Tag Archives: Northeast

January 2, 2015 · 8:35 am

East Hamptons, NY 2014

Date and time: September, 2014, 8:30 am

Location: East Hampton, NY.

The Hamptons, NY

Starting and ending at the school with a (more or less) out and back loop east along the coast.

Weather: Warm and still. ~75ish by the halfway point and sunny through the middle portion (like starting immediately after you vocalize that “this sun vs. shade situations is going to totally make or break my run today.” Oops.) And (apparently) a beautiful day for some cheer team members to survive a brief detour off course…

Must have been rough…

Threads and treads: Asics tank and running skirt, swirls Pro Compression marathon socks, my favorite had-too-many-miles-on-them-a-while-ago (oops #2) Mizuno Wave Elixers.

Field: Mostly east coasters with a handful of out-of-towners in for the run and a fall weekend in the Hamptons. A smaller race with ~2500 5k runners, ~2500 half marathoners and ~500 running the full. The vast majority (read: all) of the field appeared to be long-time recreational runners and everyone was super friendly.

Support: There were 18-20 water stations or so with one Gu fueling station (that this genius missed). More water stations during the mid/end/entire/sunny part of the course would have been appreciated…but I’m afraid that is more of a personal issue as 20ish stops in 26 miles is more than reasonable.

Pre-race Expo: This was a very quaint and low-key expo. It was at held at the school gym (also the location of the race start and finish) and was basically a dozen or so folding tables around the perimeter of the gym servicing all three race distances (packet, t-shirt, bag and stocking cap…yup…that’s right…stocking cap…pickup, maps, pasta dinner (which we opted not to participate in), a (very few) vendors, etc…) Small, but suitable considering the number of entrance and the entrance $$.

Race start: The race started at 8:30 am from the school in (what I think is) the center of the East Hamptons. The marathoners and half marathoners went out first and then the 5k began shortly after. It was a very mellow start, there were a reasonable number of port-a-potties and I was lucky enough to find a lone one-off to the side with no real line, so that made everything look just a little bit more rosy me 🙂 It was about 60F starting out, so arm warmers were nice to have, but not much more was necessary.

The Run: The run began by leaving the school and winding ~10 miles through the wooded, rolling hills of East Hampton, near the southern coast and out to the Eastern tip of the island. The middle ~6 miles were flat, but sunny and HOT (at least for this wuss). The final ~10 miles were back inland to the school, weaving around to get all 26.2 miles in.

I got to enjoy the first 6 miles or so with both Jen (who had an awesome first half marathon) and Martin (who had a perfect first full marathon). This was great. Jen split off with the other halfers at their mid-point leaving Martin and I to brave the warm, sunny, midsection of our course by ourselves.

The plan was to run 9:05 min/miles, a 4 hr finishing time. The idea was that if things slowed down for a few miles, there wouldn’t be THAT much catch up to do but that hopefully the pace would be ok and there would even be fuel in the tank for ramping it up at the end. Right. And in this case, right = wrong. At least for me.

By about that 10 mile mark, coming out of the rolling wooded area, I built up the never/concern to voice that “holding this pace is going to strongly depend on how much of this course is shaded. If I lose these trees, the wheels are coming off.”

And then we lost the shade.

I held on through the half way point and that was it. I was getting dizzy and metal-mouthed and I needed to slow down. (Hell, I wanted to lay down with a beer, but I don’t think that would have gone over so well with the rest of the crew.) I slowed down my pace to whatever felt ok and started walking not only through the water stops but also for a few (hundred) meters after/before. I fell into a little group of women (spaced out over ~1/4 mile or so) that seemed to have the same plan as me. This was nice. There was pink t-shirt pacing/pulling me up ahead, and tape-girl behind, who had to stay behind.

Meanwhile, in Martin land, things were going great. Someone managed to hold on to those 9:05, kick it up a notch at the end for the perfect sub-4 hr finishing time for his first marathon.

Ass hole. Just kidding…mostly… 😉

I survived the second half of those hot middle miles, rather enjoyed the shaded rolling hills and the ~~opportunity to drip sweat all over~~

chit-chat with my cheer team every time I ran into their smiling faces along the course now that I had no hope of running any particular time. I was still quite irritated by the 3 or 4 course fake-outs where it seemed like we might be heading back into town for the finish only to be going out to an unshaded stretch along the coast for another mile or two instead.

The 25 mile mark did finally come, and then the 26 mile mark, and then the school after a final 0.2 miles and one final cheer team encounter 🙂

Note: being a small, small-town race, the course was not closed to traffic. Not a huge deal, but something to be aware of such that you’re not surprised when you encounter these:

And a dog in a crate.

Post-Run: I was the last one of our crew to finish (thanks for sticking it out with me guys!!) so shortly after I arrived we snagged some group photos,

a post-race message (the first one I’ve ever gotten, and god it felt great) and headed home for showers, an AMAZING lunch spread and some solid RnR for the rest of the day. We rented a little abode not far from the start using AirBnB and I would absolutely, 110% recommend doing this. We had amazing digs

secured private entrance

living and dining

rooftop patio

that were super convenient and reasonably priced with a most excellent hostess.

Executive summary: Small, low-key, friendly, pretty. Not the fastest course I’ve ever done, but certainly not the slowest — and not at all unreasonable as long as you aren’t delusional about running above your fitness 😉
Beautiful.

The Hamptons Marathon Training: Week = -1

Training for The Hamptons Marathon full begins in just one short week! Yikes!

Unfortunately for Dr. Trot, someone has been doing a lot more hydrating and fueling like this…

The making of the "one bottle a night" rule on just another Thursday night...

and like this…

Breakfast of champions.

than in a happy-marathon-day minded way. Oops!

So, that must all change starting now!

I have spent the last two weeks getting over my bad-behavior-induced cold/cough (getting old is rough man…) and only felt like I could put in some productive miles starting this weekend. So that’s what we did.

Saturday 5/10: ~5 mi @ who knows
It was nice and warm out with a light breeze. And humid 🙂 — which was great for the lungs but kept the pace pretty slow (Yes, yes of course I’m blaming the humidity for that — my fitness level certainly had nothing to do with it!) It felt great to get out and get moving which was a nice sign considering how I have been feeling lately

Sunday 5/11: ~7.5 mi @ slow + a few “I’m hot” pauses

I survived!

It was nice and warm (~80F) again today with less humidity (30%) and no real wind to speak of. Today’s run was a really pretty route that I don’t usually take. I need to get over the one mile difference between 6 and 7 miles because this is a really pretty route. About 1/3 is on a great dirt trail along the canal, another 1/3 is along a paved country road that winds its way through fields and undeveloped land just outside of Pton, and then 1/3 is on two of the little roads going in and out of town. While I will maintain that the lack of public water out here (particularly along the tow path — the gravel path along the canal that people used to walk on way back in the day as they towed boats down the canal) is total bull shit, this is a really great route. AND, now that I’m well aware of this egregious deficiency of the Northeast, and have a wonderful, multipurpose, purple ~~side~~ back-kick…

there shouldn’t be ~~any~~ too many near-death-by-dehydration issues to complain about (that doesn’t mean that there won’t be — there just shouldn’t be). Anyway, it was ~~just nice to survive today~~ a great way to start off the training season 🙂

Now, in an attempt to ~~survive~~ make the most of this training season, Dr. Trot is uncharacteristically prepared 7 days out from Week #1. The game plan is as follows:

1. Follow a training schedule with 4 running days/week (very similar to last year).

For anyone interested in this kind of a marathon training schedule, here it is in an even-easy-enough-for-Dr-Trot-to-use Google calendar format –

The mileage maxes out at 46 mi/week 4 weeks before the marathon and every third week is a cutback. The long runs are scheduled for Saturdays (a to get it out of the way 1st thing on the weekend and b) to prep for a Saturday marathon. The second weekend run is meant to simply get more miles in on tired legs. Fun. The two weekday runs are on Tuesday and Thursday so Monday can be a rest day after the truckload of weekend miles and Friday can be a rest day in preparation for said miles. I’m going to try to keep my Tuesdays a bit shorter and faster (think tempo runs or fartleks) while the Thursday runs will be longer but easier miles. I personally have a hard time breaking away from work 3 times a week to run and some extra time off my feet between Tuesday and Thursday is nice to have (think “operation avoid the damn shin splints”). However, if you prefer to be out 5 days instead of 4, by all means, take Tuesday a little easier, get a short fast run in on Wednesday, and then maybe take a mile or two or three off of the Thursday run to avoid burning out.

I feel like I should also mention something about the signs of overtraining and how to amend the schedule if these start to appear. In short, shave a mile or two off of the shorter runs, or scrap one day a week altogether, to give the body a chance to recharge while doing your best to keep the long run…the most important…more or less on schedule. Since that really doesn’t do justice to the “Oh shit I’m overtraining! What do I do?” realization, I’ll have to be back with more on that later. Hopefully it’ll be a few months before this is necessary. Hopefully…

2. Include a daily core exercise program to shed this life jacket that I’ve been wearing since Feb…2004… (very dissimilar to last year)

The aim will be to follow the off season strength training regime (more diligently) –

1. Kneeling hip-flexor stretch
2. Superman
3. Metronome
4. Crunches
5. Plank (+lift)
6. Side plank (+lift)
7. Supine plank
8. Pushups

The ~~lofty~~ goal will be to go through these 8 ~~pains in my core~~ little treasures (x2) after Tuesday’s run, the Saturday long run and the Sunday recovery run (3x per week). I also want to make my favorite plank, pushups and a quick abs search-and-rescue mission regular occurances on the other 4 days of the week (rest days included). Good luck to me.

