This weekend was the BK Half! It was my first time doing this particular race but my 7th half marathon. Here’s how it went:
Friday night I went to the race expo and the only way to describe it was “eh”. The space was cool but a very far and inconvenient walk from the subway. I got there about 2 hours before the expo closed so yes, I understand I went at the tail end of the event but so many things were sold out, there were no samples, there were no clothing retailers AND they only had XS, L and XL women’s shirts left. This makes me so angry since you pay a lot of money for the race ($75) and order your size in advance so they should not run out of what you wanted! The XS is fine but it’s still very annoying and a sign of poor race management. So anyways, the best part of the expo was the view, everything else was lame.
Ok, on to more positive things (sorta)! Friday night I stayed over in Brooklyn; my race start time was 7am so I headed for Prospect Park at 5:45am. I went to drop of my bag at bag check and arrived at 6:19 and the truck wouldn’t take my bag! I was standing there with TONS of other people trying to get our bag on our specified trucks (drop off closed at 6:20) and they were just being crazy about it so we had to go to “late baggage” drop off. It was just an unnecessary added stress of race morning. They should have taken everyone’s bag who was there at the specified time.
(i’m awake here, but just barely)
Then I went to line up for my 7am start. The race starts in Prospect Park and right before the start line the street gets extremely narrow so I waited about 20-25 minutes to actually cross the start line. So many people (25,578 to be exact)!
The first 7 miles were through the park and somewhat hilly, although nothing too crazy. I started the race with 2 friends who wanted to break 1:55 and planned to stay with the pacer for the race. I had never run with a pacer before and wanted to give it a try. I hated it! The pacer was super nice and answered questions and encouraged people along the way but trying to keep pace with someone can be harder than just going at my own pace. Even though 1:55 is a very doable time for me, if the pacer was even an inch in front of me I felt like I was chasing him and would never catch him. By the time we exited the park I managed to stay slightly ahead of the pacer for the rest of the race which made me feel much more at ease. I also stumbled upon an amazing Songza station that helped my run, Performance Enhancing Pop: Running. It was a fun mix of 80s hits and more current music. Huge fan, check it out.
The second half of the race was sorta boring, just one straight street until you near the finish. It was very wide so at this point so you didn’t have to weave in and out of other runners (the park was VERY crowded and I even saw a few people fall). After miles and miles of running straight you finally run up to the board walk at Coney Island which was very cool. It was an awesome feeling to sprint to the finish with the ocean on your left.
I crossed the finish line at 1:53:34. I was pretty happy with this time. My training was not great (I only did 2 long runs in preparation) and while this wasn’t close to my best time (1:45) it also was not my worst. I felt good about it!
After the finish, the bag pickup was a total sh*t show, NYRR really needs to work on this process. And while it was cool to be in Coney Island, I was alone and didn’t really feel like hanging out so I jumped on the subway for an hour ride to get home. I ate a delish bagel and hung out on the hammock with Porter. Yesterday and today I’m sore but not nearly as bad as I’ve been in the past. My quads hurt but otherwise I’m feeling pretty good.
Overall I’d say the race was a good one. I enjoyed the course, the weather was amazing and for the most part it was a well run race with lots of water (it was a hot day) and volunteers along the way. Overall I think NYRR does a really nice job running their races and with races this big it’s expected that a few things will go wrong, but generally speaking it’s excellently run. I probably won’t do this race again. While Brooklyn isn’t THAT far away, it is way further than Central Park which happens to be a 3 minute walk from my apartment and hosts half marathons all the time. It was fun to experience once but once may have been enough.
Who else raced on Saturday? How did it go?
