I decided to run this race after reading an article featuring the race in the September 2009 issue of Runner's World. The race was meant to be a tune up for my half marathon at the end of this month. The twenty kilometer (12.4 miles) length is 1.1 kilometer shy of the half marathon length of 21.1 kilometers (13.1 miles). For all intents and purposes, this was a test of whether I could complete a half marathon. This race was a national championship open to all runners. I am not an elite runner although there were many of them racing this day. FYI - Ryan Hall, a current marathon running phenom, won this race a couple of years ago.It was also an excellent opportunity to bond with my eldest son as a half mile kids race was held before the 20K race. I want to expose him to athletics without being an over the top parent living vicariously through his child. He wanted to do this race without any assistance from mom or dad. As it turned out, parents were not permitted to run with their children.
Our family decided to drive up to Connecticut on Sunday and stay at a very affordable Quality Inn in East Haven, a couple miles away from the race venue. As luck would have it, a wedding party had booked many rooms in the vicinity of our room and their was open drinking in the parking lot surrounding the motel. Another depressant was out room was not made upon checking in. We decided to seek shelter somewhere else.
We found an available room at the Holiday Inn Express in Branford. We were about ten minutes away from the race now. These rooms were much nicer than at the Quality Inn. The last two Quality Inn's we have stayed at were motels and not hotels. Quality Inn uses a deceptive marketing technique at certain sites where the main office building is built with a two story false front, giving the illusion you are staying at a hotel. When you arrive at the QI hotel, you realize the picture depicting the building on the internet was of a false front. A more accurate picture would be to have two dozen cars lined up outside the doors of their rooms. In fact, their are actually no hotel rooms located within the 'building' pictured. My only recourse as a consumer is to personally blacklist Quality Inn.
After a sleepless night, my wife and I awoke around 5:30am to prepare the kids for the 6:00 AM continental breakfast. The night was also interrupted by a band of post-wedding guests staying at the hotel coming back at 2:00am and displaying little consideration for the other sleeping guests on our wing. Fortunately, the hotel discounted our stay $30 for this inconvenience. The kids love staying in hotel rooms, although mom and dad have a tough time sleeping outside of home.
We left for the race minutes after 7:30AM and easily found the Temple street parking garage. This garage was designated for runners. Parking for the day was only three dollars due to a New Haven 20K road race runner's discount. This was a very large garage and had ample parking. We only had to traverse four or five blocks to get to New Haven Green, command center for the race. The city of New Haven is home to Yale University. The architecture of the many of the university's buildings is astounding.
My eldest son's race began at 8:15AM. All of the children were asked to sit at the starting line of the race and listen to general instructions about what to do and not to do. They discussed having a good time also, which was the mantra I had been preaching to my son for weeks prior to this race. At six years old and being a country bumpkin, I was concerned all of these new sights and sounds may have been too much for him, but he did well. Although he was hobbled by a bad chest cold, he ran a 6:oo minute half mile. After the race he let us know he made a friend while sitting with the other kids listening to the pre-race instructions. He's a very sociable boy.
Our oldest son gave my wife and I a brief parental meltdown. After the kids race was finished, our son was nowhere to be found. We were in the midst of about six thousand runners and spectators. We had told him repeatedly prior to the race do not walk away from the finish line after the race until either I or my wife met him. For about two or three minutes we were frantically looking for him. I felt as if i were embedded in a bad reality show about child abduction. I was faced with potentially not running the 20K race in an effort to find him. Eventually we found him at the finish line, but I recall looking there initially and he was not there. He insisted he was there the whole time.
My race began at 8:40 AM. There was also a 5K race being run at the same time. The starting lines for these races were two city blocks apart, with a banner spanning the streets hung high upon on the street lights indicating the 5K start and the 20K start. At the 20K start you were running away from the rising sun while the 5K start had you running toward the rising sun.
The race website, http://www.newhavenroadrace.org/, mentioned there would be starting corrals where people were separated by their anticipated pace per miles. The five minute milers would be in the front of the pack and the nine minutes milers in the back. I was not aware of any grouping of racers at the start line. I started about 3/4 back in the pack.
Once the race was started, it required about a minute and a half to get from my position in the starting grid to the start line. Fortunately, this time is accounted for in the race results. Your 'net time' excludes the time required to get to the starting line after a race begins.
To expand on this, when you cross each timer at a mile marker you have to subtract your time to the starting line (TSL) seconds from the number displayed. For example, my ten kilometer mile marker clock displayed a 55:41 time. When you take into account my ninty TSL seconds, I ran the first 10K in 54:11. A time nearly ten minutes faster than my Elizabethtown Twilight Trot 10K race only two weeks ago. This reaffirms my contention I should not have run the E-Town race with my abscessed tooth and infection issue.
The first mile of the race was extremely difficult to navigate due to the high density of runners per square foot on the roads. There were many occasions during this time where I had to wait until I found a lane to advance through the pack. One pet peeve at this juncture was having bands of two or three runners whoi signed up together for the race advancing side by side, thereby creating a wall which needed to be circumnavigated to pass the group.
After the first mile, the remaining miles were relatively calm and peaceful. All of the roads were clear of traffic, there were no major hills to climb, and many of the roads were shaded. There were plenty of water stations. I knew at the ten kilometer mark I was having a good day. My only question at that point was how long would my legs hold out.
At about the fifteen kilometer mark, I developed an issue with a tightening muscle in my groin area. It felt like there was a knot in my muscle. This began to hamper my stride, as I shortened it to limit the pain. With only one kilometer to go, the pain became much more intense and I was not able to mount a triumphant sprint into the finish line. Were it not for this issue, I had enough in the tank to sprint to the finish line.
The strange thing with the finish line for this race is there were three finishing mats you had to run over to get your time. I wasn't sure if one of them was active or if all three of them were active. This race employed an RFID tag called the D-Tag from ChronoTrack systems. which you affix to one of your running shoes.
I ran this race in a net time of 1:51:11. That's one hour fifty-one minutes and eleven seconds of continuous running. I was very pleased with my performance in this race. While I am not going to be quitting my day job to pursue a full time running career, this is a respectable time for a person my age.
After the race, the family and I visited Yale's Peabody museum, five blocks north of New Haven Green. It was a small museum, but the admission price reflected of the size of the museum. My eldest son loves dinosaurs and this museum contained a fair number of dinosaur exhibits. The day prior we visited Lighthouse Point Park on the New Haven Harbor overlooking Long Island Sound. The kids loved the beach here as well as the authentic lighthouse perched on the rocky sea shore.
Completing this race in this time represented the pinnacle of athletic achievement to date in my life. Sometimes life's perpetual struggles can weigh you down. Running this race will definitely go down as one of my 'feel-good' moments of this year.
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