The 75th Running of the Thanksgiving Day Manchester Road Race

There's only one race that has been a tradition for me over the many years I have been running and that's the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day each year. The race course is only twelve minutes away from where I live plus it's in an area I used to faithfully train in.

The day before the race this year, Wednesday, I reported to work and took a rest day in preparation for the race. Around 10:00 am, I ran into one of my co-workers who said that I was in a picture in the morning Hartford Courant from last year's race. Now with the 15,000 or so people that run, it's difficult to get in, never mind make out images in most of these newspaper photos. Shortly thereafter, I walked down to our lunchroom to see if there was a copy of the paper.  It took a little searching, but I was able to find the half page with the race photo. It only took me several seconds to find myself since I was one of about sixty people that were easily identifiable. I'm the guy wearing gray and white on the left side of the picture two people from the bottom. Well, only half of my body is showing, but you can see my head.

The next day I made the mistake of leaving later than usual for the race and paid for it. By the time I had reached East Center Street, the path I usually follow to parking right behind Main Street near the start/finish line had been blocked off. I had to pass by Main Street and park about a 1/2 mile away. This all lead to me having to gently push my way to the starting area so that I could use my special pass to get into the under 40 minute area. There must have been over 300 people blocking my way. I finally got into the fenced in starting area with three minutes to spare. There's three areas that faster runners can get access to: under 30, 30 to 35, and under 40, but you need an access card. You just need to run a qualifying time the previous year of the race or a qualifying time that year as listed on the race website to get one. The problem is that security is lacking and people often climb over the gate without an access card.

As I'm waiting for the gun to go off, this guy lifts his three kids (all looked under the age of 8) over the gate and then climbs over himself. He didn't even have a card. This is the type of behavior that's dangerous because the faster runners aren't expecting to have to dodge little kids. When I said something to him about it, he gave me a dirty look. To be honest, I passed about another thirty or so people that looked like they couldn't run a quarter mile, never mind 4.75. It took me about 22 seconds to get to the starting line and another 1.5 minutes before I could run unimpeded. I have to take some of the blame though because of my late arrival. Normally I'm able to get right up to the 30 minutes line and when they drop  the partition just before the race starts, I usually end up closer to the line.

This is a loop course, with the second mile all up hill. My goal was to run the first two miles in around 15:30 and I was able to do that. I unfortunately slowed down in mile 3 and ended up there at 23:00 minutes, 30 seconds slower than planned. I finished fairly strong, but ended up finishing in 35:30, about 22 seconds slower than last year. I just wasn't race ready. This is only the second race for me this year. I had planned to do 2 or 3 others in September, but my wildfire assignment put an end to that.

Did anyone else run a turkey day race or another one this past weekend? Let me know. I hope everyone had a good holiday.

Ken

Seven Random Facts Quest-For Certain Bloggers

I'm asking five fellow bloggers to participate in this quest. There's my list. This is just another topic to feature in a blog post. I think the more obscure the facts, the more interesting in my book. Have fun with it-I did. Hopefully, you haven't done this yet. If you have, sorry about that.

Jessica-Jessica's marathon training (in transition)
Lily-Run Lily Run
J.J.-A Better Reflection
Brent-Vaudiophile over at RunFatbrentRun
Davina-DvB's Fitness & Food Adventures

Ken

Seven Random Facts

 

I recently was tapped by Becki aka Supergirl over at "The Middle Miles" to create a blog post which includes seven random facts about myself. I also have to reach out to invite a number of other bloggers to join this quest and do the same. So here goes:

R.F.#1: I don't like broccoli. Years ago, I had an abscessed tooth that left a taste in my mouth that tasted like broccoli. Enough said.

R.F.#2: I used to live in Pennsylvania when I was real young.

R.F.#3: I've had the same black Casio watch for over 15 years. You know, the one with all those little buttons for calculating your race pace and mileage. I even use it at work.

R.F.#4: I've run the Manchester Thanksgiving Day Road Race over 30 times.

R.F.# 5: I'm into science fiction movies and books.

R.F.# 6: I played three varsity sports in high school, basketball, baseball, and soccer. Baseball was my favorite sport.

R.F. # 7: Sorry guys, I now use an artificial Christmas tree.

I'll include a list of at least five other bloggers to share the fun with later on this week in another post.

 

Good night.

