Brooklyn half-marathon

Woke up bright and early Saturday morning to catch the train out to Brooklyn for my first half-marathon (the drunken bet to run this was made May 14th, 16 days earlier). I was pretty chill (barely awake actually) for the start of the ride, but by 59th street, the train was filling up with runners. There was a lot of nervous energy in the air, so I tried to tune out with the iPod, but by the time we got to Prospect Park, the train was jam-packed with twitchy runners. I quickly checked my bag and headed for my corral. That took awhile, cause it turns out I was in the catch-all corral, which meant that I walked past roughly 10,000 other runners. A few minutes of warming up, 20 minutes of walking and I was finally past the start gate. The course looked great on paper, half in Prospect Park, after which it was a straight shot down Ocean Parkway to Coney Island. My very simple strategy was to run a 10 min/mile the entire way. I did pretty well maintaining pace, exiting the park at mile 7 in 1:06. At this point, I was in new territory, never having run this long before. Despite this, I distinctly remember feeling pretty upbeat at this point, thinking, 'This isn't as bad as I thought.' n00b, halfway does not mean you are almost done.

The next few miles went reasonably well, although the monotony of running down a long straight road got to me very quickly (running in the park was much more pleasant despite the hills). At mile 10, I remember feeling some funky twitching in the quads (I later discovered that these are called fasciculations). I kept running, reminding myself to try and drink more fluids at the next water station. I passed the 11 mile marker at 1:46, and BOOM, my quads cramped up. Both legs were locked in rigid extension, and I must have looked like Frankenstein trying to get off the road while dodging runners. I leaned against a tree until my legs unlocked (got to see a guy with a huge tattoo of a guy screwing and angel on his back pass me). I spent the remainder of the race running/hobbling between cramping episodes. It must have looked really sad cause two people stopped to ask me if I was ok. At this point, an older blind runner and a guy born in 1938 passed me.

By the time I made it to the boardwalk, the cramps had spread to my calves, shins and worst of all my adductors (not my hammies though!). The last quarter-mile or so was surely the saddest looking, and I'm positive that they took my race photo in there somewhere. I crossed the finish line at 2:23, met some co-workers who also ran the race, and promptly grabbed a burger & beer (post-race recovery beverage of choice) and went to dip my legs in the ocean. All in all, I had a great race despite the disappointing finish: beautiful weather, a nice course ending on the beach and of course the fact that I did not die.

What did I learn? Well, I don't think I'll ever love running, although I think that under 7 miles or so is still pretty interesting. Also, I'm terrible at running, which just has to do with the fact that I almost never run (see graph from training log below); it wouldn't hurt to work more short distance running into the programming. Finally, I seem to be predisposed to cramping. The sequence of events this time around sounds most like cramping due to low sodium, but from the little I read, exercise associated cramping is still poorly understood. Maybe I'll drink some pickle juice next time.