Five things you need to know, five people you need to meet

I’m going to do a meme, whatever that is. I think it’s just a blogging version of - Tag You’re It.

I tried this once before without much success. Jeanne (Not Born To Run) cooperated, so I might as well tag her again. She has to post once a day for a month anyway because of Nablopomo, whatever that is. So she’ll undoubtedly thank me. Go read her blog. She’s brilliantly funny. (Aww, anyone who reads this knows that already.)

I got the idea from reading Irene in San Diego (Magazine Smiles). She likes Led Zeppelin and I’m going through a Man With Sticks phase right now (again). It looked like it would be fun. Besides, my parents got married in San Diego, in 1944. My Dad was a young Marine about to ship out for Peleliu and Okinawa, and my Mom was a defense plant plant worker. They met at a USO dance. She was hiding in the coat room when he was getting his jacket to leave. She was lonely and shy, having grown up in Yuma, Colorado, a small farming community on the plains. My Dad, OTOH, was cosmopolitan having grown up in Winona, Minnesota, a large town on the Mississippi River. She was 20, he was barely 19. They were together til death did them part 42 years later when he died of lung cancer. I was there when his life departed. He became addicted to nicotine from smoking the three cigarettes supplied in each K-Ration during the war. He came back from the war and taught her to smoke. She died of emphysema. Those were different days. Nobody stays married now and the kids suffer. (There. You just got a lot of free information. At work, I always tell new attorneys, never give out information for free.)

Here are the Rules:
• Link to your tagger, and post these rules on your blog.
• Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
• Tag 5 people at the end of your post by their names and links to their blogs.
• Let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I was born in Connecticut. (I lived there all of six weeks.)

2. There were six kids in my family.

3. We weren’t Catholic.

4. I have three sons, all over 18.

5. I had never run a distance of more than seven miles at any one time when I did my first marathon, the Inaugural Baltimore Marathon in 5:05:20. (I told myself the whole last hour while I was walking it in that if I only could beat five hours, I’d never do another marathon. I missed my goal so I had to do fourteen more (and counting)).

Here are four more persons besides NBTR who are going to be mad at me.
cewtwo - why, how, what, where I run...
Dorine - she do run run
nylisa - Lisa's Running Journal
sunshine - best day of the year

How I "Won" The NYCM

How me 'n Dave won the NYC Marathon last year.

You probably thought that Marilson Gomes dos Santos, the slight Brazilian who gave us cut-away opera gloves covering the arms as a fashion statement, broke the Africans' modern stranglehold on the New York City Marathon last year and won it. And he did win the race, tactically. But Dave and I won it strategically. (Above: Dave and I smiling before the marathon after it took us ten minutes, total, to get there. Photo credit S.)

The Problem. Everyone knows what the problem with the NYCM is. It's the 10:10 start from way down in the far corner of NYC on Staten Island. Everyone has to get there from somewhere else and it usually takes quite awhile. Official recommendation is to catch the 8 am Staten Island ferry and corresponding bus, because there are no later buses. To get to the southern tip of Manhattan to catch that ferry, many runners will be arising at 5:30 or earlier for the race.

There are buses that transport you to the race's start on Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island that leave from various parts of the city. But they leave very early, starting at 4:30 am. Don't try to catch one after 6:30 am (7 am from NJ) because they will be non-existent by then. (Left: Old Fort Wadsworth is dwarfed by the bridge.)

Stories abound about how uncomfortable the wait at Fort Wadsworth for the race to start is. Those hours are horrendous, especially for the obsessive-compulsive types (know any runners like that?) who catch the first bus in their can't-miss-the-start paranoia. It's cold in the early morning, sometimes bitterly so, and keeping warm for all that time is a problem. People bring blankets, snuggle in sleeping bags, make beds out of newspapers, beg clothes from strangers, go into a trance; all sorts of strategies are used. (Below: Fort Wadsworth.)

The race itself is fantastic, a twenty-six mile traipse through the five boroughs and over five bridges that range from the fabulous (the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the Queensboro Bridge) to the interesting (the Pulaski Bridge) to the merely fun (the Willis Avenue Bridge and the Madison Avenue Bridge). Screaming spectators line much of the passage and immerse you in the diversity that is the genesis of the melting pot of America.

A funky bed and breakfast without the breakfast. When I got into the NYCM last year, I googled "bed and breakfast" and "Staten Island." Up popped a funky place on Daniel Low Terrace. It seemed roomy enough and it was only $100 a night. A call to the "hotel" gave me the owner who said he had several "units," and he'd give me the best one available when I got there. As he described each one, they were all suitable for my needs. I'd get one of them, he assured me. He told me to send a hundred dollars deposit now. Contract? Paperwork? Naw. Just the hundred, and show up.

It was a perfect location. Just off Victory Boulevard near the ferry, it was within three miles of Fort Wadsworth. Back roads would lead me right to the race's start. I received conflicting information concerning the availability on race morning of city buses running down Bay Street in Stapleton on their regular routes to Fort Wadsworth. If there were problems, I could jog the distance in thirty minutes. (Above: I watched this bridge being built out of my bedroom window when I was a boy.)

When I arrived six months later on the Friday before the race, it was funky alright. The owner was an iconoclast who had built, in stages, a series of units off the backside of his old house there in St. George. He was quite talkative and had plenty of stories about his battles with the zoning commission as his house grew. He also knew Hilary Rodham from school and ventured forth his opinion about her. It would hearten the soul of any Republican and many a misogynistic Democratic. My unit was a long narrow unit on the ground floor in the back with an outside entrance.

Dave? Dave's Not Here! I met Dave, another runner from Chicago, sitting on a settee on the house's porch enjoying the view of the lower Manhattan skyline across the harbor. Dave was in the initial throes of his discovery of running in middle age. (Left: Funky? Well yeah!)

He had run six marathons, all within the last year. His pace of running marathons was increasing. He had run two in the last five weeks. He had arrived on Wednesday to steep himself in the course. He expected to better his PR of a little over four hours because he had discerned that the course was pretty flat except for the bridges and several rolling hills on First Avenue in Manhattan.

His wife was with him, trying to share in his new found zest for life. They walked to the ferry to go into Manhattan every day and he would go scout sections of the course while she went shopping. He was leaving on Tuesday, his wife having said "no" to him staying until Wednesday to recover. "Remember the kids at Aunt Maybelle's, dear?" was how she put the reasoning behind them leaving sooner rather than later when he was explaining all of his running plans and aspirations to me. Dave was scheduled to run another marathon, necessitating another trip, two weeks after New York. She was going with him there, too. (Left: My unit stretched all the way across the back of the house.)

I got the feeling from looking at his wife as Dave spoke that this exhilarating new phase of his life, with its frequent one-on-one challenges that put new meaning into a life where awareness of mortality had intruded lately, was about to end. His wife had a tightness in her facial expressions, a quietness as he spoke animatedly, that demonstrated to me a noticeable tiredness with his ongoing personal quest into self-worth. Real life was about to descend upon this running warrior in the form of his family's real or perceived needs as mandated by the non-running member of the union. Hence, to us all when we take up running.

Dave is an electrician. I got the impression that he had mostly finished his life's work and the family was comfortable. He told me that his unit at the house was great, very comfortable and well-appointed. He told me, though, that he wouldn't stay there long-term. You really don't want to look too closely at all the new wiring in this old house, he said in mock horror. Dave and I arranged to go to the race's start together. A friend would drive us both there.

Excuse me, I've got a race to run in 55 minutes. Race day dawned cool, clear, crisp. I woke up at 8 and lay in bed thinking of the horror stories friends had told me about catching a 4:30 am bus and then spending four hours shivering in the open on Staten Island. That was a prominent memory of the race for all of them, whiling away the long hours in Fort Wadsworth. Starting the race itself was like swinging open the jailhouse doors wherein they burst onto the race course, trying to put the fresh memory of those enervating and anxious (and freezing) hours out of their thoughts.

By 9:15 I was dressed and ready to go. I met Dave and we climbed into the car. I directed the person driving onto back roads I knew from childhood, having grown up in this section of Staten Island. The trip to the race, as a matter of fact, was a trip down memory lane for me. Down St. Pauls Avenue, past my old church. Back-track on Broad Street, past the Projects which I used to walk by on my way to the den mother's house during my one year of being a Cub Scout. Then a straight shot out Tompkins Avenue past the YMCA where I used to attend summer camp to School Street, the race's entry point. Distances that had seemed to stretch out so impossibly far for a ten year old boy seemed incredibly compressed forty-four years later to a full-grown man. (Yes, on Staten Island forty-four years ago, little boys could and did walk around and play miles from their homes.) (Above: St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Staten Island.)

Encountering no traffic, we arrived at the traffic barricades half a mile from the race's actual starting line in ten minutes. Plenty of time for two visits to the port-a-potties and to find our respective starting corrals. (Below: Celebrating the finish of the 2006 NYCM with J (who is running today, good luck!), H (who ran the MCM a week ago), me and A (my charity partner who helped me finish at sultry Chicago last month)).

Last year I finished the NYCM more than a hundred minutes behind dos Santos. Dave discovered the course was hilly after all and finished a little further back. But we both strategically won the race by having pristine memories of an incredible run on a perfect fall day through the greatest city in the world, unblemished by a single bad memory of the transport to the start line or the stay in Fort Wadsworth.

H runs the 2007 MCM

MCM. Unlike three weeks ago when it was 90 degree and humid at Chicago, the weather today was almost perfect for the running of another of the nation's premier marathons, the People's Marathon, the 32d Marine Corps Marathon. It's either the third or fourth largest marathon in the country. They know what they're doing.

This marathon, a scenic trip through the nation's capital, has never been cancelled. The Marines provided plenty of water for everyone. The police didn't deploy on the course and order runners to walk under threat of arrest. (Below: Does the marathon in your town have a view like this one that greeted today's runners?)

It was in the fifties and breezy for the 20,667 finishers. I waited on the 14th Street Bridge at MP 20 for a friend of mine, H, who was running her first marathon. I had offered to accompany her the last six miles. She wanted to run around a 4:00 (9:09 pace) marathon so I had been practicing running nine minute miles all week.

It's a lot harder to spot people as masses of faces pour past you than you might think. Last year I completely missed Bex when she ran by me at the same spot with A, who is 6-3, running next to her. How could you miss those two women running by you? Bex ran a 3:56:53 MCM last year, having been greatly helped by the accompaniment of A around the wind-blown and desolate Haines Point.

This year they added some hills. It seems they're always tinkering with the course but the core course, a beauteous run down the mall and by the Capitol, remains the same. I ran it in 2002, not very well (5:04:38), and it seemed a lot more crowded this year than what I remembered. There were 14,086 finishers back then. (Above: Old Glory on the 14th Street Bridge.)

H came by, a little off her desired pace. She was running steadily though, looking relaxed and strong. We burned a 9:12 running to MP 21. Off the bridge now, we went though the crowded streets of Crystal City, running a 9:25 mile, then a 9:30 mile. (Right: Running by the Lincoln Memorial in the 2002 MCM, my fourth marathon.)

H had worked hard all summer and fall, running according to schedule every week and keeping on her desired pace in her training runs, including a couple of 8:58 minutes-per-mile twenty milers, but she was hitting the wall now in the twenty fourth mile. She powered through it though, with a 9:59 mile followed by a 10:15 mile. Nice and steady. I ran a little bit of the last mile with her, then stepped off the course before I got penned in by the crowded finish zone. H finished with a really nice time of 4:07 and change. Nice job! (Below: H is on the left. She looks pretty good for MP 20, don't you think?)

If you haven't done the MCM, it's a must-do. There's a great spirit to this race, a great sense of community and excitement. You can have Chicago, although the spectators were terrific.

An arresting encounter

It seems like all of my recent "encounter" posts involve the police. Here is the closest I think I ever came to getting hauled in while running.

I was running the route of the National Half Marathon with David shortly before its inaugural running. We left RFK and ran down the north side of Constitution Avenue, essentially, to the White House. There along the Ellipse we encountered a construction area where part of the broad open field leading up to the the back fence line of the White House was being landscaped. The sidewalk and parking lane of Constitution were blocked by a temporary chain link fence. A nearby sign read in bold letters, Sidewalk Closed, Use Other Side. (Below: The Ellipse. Constitution Avenue runs along the bottom of this picture, taken from atop the Washington Monument. You can see the National Christmas Tree at the top of the Ellipse)

We had just run five miles in forty-three minutes but we were too lazy to cross the six lanes of Constitution Avenue. Constitution is too busy a street to be running in a traffic lane.

There was a two-foot gap in the fence which led into the construction area. I squeezed through and David followed. This was not a good idea.

We ran along Constitution on the inside of the temporary construction fence. Ahead of us I could see a marked police unit swing out onto Constitution from where three or four cruisers typically sit blocking the entrance way of the road leading into the Ellipse. The road is closed to traffic but the Ellipse is open to pedestrians.

The squad car slowly cruised down Constitution and stopped at the point where we had entered the construction zone. Meanwhile we ran two more blocks and discovered we were in a dead-end. There was no space to squeeze back out of again. It didn't seem like the time to create an opening by shouldering aside one of the posts.

I could see the cop two blocks behind us waiting. I considered scaling the eight-foot high chain link fence like a gang member in West Side Story, but it's never a good idea to scale a fence near the White House. We retraced our steps and ran back out the original opening where, of course, the cop hailed us from his car.

He didn't stupidly ask us for our I.D.s, but he did ask if we knew how to read. He was brightly referring to the big Sidewalk Closed sign. We allowed as to how we could, in fact, read. He asked if we could read English. I decided contrition was the best approach here.

"Geez, officer, there's no way to get out of that work zone down there. Once you go through this entrance, you're stuck." I was pointing to the two-foot gap.

"That's not an entrance. Does that look like an entrance to you?"

"No, I guess not."

"And what does that sign say?"

"Cross to the other side." Hey, I passed fourth grade.

"And...?"

"Uh, I guess we'll be crossing the street?"

"Not here you won't. Do you see a crosswalk here?"

"No I don't."

"There's a crosswalk back there."

One block further back was a signal light with a crosswalk. The cop was grinning wickedly.

"Thank you sir." Shakin' the bush, boss.

While the officer watched, we trotted back a block, crossed in a crosswalk for the first time all year, after actually waiting for the light, and came back on the other sidewalk. We waved to him as we passed and he cheerily waved back. Everyone was smiling big, toothy grins. The better to mutter imprecations under our breaths.

Twenty minutes later we came back the other way as we headed towards the waterfront and SE. The two-foot gap in the temporary fence had been pushed shut.

My ridiculous encounter

A couple of years ago, I was out for a noontime run on a hot summer day in DC. Sweat was pouring off of me. I was wearing my Asics, socks and running shorts.

I ran across the Mall and down 14th Street. To reach the Tidal Basin to run, I decided to cut through to 15th Street on the Holocaust Museum walkway between that somber edifice and the Forest Service building. The Forest Service are the folks with the friendly Smokey the Bear mascot.

I started to cut across a tiny corner of the USDA parking lot, which is the Forest Service's umbrella agency. The brick-paved footpath skirting the north end of the Holocaust Museum was mere feet away.

"Hey, you! Stop!"

Stupidly, I stopped. I was fifteen feet into the Forest Service's domain, their parking lot, and ten feet from the freedom of the Holocaust Museum's bench-lined pathway.

A guard came out of the little gate-building which controlled vehicular access to the little parking lot. He was armed.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get to 15th Street." I waved to the nearby footpath.

"You can't be here. Let's see some I.D." Barney's thumbs were hooked into his Sam Browne belt. A second guard materialized next to him. Fife's thumbs were hooked into his Sam Browne belt.

I was stumped. Droplets of sweat spattered to the ground beneath me. I mentally surveyed myself, a male runner on a hot steamy day. Let's see, I.D., back at the security desk of my agency awaiting my return. Running shorts, no pockets. Socks, nothing in them. Running shoes, well maybe...

"Here," I offered, pointing to the Runner's I.D. tag laced into my right Asic. "That says who I am."

The guard seemed interested. I lifted my foot a couple of feet and showed him the custom tag on my shoe. My name was printed on it, along with five other lines of text. The name and phone number of my sister in Ohio. The name of a marathon these particular shoes had been through, followed by a time and a date. The initials of my agency with the place designation of DC. A line nodding to my estranged son Danny.

The guard leaned over to read the tiny print. The second guard watched the first guard watch my shoe. If I'd a had a weapon, I could have taken them both right then.

"Who are you, Peter or Danny? Or Kate?"

"I'm Peter. The one on top." The conversation was absolutely inane.

Barney straightened up and looked into my face. Fife followed his cue and his eyes bored into mine.

Maybe they were simulatedly practicing matching a real photo I.D. with face recognition technique. Or maybe hundreds of glanced-at photos of Al Qaeda fighters were rapidly whirring through their minds as they stared at me.

"Okay, you can go. Don't you be coming through here again though."

There is one parking lot in DC that I know is really safe.

A strange encounter

Writing yesterday's post reminded me of one of my favorite running incidents, which happened five years ago. I remember exactly when it happened because my kids were still visiting me then, still affording me status as a human being. (They don't acknowledge my existence now. It's a divorce thing that happens to mostly or only guys, called parental alienation.)

I was out running in bitter cold at 3 in the morning on the main street of my town when I ran by a really strange guy. All of my ex-cop's instincts went onto full alert instantly as I ran towards him.

It was about 20 degrees out and raw, yet he was only wearing blue jeans, biker boots and a tight white t-shirt. I don't remember now whether he actually had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one of his sleeves. His black hair was slicked back pompadour style.

He was striding down the middle of the sidewalk, marching straight ahead without so much as a glance at me. I watched him carefully as I ran past. I refused to succumb to my fears and run across the street before I went by him. Off down the sidewalk he strode at 3 am as though he was late for a lunch appointment.

I scrutinized the nearby Seven-Eleven as I ran by. It looked normal, and through the window I could see the clerk moving about inside. Mentally shrugging, I ran on and turned down a minor artery.

Six blocks later I ran by a blacked-out stationary police car at an intersection. I don't usually bother with the town police, not even early in the morning, not even to wave to them (thanks for those two speeding tickets, guys), but this time I carefully approached the idling cruiser and paused a few feet away. The woman cop rolled down her window to see what I wanted.

"Excuse me, officer, but I saw something that I thought I should tell you about. I ran by a guy about ten minutes ago who was wearing only pants and an undershirt. It's so cold out, you know, that it was strange."

Her hard look of wariness (what, do I have the information sign lit up again?) changed to one of interest. "We've been looking for that guy! Where did you see him exactly?"

"Headed westbound on the north side of Main at West. Across from the Seven-Eleven."

She rolled up her window without a further word and got on the radio. A moment later she roared off towards Main Street, her overhead lights activated. I watched her go, then continued on, marveling at the scenarios that can unfold sometimes when you run. Even at 3 am.

The nighttime encounter

The policeman peered through the windshield of his marked unit at the man in the parking lot who was undressing in public in the dark. It was 8 pm, the cop was just coming on duty, and he had barely climbed into his squad car, parked in the town hall lot, when a man had emerged from a pickup truck parked directly across the travel lane from him, twenty feet away.

The man threw down the tailgate of the truck and sat on it. He pulled off his shoes and peeled off his socks. A few people from an exercise class at the nearby community center milled about in the parking lot.

Standing on the pavement in his bare feet, the man unbuttoned his dress shirt and shrugged it off. Was he wearing anything underneath? It was hard to tell in the gloom but it seemed he was wearing a cream colored t-shirt with writing on it.

The man unbuckled his belt and undid his trouser button. Unzipping his fly, he opened his pants. The policeman's hand tightened on the car door as he stared hard through the night.

The man dropped his trousers and stepped out of them. The policeman started to open his car door. Did the man have on anything covering his lower extremities? Was that a shadow or something form-fitting and dark?

The cop’s hand came back off the door handle. The man was wearing black Lycra shorts underneath high-cut black running shorts. The man went to the cab of his truck, threw his discarded clothing inside and reached for something. He emerged with a yoga mat, wheeled about on his bare feet and strode away towards the community center.

The cop ran the plate to see where this male yoga practitioner lived, then fired up his cruiser and swung out into the street for the start of his shift. Yep, the guy lived in town all right. The cop made a mental note to drive by the address later and check out this guy’s house.

[My brother believes I dislike authority. I don’t know about that, but I do firmly believe in questioning authority. When I saw the cop watching me last night as I sat in my parked car preparing to go to yoga class, I just had to get out of my vehicle and get ready in front of him. Sort of a statement. I wasn't doing anything wrong. Funny thing is, I used to be a cop. Now I’m a lawyer. Sigh. If you’re ever in danger and need help fast, go find a cop because a cop will act swiftly to resolve the situation. On the other hand, a lawyer will be worse than useless.

Last night was only my second yoga class in the last six months. It felt so good to be back at it!]