Monday, October 20, 2014

My Ferris Bueller Tour of Chicago

Ferris Bueller had his day off, and I had a weekend to recreate it. Encouraged by my father who loves the movie, and inspired by this website, I spent my first day in Chicago trying to visit many of the sights he visited.  I had the day to myself because Laura flew in after work.  After leaving my bag at the hotel, I went to pick up my packet and meet my high school friend, Tuere Wiggins, for lunch.  We had some deep dish pizza near the convention center before I embarked on my route.  First, I hit the Art Institute and took a picture of Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

My father's favorite painting

After the museum, I went to Sears Tower - excuse me - Willis Tower.  While I tried to ascend, I was informed it was over and hour and $20.  One or the other, but not both, so I went on to Wrigley Field.

No October baseball in Wrigleyville

That night, I went to an Italian restaurant for some gnocchi, and read, watched baseball, and went to bed.  Well, Laura arrived a bit late, so I woke when she arrived.  Saturday morning, I went to Solider Field for the shakeout run hosted by Bart Yasso and Deena Kastor.  But, it was so crowded and I needed to get home that I left the run and headed back to the L.

Selfie with Yasso and Kastor

We got brunch with Laura's friend, Emily, and then I went to bath in my hotel room and rest.  For the pasta dinner, we went to Maggiano's and met Alex and Britt.  Then it was a good night's rest and up at 4AM for the 7:30 start.  I met Alex and we took a cab to the start.  I tweaked my right calf walking around on my sandals, but that didn't bother me during the race.  It crept up at mile 10, but I know it didn't hurt my time.  After waiting for the race to begin, we ran into Dan Burns who trained with us for DCRRC and ran with our team along with Joe Kane and Hirsh Kravitz.  We warmed up and then tried to get to the start, but they wouldn't let us both into corral A because I accidentally got placed in B.  I snuck into A, but I couldn't find Alex so we ran separately.

After the race, I waited for Alex who was tended to for cramping.  I met Britt, we left, went to the hotel room to shower, and went to Giordano's for deep dish pizza where Laura met us.  After stuffing our faces with beer and the stuffed pizza, Laura and I went on a boat tour of the river to see the architecture.  Then we walked around to Millennial Park, walked to John Hancock and got a drink at the top in the lounge (way too long a wait to go up and then to get seated), and then got sushi near our hotel.  We left for DC early in the morning.

Sears/Willis Tower in the background while on the river cruise


Random Race Memories:

I really thought I was going to go sub 3 today. I knew early on that I was nailing the miles even though my GPS was erratic due to the skyscrapers so I trusted it to even out which it did. Was going to run with Alex but we were separated at the start due to being placed in different corrals. It really was a flat and fast course.



My splits:

6:47/34/7:05/6:41/45/47/44/46/48/49/46/44/36/47/50/51/54/7:01/08/16/39/48 /55/53/36/30/ 3:00 (.44) - 21:09 5K; 21:10 10K; 21:07 15K; 21:25 20K; 21:12 25K; 21:47 30K; 23:34 35K; 24:25 40K; 10:09 to finish 3:05:58 finish 1st half = 1:29:21 2nd half = 1:36:37; 1488 OA, 231 AG, 1304 M


Our race team of Joe Kane, Alex Albertini, Dan Burns, and Hirsh Kravitz and me placed fifth in our category.

Just a few miles to go!

Vancouver not BC, Washington not DC

This race fooled me.  I really thought I was playing it smart by trying to hold a 7 minute pace and just glide in around 3:05, or at least under 3:08 where I thought the cut off line for Boston 2015 would be.  It was a cloudy day with some drizzle at the start, but I quickly regretted bringing a hat to keep the water out of my eyes as the rain stopped and I ended up ditching the hat in the second mile rather than lugging it around.  The first half of the marathon was very flat and on a highway and boring, but I was able to hold my pace.  The second half had a few hills and a monster hill around the "Wall" that stole time on the way up and crippled my thighs on the way down.  The weather was deceivingly humid - I thought the weather in June was going to be fine, and it mostly was except for the humidity.

I also probably walked way too much the previous day.  We stayed with my friend Howie and his
wife, Helen, in Portland, and walked around touring the city. For future marathons, it is important that I really rest the prior day. The point of the trip was to have a vacation and get me another state.  We did have a good trip as we took in Portland (visited Voodoo Donuts, a brewery, some bookstore) and we also drove to Seattle (took in the original Starbucks and saw the flagship Nordstrom's, watched a Mariners game, walked the city, went to the huge market, ran along the shore, took a ferry to Bainbridge Island, went up the Space Needle).

Random Race Memories:

Ran with Ryan Hagen from Kirkland, WA - his first marathon; not much to see as on highway then neighborhoods and industrial area; really strong finish and Bart Yasso announced my finish and tweeted at me later; passed a limping woman in the last half mile and tried to get her to finish which she did; got a massage and walked around Portland all afternoon and didn't feel so sore - in fact could probably have run a mile or two.

My splits:

6:58/59/7:02/03/02/00/00/03/00/6:56/7:01/04/08/21/23/21/13/21/44/8:43/7:15/45/8:14/14/35/09/55 seconds last .15 - 12/58 AG 47/757 OA
Bart Yasso greets me at the finish with a high five!

