A week of running across the pond

Written on Nov 10th and 11th

I am starting this blog post basking in the glory of my best ever marathon in Richmond Virginia. I am also feeling the aches and pains from the effort. It turned into a warm day today, and although once again I think I got the eating and drinking right, the hard surfaces took their toll. I was ready for the finish as we charged the last steep downhill half mile.

My time was 3:48 and change, not far off my lifetime best from the 1998 London of 3:46, but given 14 more years on the body, it is a far better result than that first marathon and a 24 minute improvement on my 2012 London Marathon.

As the previous post described, my week here started in bizarre fashion, as along with 1000's of other foreign runners I found myself marooned in New York with no marathon to run. Well actually I was in Newark, NJ to start with, and I started my stateside running by hammering out a frustrated 5 miles on the Hilton's treadmill at 5 am on Saturday. No signs of flooding or storm damage in downtown Newark, but parts of the city have a pretty run down feel anyway, and trains into Manhattan were sparse.

I headed off to Penn station and went straight to the marathon expo, 6 or so blocks away. Bizarrely I got my number, t-shirt and start-zone bag (including mineral water) before heading into the merchandise area.

 A big knock-down sale was on and people were grabbing stuff by the armful, guilt free, due to the signs everywhere claiming proceeds would go to the Sandy relief effort.

As I walked over to my hotel, I had time to reflect on the chain of events that had allowed this 42 year icon of big marathons to get embroiled in the politics of disaster management. In the time I've been away, a great deal has been said and I really don't want to go into a long rationalisation of what happened, but clearly a politically divisive New York City Mayor couldn't hold to his "renewal" argument for running the marathon in the face of social and mainstream media pressure. Talk by Sunday was that runners may have suffered abuse or worse en route. That would have been interesting...

Now sitting on an Amtrak train headed back on the Northeast route to Newark.

This is not a travel blog, so no real reports here of most of my 3 days in New York, but Sunday was "run day" and I decided to knock out 20 miles, almost enough to test me like a marathon, but hopefully not enough to bury me for Richmond. So I headed off for lower manhattan at 6.30 am, and the streets were quiet enough for me to run down the middle of fifth avenue and then broadway, with Bruce Springsteen on the earphones. Corny, cliched, all of that.

 As I gradually tacked south and east and gently downhill through the swanky Gramercy Park into the more grungy lower east side, I gradually began to see more evidence of the storm. In Chinatown it was harder to tell, but once below City Hall, there were no more traffic lights, and by the South Street Seaport, the devastation was obvious.

  I had to weave among crews of workmen obviously hired in to clean up. Ground floor businesses were being pumped out and the odd piece of urban landscaping had been destroyed. I decided that I shouldn't really be in people's way and I headed off past Battery Park to the former World Trade Center area, spotting on the way some other runners heading for the Staten Island ferry to help with the relief effort. On another day, in another city, I may have joined them, but I had pretty much decided that a donation was more appropriate and that in the words of the Springsteen song, I thought New Yorkers should heed the call: "wherever this flag is flown we take care of our own".

When I was a commodity trader, back in the way distant past, my various firms had offices in Broad St and by the Trinity Church in lower Broadway. The exchange was in 4 World Trade Center, and I had dined in the Windows on the World restaurant, on the 107th floor of one of the Twin Towers. I most certainly would have rubbed shoulders, and probably spoken to, people who suffered on 9/11, and I have always felt the need to pay my respects at Ground Zero. I was able to do this in about as low key a way as possible, looking in through the fence, with no-one else around except me and a security guard, with the magnificent Freedom Tower across the site to the north.

 I didn't hang around long, didn't need to...and it was bloody freezing! I headed north, ducking into a 7/11 to refuel.

By the time I reached midtown again, the city was waking up and the avenues were full of runners, most of them heading towards Central Park. As I came into Columbus Circle, this had become a slightly unruly multinational swarm of Lycra. The crowd-sourced, unsponsored New York City international marathon had clearly replaced the "big one".

With nearly 20 km already on my running "clock" I briefly flirted with the idea of going the "whole way" but soon thought better of it. I had started off the morning "on empty" and was snacking and drinking from convenience stores en route, but I had no intention of risking "bonking" without getting a medal at the end. So I ran one lap of the park more or less, with a dip out by the "Met" for Gatorade and junk food. It was crowded, raucous, odd, but gave food for thought on the nature of big city events. It was both contrived and authentic simultaneously, particularly when, bizarrely, I ran through the marathon finish line the wrong way, with people actually in the stands cheering everyone - why? I might only have run 5 km!