3. Keep tabs of what works, what sucks and what translates into better fitness — vs. just a crabbier, tireder (of course that’s a word) Dr. Trot — by honest-to-god-pinky-swear-really-really-really-I’m-serious-this-time keeping a running journal.

Never mind the dead plants or the gross runners feet -- I have no idea who either of those belong to.

I’ll ~~probably~~ definitely subject you to excerpts of this as a means of forcing myself to do it and keeping it PG-13.

4. Work is important but not 24/7/365 important.

I ~~want to~~ should do all of the above and if that means I can’t put in all of the +18 hr work days that someone would like me to, that’s ok. Life will continue, probably even as we know it, and the bugs will wait until tomorrow for me. (And if they don’t, it’ll be a hell of a lot more interesting paper than anything I’m going to get out of these +18 hr experiment days!)

4. Beer is not dinner and does not count as carb-loading.

Alrighty, and with that, I think I need to go. I apparently need to search for some long lost core muscles and write in a stupid journal. Some people and their crazy ideas

Have a great upcoming THMT Week = 0!

The Hamptons!!

It has been decided! The 2014 CEMS Marathon Team will be running The Hampton’s Marathon this year!! The race is on Saturday (is this a little odd, or is it just me?), September 27th. Both full and 1/2 marathon distances, as well as a 5k, are offered all at the same time. I’m hoping our team will have “competators” 😉 in each event.

Per usual, the major focus of this year’s marathon will be:
1. The very best team uniforms

The costume awesomeness of 2013

2. Excellent pre-race eats

Numnumnumnum....

3. A weekend of QT + R&R with an eclectic pack of nerds 🙂

Before...

and after.

One additional aim, IMHO, ought to be for the group to acquire ZERO broken legs during this year’s marathon. Dr. Samia….

Aside from the above, my goals for this year will be largely dictated by the kind of training that my ~~bitch of a~~ lovely job and summer travel plans allow. If I can get a solid 18 weeks x 4 runs/week training season in, I would love to see that pesky 3:xx that so narrowly evaded me by 1:40 last fall. If not, well, then aside from hopefully having a summer of wonderful wedding and vacation and house-guest memories, and a paper or two in the works, I’ll enjoy ~~hobbling~~ running the 26.2 with whoever is willing to wait for me.

The off season has (of course) been less consistent than I would have liked but I did get in some nice track, interval, Vibram and tempo work outs in. I have to use my imagination (or be a-okay with lying) if I want to claim there were ~~many~~ any long runs (>10 miles), but I trust that those will come now with the beautiful weather and seasonal allergies. 🙂

This year’s training plan will be very similar what I followed last year. I much prefer the 4 day/week schedule, with a few more miles on each day and an extra rest day each week, to the more traditional 5 day/week regime. The rough goal will be as follows:

1. THE LONG RUN – the most important run of the week. I’ll try to get this out of the way on Saturday mornings and cover 8-21 miles. For those of you how know me (read: know about my issues with being able to hydrate properly on hot summer long runs) will be excited to know that my H2O struggles may be a thing of the past! You can address your thank-yous to this pretty little birthday gift I received last fall…

Camelbaked!

Don’t worry, I will find plenty of other ~~bonehead struggles~~ legitimate grievances to share with you along the way 🙂

2. The recovery run. 5-12 miles to work the consequences of Saturday out of my legs. Happy Sunday 🙂

3. The Tuesday Tempo run. 3-7 miles at faster than race pace to give the legs a ~~rude awakening~~ little reminder of what it feels like to turn over at a reasonable pace.

4. The middle distance weekday run. 5-12 miles at a comfortable pace to keep up the fitness level and keep down the jeans size.

The core strength training that I’d hoped to be super diligent about this off season has unfortunately been less than a top priority 😦 Naughty Dr. Trot. Reflecting on the situation, it is a bit odd, even to me. I know core strength is important, I know my abs and back and arms and pecs could/should be stronger, and I know it doesn’t take that much time to crank out a few “lifts” at the end of each work out. But somehow it is still a hell of a lot easier said than done. Why is that? (Dr. Trot = L.A.Z.Y. is the best that I’ve got thus far.) Regardless, these NEED to become a regular part of my training this season.

Alrighty then! Long story short, I think that’s it for now! Overall it’s pretty simple, eh? We shall see!