. So there’s that. I guess.

TCS New York City Marathon 2025

The idiocy continues!

Nobody, least of all me, can possibly even begin to explain why I keep subjecting myself to such torture. It’s not like there’s even the excuse that I need it for my six stars, because I already ran this multiple times… but I guess there is no rhyme or reason to insanity.

I am not, and never will be again, fast. (This, of course, being a relative term.) I would be delighted to eat my words one day, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never get that opportunity. Combine this with my stupidly doing a Garmin workout — someone fat and slow like me can’t run 4:35 pace, even for fifteen seconds, and if I could, the GPS wouldn’t kick in fast enough to pick it up. But attempting to do that workout strained my groin, and anything near my groin freaks me out, what with my history of repeated pelvic fractures. So there went doing any workouts at all for a good few weeks before the race, because once it felt fine to run easy, I could still kind of feel it when I tried to speed up.

None of this actually bothered me that much in terms of it affecting the race outcome, because it was always a foregone conclusion that it would suck. This is me, after all. And my finish time didn’t really matter, since I already have a qualifier for next year from the NYC Half. I suspected I wouldn’t even run under 3:30, but I wanted to finish under 3:20… because that would be enough for a qualifier for Melbourne. Which I am probably not even going to do, but it was my knee-jerk reaction to a double rejection from Sydney (which is on my birthday next year, FFS!) to look that up.

Anyway. The weather was basically perfect; it was stupid windy for days before, and now it’s stupid windy again, but we got a nice little reprieve just for this.

Also to make up for the deluge we had to trudge out to the Javits Center for the expo on Thursday, I guess.

Impostor me spent far too many hours in the local competitive tent, where I tried to sleep. This was difficult because my stomach was feeling less than ideal, albeit not in the usual way. I decided to do a true carb load this time, and not with the more fibrous carbs I generally eat… these were simpler than simple, and if I never see another bagel it will be too soon. I did this in an attempt to avoid the non-stop pre-race bathroom trips. I suppose it kind of worked, since I didn’t go a dozen times like I have in the past, but then… the race happened.

I’ve never run on the upper level of the Verrazano, because even though I was in the blue corral in 2016, I dropped back to run with someone else. GPS doesn’t work well here, so I don’t even bother. This was less of an issue when I actually was halfway decent at running and was able to run by feel, but I can’t do that anymore.

My elapsed time for the first mile (which was about a tenth of a mile short on my watch) was something like 7:5x. And during the second mile — not even off the bridge yet — the 2:55 pacer passed me, which of course makes sense, and I realized that the stomach cramps that had been bugging me all night didn’t really plan to go anywhere.

The Brooklyn part of the course is naturally my favorite, and as I tend to positive split, it’s also the fastest. Again, I tried to run it by feel, but I can’t exactly do that anymore. It was a little easier since I was holding a small water bottle, so I didn’t need to stop for many aid stations, except for a couple of times when I went for Gatorade.

Knowing that Hershy was waiting for me in Williamsburg propelled me forward — I had to get my second bottle, after all! (Real pro, here.) I ditched the first empty one around 15K, and saw him probably about a mile later.

I look altogether too happy for someone who was in so much pain… and that was before it got really bad.

At the halfway, which I reached well on target for a sub-3:20, I wanted to see if I could actually negative split. It can be done here — it’s the only marathon I ever managed that — but that requires bodily cooperation, and I did not have that. My legs were doing okay… but my torso was not. Any attempt to pick up the pace turned the butter knives in my stomach into samurai swords. It wasn’t like a single side stitch: it was my whole torso, like from sternum to pelvis. I’m assuming I probably changed my gait a little to try and alleviate it, which not only didn’t work, it likely also contributed to the way my back started to hurt. I was so, so, so tempted to just quit, but I hate being a quitter.

It took me four miles — 14 to 18 — to take one gel. I held onto that second water bottle until mile 21, so I didn’t need the water stations to take miniscule sips of gel… and even those tiny sips made me feel like I was going to puke. I don’t do puking, so this was a problem. Some people are highly motivated to improve their race nutrition because they want to avoid hitting the wall. That’s never happened to me, so I wasn’t necessarily worried from that perspective about the fact that I was apparently going to have to run the last eight miles on air. Since I no longer had my bottle, I did try to take Gatorade instead of water whenever the opportunity presented itself, but even that was nauseating.

Along the way, I had been passed by more pace groups… 3:00, 3:05, 3:10, and two 3:15 pacers. And on Fifth Ave., a third 3:15 pace group came along. If I had just stuck with them, I might have been able to squeak in under 3:20. By the skin of my teeth, but still.

Except I couldn’t, because sending my legs along to do that while my upper half remained by the side of the road was apparently not an option. And my upper body hurt.

It’s amazing that none of this was evident when I passed by the NJR cheer zone around mile 23.5… I knew I wasn’t going to run anywhere near the time I wanted. I mean, I knew that before the race even started, so this shouldn’t have come as a shock, but of course it still stings.

Screenshot from video by Brian Benton

It was my second-slowest NYCM. I managed to muster up the will for a sub-3:23, but that was just because I knew I would have the opportunity to double over in agony afterwards. My poor back.

Garmin recorded 26.14 miles in 3:22:52, 7:46/mi. (GPS was all over the place… at one point I was a quarter mile behind, at mile 15 I was smack on target, and then it fell behind again but somehow most of it reappeared in the last half mile, which is the last place you want that to happen.)

Officially, 26.2 miles in 3:20:50, 7:45/mi. 6462/59133 OA, 1199/27129 F, and 198/3046 F40-44. Nowhere near what I’d like, of course, but why would it be? I can’t do anything the way I’d like anymore.

This race also set a record for the biggest marathon ever. I think I’ve run NYCM twice when they’ve set such a record, and I ran Berlin last year when they did the same. For someone who doesn’t like huge crowded events, I seem to do an awful lot of them.

And I’m sure I’ll be repeating this folly again next year. Either because hope springs eternal, or because I never, ever learn.