Ken

A Week With No Power

Parts of New England two weekends ago got hammered by a snowstorm with almost all of the leaves still left on the trees. Normally we don't get snow in October. I think the last time it happened in CT was back in the late 1950's or early 1960's  and then it was only several inches. Parts of CT got as much as 20 inches. The result was literally thousands of trees and branches came down with all that extra weight and lead to the largest power failure I've ever seen in my life. Some of the trees split just like a banana being peeled. Incredible.

We were without power for about seven days, which wasn't much fun. But at least I had a wood stove, which helped keep the temperature in the house in the sixties during the day and fifties at night. No home phone or cable made it challenging too.

I was able to go to work most of the week because my office in Hartford had power and showers in the basement. I was especially happy about that. I continued to run 3 to 4 days a week during that period. The snow actually melted very quickly so it was the wires and tree limbs all over the roads and people's house and properties that presented the big challenge to restoration. As I write this post, there are still hundreds of people without power and it's going on 12 days so that totally sucks.

Here are a few pictures from my neighborhood which illustrate the damage. Let me know if you got caught in this storm. Also, I'm interested to see who has been the longest number of days without power in their life. Give me some detail. I'm interested. My record is 7 days. Any challengers?

Run Two Bridges-Hartford Style

One advantage of having paths and trails along a river in your area is that it makes running more enjoyable. My small running group refer to courses along and over the Connecticut River as "Two bridges". Now we have a total of four bridges that cross the river in Hartford and all within a 2 mile stretch, which makes it easy to vary the run. Yesterday I ran our "Two bridges w/o Arch".  I'm not referring to the Arch located in  Bushnell Park near the start and finish of the Hartford Marathon though. The Arch is short for Arch Street, which is a short city street that has one of our favorite bars on it. And the name of the bar is the ..... Arch Street Tavern.  Go figure.

So the term "two bridges" means just that. We cross over two bridges on these runs. I crossed over the Charter Oak bridge to East Hartford first and returned to Hartford over the Buckley bridge. This course takes you past the Colt Building in the beginning, and towards the end of the five mile loop, past the Hartford Steam Company and under Constitution Plaza before returning to my office along Bushnell Park. Check out some of these photos I took along the way.

The picture with the close-up railing in it is from the Charter Oak bridge looking east before crossing it, while the one looking down a flight of stairs is from the same bridge looking north towards Constitution Plaza and the Convention Center. The picture that is mostly water is from the Buckley bridge looking south towards the Founders bridge and the Science Center (building looks like a ship on the right side).

Sunday's Six Mile Trail Run

The rail trail was really busy this past Sunday morning. I usually can get a spot out of the 25 or so parking spaces, but they were all occupied. I settled for a nice spot facing back towards my house on the side of the road. As I walked up to do a few stretches before beginning my run, I noticed that the UCONN women's cross country team was training on the trail.  A minute or so before starting my run, they took off in two groups, each with about ten runners. Now I wasn't about to keep pace with these ladies, but I used them as motivation to keep my pace up and kept them in sight until the three mile turnaround point  for me. I stopped for less than a minute and just before I started back one of the groups passed me on the way back. There was a female coach riding a mountain bike along side them. They had about a forty second lead on me as I started back. I tried to close the gap and started to do so running around a 7:50 pace for mile four. I could see that the coach every so often would look back and then-boom- they increased the pace. This must have happened at least five times over the last three miles. Perhaps I'm full of myself, but I had the feeling that the coach was using me as motivation for her runners. "If you ladies don't pick the pace up, that old guy back there is going to catch us. Let's get going!"

Anyway, I continued to push until I was running around a 7:18 pace. I covered the last three miles in 22:57, which is a 7:39 pace. I think they ended up less than a minute ahead of me. I was happy with the run. 

What types of things do you do to motivate yourself during training runs?

Ken

Cross-Training? I've Got Something For You.

I just spent the last several weeks with the Connecticut Wildland Fire Crew working on the Pagami Creek Fire in Northern Minnesota. I was part of a twenty person team that worked with various federal and other state resources to help contain this large fire involving some 95,000+ acres of forest.

I didn't get a chance to run, but we had to carry in canoes and paddle through three lakes to get to our spike-out camp. Then we had to canoe in each day to the fire to work. The terrain, although not hilly like out west, presented many challenges with slippery rocks, bogs, moss-hidden holes and the usual roots, rocks, and fallen and leaning trees. Fortunately, no one got injured despite a few close calls.

I lost about 8 pounds while out there. We had to cook and clean each and every day, while we received supplies via a plane drop-off system. 

I'm still somewhat sore, especially my legs, but hope to resume my running tomorrow.

I hope everyone has been well during my absence.

Ken