Race Report: Al Gordon Classic 4 Miler

Results
Chip Time: 31:19
Overall Place: 1059
Gender Place: 195
Age Group Place: 27


The New York Road Runners organized a race this weekend in Prospect Park. Over 4,000 people participated, including me and my visiting Boone friend. NYRR's website invited people to courageously step outside of Manhattan and enjoy the countryside of Brooklyn, where I'm sure they were surprised they didn't have to step around cow patties upon stepping out of the subway station. I kid. But their race description that was geared toward people living in Manhattan, as though the most populous borough of Brooklyn isn't filled with runners who support NYRR races, was really silly.

But I digress. The point is that I PR'd with a 7:50 pace. I am familiar with Prospect Park and I think it gives me some advantage when I've been training well. Despite my familiarity I still steered my Boone friend wrong and told her that "the hill" should appear around mile three (I thought we would be starting out differently). "The hill" actually happened right away, so she was taking it easy (and also thinking that it wasn't really a hill since she lives on the side of a mountain and knows real hills) with the expectation that she'd have a hill to conquer later on. That never happened. And she was one second slower than her goal 10 minute mile. Oh no!

In more exciting news, I got the Forerunner 210 Garmin watch! And heart monitor. (The Garmin is a GPS watch that records all kinds of highly classified information.) And if I knew how to use it I am sure that it would be really awesome. Right now I can honestly say that it tells very good time. Very good. Like if NASA were to design the most precise clock in the world, my watch and that clock would say it was the same exact time, but my watch would be better because it would be on my wrist. All weekend long I've looked at it to see what time it is and I'm really glad I have it. The woman who sold it to me at JackRabbit Sports invited me to a monthly long-Sunday-run, and I showed up this morning hoping she would be there so I could ask her how to use the watch. Alas, she wasn't there, but I still really enjoyed myself. We ran 10.5 or 11 miles (depending on whose watch you believe), winding through Brooklyn along the water front and even passing my apartment at one point.

The best part of the whole run was that we ran past a row of firemen in a very industrial part of Redhook. They were standing in the street beside each other, maybe six or seven of them, and each of them was smiling and holding part of a long hose.