My Jeff Reed Moment

Well, I never thought I'd be taking a picture of myself on the cell phone in a hotel bathroom, but I thought I needed to capture the moment for posterity's sake. I was too tired to stand in the line to get my photo in front of the flag after the race this morning. I'll post a recap later in the day as I'm trying to get out of the city in time to watch the Stillers.....just the facts:

No rain. Superb Low 40's temps. Unofficial time of 2:22. I'll have to wait and see what my chip time was. I forgot to turn off my watch when I hit the finish line because I was too busy doing my best Rocky impersonation with my hands above my head. If that time holds up, it will be about 18 minutes faster than last year. Not too shabby for an old guy I guess. I'm off to get my car........enjoy the game!

Can't Win For Losing

You know, last year Still A Dad and I ran in the Philly half marathon in September and we both trained in the early mornings leading up to it. On race day it was sunny, not a cloud in the sky and hot and humid as all get out. We did nothing but complain about the weather and blamed our times on it. This year I thought I would outsmart mother nature. I bypassed the half in September to run in the half portion of the Philadelphia Marathon. They have a full, half and 8k all on the same day. I'm currently in a hotel room praying it doesn't rain, but it doesn't look good. It's frickin' freezing outside and there is a 70% chance of rain tomorrow. It looks light on the radar, but nonetheless, light rain and high 30's is going to be pretty miserable. I was hoping for overcast and 45! Oh well. I guess a little rain never hurt anyone.

Half Marathon Photos

The Philadelphia Distance Run had a professional company at different locations throughout the race to take pictures of the runners. About a week later - they send you a link to all the photos and you can look yourself up by bib number. What a process that must be. Do they own software that can scan the photos looking for numbers? I bet not. Geez, with 12,000 runners how would you do that? Imagine the Boston Marathon! Anyway, they got some decent shots of me and the old man. One issue they should try to solve is the time showing in the background. Unless you were in the first corral - it's probably really wrong. Our chip time was about 10 minutes off from the finish clock. Some people might not understand why their finish time was 1:53 but the clock in the picture displayed 2:01. If your goal was to be under 2 hours, you might not want a picture with 2:06 showing! Another thing this company should do is write "PROOF" across their pictures. They disabled right-click for IE but for Firefox it works. Since they are selling very high resolution copies for big bucks - it seems silly not to protect themselves with something acorss their website. Even before I was informed by Still A. Dad that Firefox would allow right clicks, I already had copies for myself simply by saving the webpage as html which creates a folder of all components of the page, including images. Like I said though, the images on the website are low-rez and if you want really nice prints - you would buy them.

Half Marathon Results

Well, it didn't end like my Dad and I wanted it to, but we both finished the race and we're both proud of that. WHen it's your first distance race, just finishing is a good goal. We set what we thought was a modest goal time of around 2:20. At 2:23 our pace would have been 11:00/miles. I've run several training runs for this race with my dad all at right around 11:00/miles. My last long run was last Sunday and I did 10 miles at 1:48 which is slightly under 11:00. My best 10K time is 55:25 so I thought I was in no danger of not getting in at 2:20. Well, that's why they play the game. Average race day temperature for the Philadelphia Distance Run Half Marathon is 63 at the starting line and 70 at the finish line. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 80 or more at the finish line today. The sun was out before the gun went off and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Runners were hugging the edges of the road looking for shade. All of my training for this race was done around 6:30 - 7:00 AM and it seems like in this area it has been overcast at that time of day for the past month. If you run at all, you know the difference between running when it's 55-65 degrees is vastly different than running when it's 75-80. Dad training in the mountains of western PA is much more accustomed to cooler temperatures. Also, my dad fought off calf cramps almost the entire race and I actually had to leave him (after promising not to) around the halfway point. We were right on pace and averaging 11:00 through mile 4 even though he stopped running to take 2 short walk breaks. Between miles 5-6 he was having more trouble with it and I slowed down while he tried to walk off his problem. I kept running but very slowly because once I stop, I have a really tough time starting back up. We talked about it and decided I should just go ahead and meet up at the finish line. For a while I tried to speed up to make up for lost time but with the sun bearing down I went back into race pace and decided just finishing was a good goal for my first half. At this point I took a porta-potty break which cost me at least 2 minutes, maybe more. I also fought off a nasty stomach issue I was having which was caused by 1 of 3 things (TGI Fridays the night before, eating 4 Cliff Bars within 10 hours or drinking more water than I'm used to). Hey, you live and learn. I came in at 2:40 and pops finished at 2:58. I'm really proud of both of us. We were talking about it last night and before he started training for this race 12 weeks ago - I think he had only been farther than 5 miles once. Until I started training 9 weeks ago, I had only gone 7 miles before. For both of us to get to 13.1 is a major accomplishment in my eyes. I want to run a full marathon before I turn 40. However, my short term goal within the next calendar year is to run a FALL (see COLD WEATHER) half marathon much much much closer to the 2 hour limit most runners view the half for. I'll post some pictures when I get them. On a funny side note....I got passed by a guy juggling 4 balls around the 12 mile mark. I turned around to see if I could see my dad and I saw the juggler coming. He was in our corral starting out but we passed him very early. When he passed me I made everyone around us laugh by exclaiming "Shit, I just got passed by a juggler."