All of this history is fairly interesting to me. I live in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, named after General Nathaneal Greene (that's how it's spelled) who was put in control, by Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces George Washington, of the Long Island armed forces. But he got sick before the British attacked Long Island and was unable to take part in the battle. The site of Fort Greene Park, the place where I take my dog to off-leash hours in the morning, was once a entrenchment that General Greene oversaw the construction of, presumably before he got ill.
When the British fleets landed on Staten Island in June 1776 George Washington did not know if they planned to attack Manhattan or Brooklyn, so he divided the army in half and placed them in both cities (Brooklyn was its own city until 1898). In August, 15,000 British troops arrived in Brooklyn in the hopes of finding the best artisanal mayo. Kidding! They did, however, find taverns. They also outnumbered the American troops and, in a maneuver that is too complicated to go into here (full disclosure, I don't know what happened), essentially attacked the Americans from behind. The Americans retreated to Brooklyn Heights where it was decided they would escape and head back to Manhattan to unify the forces. Fog had descended on the East River after several days of rain, and they were able to escape safely overnight undetected by the British Army.
Fittingly, it rained today! I got up at 6 a.m. to get ready for the race which started at 8:00. On my way to the park I met a nice guy who came from Manhattan to run in the race and wasn't sure where the starting area was. As we walked we talked about running and training for races. Small talk for runners.
You don't see these flags very often, and at first I thought to myself, why are they displaying old British flags at this thing?...USA!...USA! I actually had to look it up to see what it is. And much to my relief it's a rare American flag called The Grand Union Flag or The Continental Colors Flag. It was in use from 1775 to 1777, at which time the U.K. Union Flag you see on it was replaced with the stars. Yeehaw!
Some people donned fancy, gold-trimmed cocked hats.
A small group of runners (under 600 people ran today) gathered at the start and after a short speech and a really nice Star Spangled Banner the horn went off.
The race started on a downhill on the west side of the park, so I took off pretty fast knowing that I could coast a bit. On the other side of the park we hit zoo hill no less than three times (the race was three loops around the park) where some jokers posing as British soldiers were stationed with giant water guns! It was one of the best things I've seen in a race, and it almost made the hill totally worth it.
The first loop went by really fast as I knew it would. The second loop was the most challenging for me. The third loop (and the third time running on zoo hill) was really hard. But I was able to kick it up a notch at the end and finish strong.
My Runkeeper app said that I ran 10.4 miles. I spoke with a woman after the race who said her gps also said she ran 10.4 miles. Accordingly, I ran an average 8:33 pace, but my official results were different.
Official results:
Your time of 1:28:53 gave you a 8:53 pace per mile. There were 115 finishers in the Female 30 to 39 age group and 535 finishers in the race. Your overall finish place was 262 and your age group finish place was 30.One hundred and fifteen out of 535 runners were in my age group! Women in their 30s dominated this race!
I just read this out loud to see if my history lesson made sense (it's put together piece meal from a bunch of different sites- I'm obsessed with fact-checking), and as I was reading Oscar raised his head and let out a very deep sigh. I hope it was more interesting for you than it was for him.
USA! USA!