Boston recap

While I am tardy in posting my results from 2014 Boston, it's probably because I am not very pleased with my effort.  I had a great training season and set personal bests in a few race distances - most notably the half marathon (Rock N Roll Half - 1:25:47) and Cherry Blossom Ten Miler (63:11).  The cost of these PRs was that I was overtrained, suffered a bad taper, and didn't carb load properly (more on this later).

I had a pretty good training cycle, but by going all out for a half four weeks prior and a ten miler two weeks prior to Boston, it left me exhausted for the race.  Sometimes I think that I am superman.  I also suffered by not properly getting a good carb load since the race occurred during Passover.  I was interviewed by Washington Jewish Week about how I balanced observing Passover with training for Boston.

Finishing the 2014 Boston Marathon in under 3:30

Sara and Lisa greet me on Heartbreak Hill


Random Race Memories:

I knew early on around the tenth mile it wasn't going to be my day, but I was surprised at how tired I was - definitely poor taper. Amanda Hicks passed me and I cheered her to finish strong; took a picture with Lisa McAvoy and Sara on Hearthbreak Hill again; ran with Arnie - boy did he not aid me! Happy to finish. Bad carbo loading with maztah, quinoa, and potatoes - I do rely on pasta, but glad I kept Passover.

My splits:

21:51; 43:33; 1:05:32; 1:29:48; 1:35:00; 1:54:55; 2:21:42; 2:49:37; 3:17:49 (5K splits) Overall 9029

Yet, there is no such thing as a "Bad Boston Marathon." I'm reminded of this as my 3:09:27 wasn't good enough for entry into Boston 2015, 29 seconds short of the cut off line. I will have to wait until 2016 to try to run Boston as well as I know I can.


Full text of article:

In Boston, a celebration of running


After running a little more than three hours, Kenny Ames crossed the finish line at Monday’s Boston Marathon and began eating from his box of Passover Tam Tams.
Ames wouldn’t have minded celebrating with a beer, but due to the holiday, he went with “the little crackers for Passover that are so awesome.”
The 118th Boston Marathon was the third for this D.C. resident. He finished, but didn’t meet his goal of running the 26.2 mile course in under three hours.
“I do think Passover affected me this time. I was not able to carbo load,” Ames, 36, said, referring to his normal heapings of pasta before a race. Instead, he digested lots of potatoes, apples, bananas and yogurt.
“I definitely felt tired earlier than I normally do,” he added, “To me, it’s more important to observe the holiday than to run a marathon.”
For Jewish Washington-area runners at the marathon, Passover was just another hurdle to cross. A year after the bombing that killed three and wounded more than 250, Ames and others saw a city that boasted extra security and heightened pride.
Ames’ parents waited for him at the finish line, just as they had last year.
Fortunately, in 2013 he finished the race about 85 minutes before the bombs went off “so we were long out of the city.” While he didn’t witness any of the devastation, the human toll still weighed on his mind.
“This is so much attached to it. I’m going to have to keep my emotions intact,” he said several days before Monday’s race. The Brookland resident generally runs 50 to 60 miles a week.
There was more security this time. Because runners weren’t allowed to leave bags around, the warm-up jacket and pants that he wore when he first got to the athletes’ village about three hours before race time had to be thrown away, he said.
Warren Margolies of Bethesda also noticed the increased security. ”They were really adamant that you had to show your bib number” when walking around the athletes’ village, he said. He also noticed “snipers on the roof of the middle school.”
Margolies, 33, also saw “a heightened sense of pride in the city. You saw so many Boston Pride shirts.” He called the 2014 Boston Marathon, his second one, “a celebration of running.” The real estate attorney, who has now run five marathons, said Monday’s race was “very special. It seemed like the right thing to do after last year. I feel honored to be there.”
He also was pleased with his time of two hours, 50 minutes and 31 seconds, noting, “I did well.”
Margolies usually runs 45 minutes to an hour every day. “I just clear my head. I can think things through,” he said. Running gives him “inner peace, peace of mind. It gives sort of order and discipline to my life.”
Scott Zoback also was among the marathon’s 35,671 entrants. The 31-year-old had two strong reasons to run in this year’s race. He joined a team supporting Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where his father was a patient for four years before he passed away in 2007.
But Zoback, press secretary for U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), also wanted to return to Boston after witnessing the bombing as a spectator at last year’s race. “I was diagonally across the street from the second bomb,” he said.
When the first bomb exploded, he and his friends weren’t sure what happened. “But when the second one went off, we knew this was purposeful. People started running, trampling,” he recalled. Despite that, Zoback said he had “zero” concerns about security while running through the streets of Boston on Monday.
“The deeds of a couple aren’t going to change how we as a state feel,” the Worcester, Mass., native declared. He was proud of how the crowd “was urging you on at every point. The way Massachusetts came out for this race, it was definitely emotional out there.”
He’s glad he ran, although he said the heat took a toll on his time. So did Passover. “I have never eaten more potatoes in a week than I did” prior to the race, he said. Zoback was happy this year to be able to eat the grain quinoa, which is new to the Passover menu.
Two family seders also created a challenge to his training schedule. However, “There are always hurdles to overcome,” he said. “A little family Seder isn’t going to get in the way of six months of training.”
All his emotions and training culminated in having a medal placed around his neck. “There is no feeling like it in the world,” he said.