BETTER AT RUNNING THAN COUNTING

I ran a very good cross country race...even though I missed my time goal. Fortunately, my time goal was wrong...because, apparently, I'm no longer a very good counter.

Here's how I set my goal time: 21:42 is 7 minutes flat for a 5K. I added 30 seconds per mile to that (93 seconds over the 3.1 mile course) and got 22:45, which I then rounded up to 23 minutes as my time to beat. Whoops! That 22:45 should have been 23:15. Which I would then have increased to 23:30 as my goal.

Hooray! I solidly beat my newly computed correct goal by running 23:08.

How do I know that's actually good? Well, the race included 4 members of my GNY team who had also vied with me in last week's 4-miler. They all had beaten me by fairly comfortable margins, but not this time. I beat 2 of them and significantly closed the gap on the others.

To top it off, racing cross country was actually lots of fun! Who knew??

The course descriptions I've read...and pictures I've seen... for Van Cortlandt Park have always made the course seem ominous! The hills were vicious and steep, the footing uncertain, and the end result slow and exhausting. So I didn't feel much enthusiasm for the event. I feared I was on my way to a race in which I'd do embarrassingly badly and, possibly, injure myself. Right before the start of the men's race (the women began 20 minutes later...the trails are too small to reasonably handle both groups at once) I wondered if I might finish last.

Nevertheless, when I first got off the subway alongside the Park, I thought Van Cortlandt was beautiful. A long field on which people were playing soccor and cricket (which I'd never seen in person)and then the woods and hills off in the distance. It felt like the country in the Bronx and the sight of the woods bordering the playing field reminded me of my childhood delight, the softball field at Lansmans Bungalow Colony, where my family spent many Summers. In the Catskills, the deep outfield actually sloped down, leading to the forest that surrounded left, right and center. Many times I flew down that slope, chasing fly balls that ended in my glove before they could make the trip all the way into the woods.

The race started on the long flat playing field (The Flats). We ran straight across between the various games for over half a mile, turned left around a pole featuring the tortoise and the hare (I feared I knew which one I was to be that day), left again and then right till me entered the dreaded woods. I had no real idea what to expect in that mysterious place.

And that's why I'd run the Flats cautously...I was conserving energy for the unexpected. Well, I could have started the race more aggressively...

...Because I loved the woods! Surrounded by trees, unable to see any part of the City (till we ran over a bridge that crossed a major highway), it was cool and other worldly. Some of the dreaded hills were steep but they were VERY short. The footing was not bad at all. In fact, the hardest part was running the steep down hills. Twice I picked up so much speed while my body was at such an unusual angle towards the ground that I feared tumbling over and thus had to struggle to slow myself down a bit.

Less than half way through the woods I came upon our team leader, Bob Glover. He had beaten my solidly the week before and then said after the race that he had not "pushed it" near the end because he was already well ahead of his age group competition. In other words, he could have beaten me by even more! I went by him and never looked back!

Then, up ahead, was JC, another team runner I'd never come close to. Well, he was close this time, maybe 50 meters or less ahead. This was great, but I decided to concentrate on my footing and maintaining a good pace over the hills and not exhausting myself for when we reemerged on the Flats. I'd been told that there would still be a long way to go to the finish and I didn't want to falter there. The race was still more with myself than with others.

Running through the woods, pushing up the not so awful hills and then flying down while trying to maintain enough control, all the while doing a very nice pace, was SO MUCH FUN!! Still, I kept wanting the fun to end, to get out of the woods and on to the finish. And that was because I feared that perhaps there WAS one last hill still lurking that would be exactly as bad as I'd been lead to believe!

But there wasn't. We left the woods and turned on to the trail that would lead us back across the Flats to the finish. JC was, maybe, 25 meters ahead of me and certain to pick up speed now that we faced no more hills. The finish line, though in sight, was still way too distant to begin a kick. No way I could maintain it that long. I was pretty tired and not sure that I had a kick left inside me. In fact, as we raced to the end, I wanted to pull back and slow down. There was too far to go to even maintain the quick pace that I was running. But there was JC not that far ahead and I didn't want to weaken so late. If he could do it, so could I! And then we were passing the starting point for the women's race and I could hear teammates' shouts of support. I certainly didn't want to falter in front of them.

The finishing banner was now not so far away...nor was JR. I was gaining on him, maybe within 10 meters. He started to kick and so did I. Well, it didn't feel like much of a kick as I was now near totally spent. But the finish was beckoning and the distance between us was lessening. If only he'd pull away I could stop pushing and end the race in some level of comfort, but now it was too close to call off the chase.

I pushed it all the way in and so did he and by the end the gap was about 1 meter, 1 second according to the official posted finishing times. It was JC who prevailed by that slim margin. Couldn't we race just one more kilometer?

I was disappointed...but not very. Because it's not just JC that I'm gaining on!!