Early on Monday I went back for a run in the park, and this turned into something of a smack down with some French runners and a couple of locals. The park is certainly a great place to run if you are stuck in a city as big as New York, but despite all the hype, I don't think it matches what London can offer, although it may be more runner friendly in terms of traffic. I imagined the marathon course and had to reflect that the last 5 miles of the London marathon more than match the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

I won't be coming back to run. This was a one-off. Other nationalities may look to New York as the cradle of running, and be drawn into the attraction of running its marathon, regardless of the cost, but as a Brit.....I'll take London. The main reason is that New York's strength (its very international flavour) also makes it not a true mass participation event for New Yorkers in the way London is for Londoners. Perhaps that is why the city turned against it so easily this time......it is no longer "New York". Even ignoring the flights, the extra cost of entry and hotel premiums make it around 8 times more expensive than running London. Mr Brasher, Mr Bedford you have got it so right - and as for the "baggage problem", why don't NYRR just look at what London does and follow it?

At the time of writing, NYRR are yet to define how, or indeed if, they will recompense runners. They are also, I believe scandalously, using a pretext of funding the post-Sandy relief effort as a means of appropriating runner entry fees for a race that 18,000 foreign runners could have avoided flying out for. An offer of "ballot avoidance" for 2013 appears to be all that is on the table right now, which would presumably involve foreigners paying two year's entries for one run, or in excess of $600. They appear to be acting like a monopoly. They may have a monopoly on the "New York City Marathon", but to the runner, the distance remains the same, and there are many prettier places to race (Richmond for starters) than the famous 5 boroughs.

Rant over. (But here is the Village Voice's take on the story today.)

After New York, Amtrak brought me down to Washington DC for 3 days bracketing the 2012 presidential election (I am officially a student of political ideas right now - in DD306 with the OU, so this constitutes a field trip!). Again this is not a politics blog...though friends would not be surprised to know I have plenty to say on the subject! I only permitted myself one run in DC, on the Wednesday, so I made it a good one.

Not many tourists get to see Capitol Hill, the National Mall, the National Monument, Vietnam War Veterans Wall, the Lincoln memorial, Reflecting Pool, Jefferson Monument, Potomac park and Navy Yard in a day - I ticked them all off on a 12 km run! Be a runner = speedtourism.

And so down to Richmond, confederate capital in the civil war. I thoroughly immersed myself in one of the museums while the weather gradually improved on Friday. Clear, sunny and no breeze at all by Saturday morning, and that meant an unexpected marathon in t-shirt.

The start was in Broad Street which forms a central spine entering the downtown area from the west. With a half marathon and 8 km run preceding us, I was quite surprised at the size of the field, and later found out that it was up near to 5,000. Richmond prides itself as having the USA's friendliest marathon and the large number of spectators in the leafy suburbs testify to that. Plenty of witty placards too, including one held up by some school kids : WORST PARADE EVER. After about 7 miles the course crosses the James River and follows lanes along the southern bank for about 4 miles. Normally these would be pleasant undulations but I was getting increasing Achilles' tendon soreness in my left leg and started to resent the downhills. I have to admit that mentally after half way, I was starting to displace the miles onto the London route, as we began again to run down more urban streets, and I am quite proud of myself for successfully zoning out in miles 15 to 20. Truthfully the leg pain was fairly constant. Having seen people run past me earlier on, I was now passing people in droves, and my calculations suggested not just sub 4 hours, but sub 3:50 was possible.

From 21 miles onwards, I became more and more determined to give it the lot, knowing another road marathon was probably a long way off, and that I had around £10,000 of sponsorship money raised since the London marathon that needed to be justified. The best way to do this is to race people which is what I did, at the same time as a bit of shameless "crowd milking".

Go Coffeeman! Go UK!

Good jaarb, great jaarb! (strange phrases really)

Normally a relatively steep downhill finish to a race is an excuse to stretch out and finish like an athlete, but in a marathon with Achilles' tendon soreness, it was plain horrible.

Medal (a London 2012 style biggie), space blanket, water, slice of pizza, bagel, banana. One hour wait for bag at the most ridiculously organised baggage reclaim ever seen. Very, very slow hobble back to my hotel a mile away.

Just one celebratory beer, and a sore Achilles today.

The trails are beckoning from back home......Wendover Woods, I am on my way.


Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy