In 2011, I only had 552 total miles, with an average pace of about 7.5 minutes per mile. I have to say that the Garmin reports (above) are not nearly as interesting to look at, as the ones that Nike+ generates (below). But I am willing to give up the fancy graphics for the additional accuracy that Garmin provides. According to my Nike+ stats from 2010, I ran 798 miles with an average pace of just over 7 minutes per mile.

I’m pretty sure that the Nike+ stats are padded resulting from inaccuracy. But I know that I ran a lot more in 2010 than last year. In 2011 I didn’t run at all until March. I took the beginning of January off, this year. But as of last week, I have already racked up a handful of miles in 2012. So, I already have a leg up on last year. Here’s to beating last year’s 552 miles, in 2012.

The next items came from Laughing Squid. It is a story about an illustrator Christoph Niemann, who illustrated at various points along the race course as he was running, then tweeted his drawings/paintings. I seriously love this kind of stuff.

The caption of this one is “Bottom of the Willis Ave. Bridge”

This one is “To of the Willis Ave. Bridge” Hahahaha

And here is crossing the finish line.

Check out the full photo story, starting at @abstractsunday, which became locked up and eventually moved to @abstractsunday1.

Oh man, I love this race. There has been so much going on in my personal life lately that I never really had a chance to get excited about the race this year. In fact, I even considered sitting it out, especially after the crazy weather the previous weekend. Thanks to some good friends’ motivational pep talks, I showed up yesterday morning with my running sneaks on. I’m so glad that I did.

I rode down to the SI ferry with my same friends that I ran Chicago with. There was some drama with the car service. But that was really the only setback of the morning. By the time we arrived in Staten Island and boarded the buses for Verazzano Bridge, the sun was already coming over the horizon, and I could tell the weather was going to be phenomenal.

My friend Becca agreed to run with me. Which was very gracious of her, considering that She tends to totally crush the NY Marathon. She PR-ed in it a few years ago with a faster time than I have had at any marathon, which is super impressive for such a difficult course. Anyway, it was so great to have her there, to chat with her in the staging area, because it gets so boring waiting and waiting for gun time.

It is always so exciting when you finally get up onto the bridge and can see the start line. Bloomberg gives his little good luck speech, and the cannon goes off. There is suddenly a sea of bouncing heads that begins pouring onto the bridge toward Brooklyn. It is the most amazing sight, ever. On my way across the Verazzano, there was a Coast Guard Black Hawk on my left side, along with a TV news helicopter. On my right hand side was an NYPD helicopter. They would fly right up next to the bridge. Coast Guard was waving through the open side door. I waved back, of course. Hehe.

Becca and I kept a nice comfortable pace just under 8 minute miles through all of Brooklyn and Queens. We even tackled the Queensboro Bridge with a pretty good pace (mostly thanks to Becca). Once we made it into Manhattan and started to charge up 1st Avenue, I began to struggle. Thankfully, Becca was really good about not letting me slow down much (even though I really wanted to). By mile 17, I was really wishing that I had brought some energy gels with me. Thankfully at mile 18 they were handing them out. But, by the 20k mark, I was really losing steam and thankfully Becca didn’t let me slow her down anymore. I watch her fade into the crowd of runners in front of me. Around mile 20 the energy gel started to kick in, and I was feeling a little bit spry again.

As I was coming off of the bridge into the Bronx, without warning, my left hamstring cramped up really hard. Like, so hard, I was worried that my race might be over. I hobbled over to the sidewalk (without tripping anyone, thk gdnss), and stretched it out for a few minutes. It ended up costing me. That mile was a 12 minute mile, hahaha. From then on, I knew that I wasn’t going to get any sort of amazing time, so I just settled in at a 10 minute mile and enjoyed the home stretch. It was almost existential. I stopped looking at the pace clocks, and my watch, and just enjoyed the crowd. I crossed the finish line at the same time as Jack Waitz, husband of the late Grete Waitz.

Thank you so much to everyone who provided encouragement to me about this race. Also thanks to everyone who tracked me, and came out to cheer. I saw one of Reagan’s hair models, out cheering twice! Hahaha. It was pretty awesome. Can’t wait to do it again next year. Here is a link to my Garmin stats.

[img: a cctv cover that I have been wanting to shoot for months]

I’m one of those people who get’s extremely thrown off by things like Columbus Day. I’m still getting my bearings from starting the work week on Tuesday. As a result, I just want to warn everyone that this is going to be a pretty scatterbrained post.

I want to start out this post by writing a bit more about my recent experience in Chicago. I arrived kind of late by Chicago time, last Friday night. My friends Mike and Jeni picked me up at the airport and took me to their newish suburban mansion, where we promptly launched their little boat into their backyard lake. We drifted around catching up on the last 5 years of our lives until about 4 or so in the morning. I woke up to the sound of leaf blowers on Saturday morning. I don’t think that has happened since I lived in LI. I took the train into the city ctr, where I met up with my friends Carl and Bec at the race expo. We hung out for the rest of the day, and luckily I was able to sneak in a nap at one point (despite the louder than bombs “occupy” garbage going on across the street from the hotel).

I didn’t sleep very well the night before the race. In fact, it was one of those nights where I was having nightmare stacked on nightmare. The most relevant/poignant was the one where I found myself in the race corral in flip-flops, having forgotten my shoes. In my dream I decided that I was going to toss the flip-flops and see how long the bare feet would hold up. I ran several miles in bare feet, as the leader of the race (haha, dreamzzzz), until my uncle (so random) met me at like mile 9, with my shoes.

Fast forward a few hours– my alarm went off. Our hotel room was like a little beehive. Everyone doing their own pre-race ritual– suiting up, mentally preparing, etc.. The no-shoes dream was still fresh on the brain, so (don’t laugh) the first thing that I did was pull my shoes out of my bag and put the D-tag in the laces. I then set them atop my shorts and jersey for when I got out of the shower. Even though I knew it would logically be impossible for me to forget my shoes, dreams can really eff with you sometimes.

We were a little bit behind schedule getting out of the door, which wasn’t a big deal, since the starting area was in the park right across Michigan Ave. from our hotel. After pushing our way through the mob, and finally entering the “runner-only” area, I was horror struck by the realization that I had forgotten…. not my shoes, but my pace watch. Carl, being the good man that he is, agreed to check my bag for me as I sprinted back to the hotel to get my watch. I’m going to skip a lot of details here, but it was not an easy feat. After locating the watch, I blitzed back to the park. It was like cattle. Super lazy cattle, who didn’t have seeded bibs. I had to climb two chain-link fences to even get to where my group was starting. They were those crappy temporary fences that almost collapse as you are leaping over them. Have you ever jumped from 8 feet at 7:15 in the morning? The landing is not pleasant when you are an old man like myself.

To wrap up this chapter, I started the race with my shoes on (and my watch). I chased my pace group for the first 5 miles, only to fall away from them somewhere around mile 16. Life is a funny ol’ thing.

Chapter 2 of this Wednesday’s post: Speaking of the race… I had some mystery cheer leaders along the route. How random/awesome is that? Christina was at mile 10. I heard the “Go Jake” and was a bit startled, but stoked nonetheless. Then right around mile 18, I heard someone shouting my first and last name. This was one of the more sparse cheer areas of the race, so I was able to see who it was– an adorable looking mom with her baby strapped to her chest. Christina read on Reagan’s page that I was going to be running, I can only assume that mystery mom at mile 18 did as well. So, thank you-thank you, ladies. Very appreciative of the support.

Chapter 3: While we are talking about people who read Reagan’s page– the fruit fly situation has been making me absolutely insane. Andahhhh, Reagan flippantly posted about it for the second time, last night. The post resulted in mad stacks of advice, including links to diagrams, etc..  To these commenters, I say thank you. I built a little hybrid contraption based on the feedback.

And the kicker? We already caught one of the little bastardos. Check out the detail below. That is 100% more flies than were caught in previous attempts.

Chapter 4:  I have inadvertently started a journal. I received a little orange booklet as a takeaway at some fashion preview that I shot earlier this fall. When my magazines for the month have all been read, I initially resorted to making lists in my little orange book during my commute. This eventually morphed into writing poetry (arguably not poetry at all, there is no iambic or any of that stuff).  Lately is has digressed into a full blown diary! Since when did I become a teenage HS girl? Anyway, there is that confession.

Chapter 5: One ring to rule them all, hahahaha. Don’t sue me Tolkien. For real though, this is the longest post evaaaarrrrrr. Give yourself a high five if you are (probably stuck in a waiting room somewhere) still reading this. The Aussie stuff that R and I shot for Hairdresser is now public. Well, that is to say that one of the videos is now public. We didn’t have as much creative control as we had hoped, but I guess it isn’t that big of a deal, since everyone we worked with was so cool. Also, the audio ended up being rough. I tried to find someone to come hold the boom for me, but Mondays are tough. I ended up putting a shotgun mic on a stand. Let’s just say that it wasn’t ideal. But the important part is that hair ninja Reagan krushed it. Check the vid over here if you are curious.

Finale: Thanks for reading this tripe. I know that Jakesmag has been relatively dull at best, lately. I guess I’m in a bit of a rut. So, thanks for having the faith that I’ll get back in my groove soon.

I had a fantastic time in Chicago hanging out with my friends Carl and Becca, as well as reconnecting with my friends Mike and Jeni. The weather was fantastic. Ok, actually it was a bit on the warm side, in the context of distance running. Anyway, I scored a 3:32. Not my best time, but certainly not my worst. I paced with the 3:20 group until around 18 or so, when it really started to get warm. At the time I was was also starting to have a lot of knee pain. So I decided not to kill myself, and that I would settle for a time under 3:30, which didn’t happen. Hahahaha. I guess it has just been a mediocre year generally for me, when it comes to running. At least now the pressure is off for the New York Marathon.

[via]

Well, next Sunday is the big race in Chi-town. I’m not sure how I will do. I wanted to score a 3:10 or better. But I can already tell you that isn’t going to happen. As usual, I totally crapped out on my training, right when I was starting to really speed up. I ran a half marathon yesterday in Central Park. I was hoping for a 1:30 or better. I ended up with a 1:35. So, I would have to double those efforts to get my time in Chicago. Seems like a pretty long shot. Part of me is excited to get Chicago out of the way. I have put a lot of pressure on myself to get a good time. Once it is over, I can just kind of coast and relax until the New York Marathon, which I am running purely for the fun factor. Here are some of the stats from yesterday’s half-mara.

Distance: 13.1 Miles, 21.1 Kilometers
Date/Time: October 1, 2011, 9:00 AM
Location: Central Park, NYC
Weather: 60 degrees, 93% humidity, wind 3 mph, overcast.

Total Finishers: Men – 2551 Women – 2406 Total – 4957

[Photos: Reagan Breinholt]

I came across these images from Stussy’s “Stussy Sport” line for Fall/Winter, today. What are people’s thoughts? I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a cold weather runner. I’m curious about how these items peform, since Stussy isn’t exactly known for the technical aspects of their gear. I still wouldn’t mind trying it out. I mean, it’s no X-ray jacket, but, I’m digging the style.

Training has been going not so great. I did a single 10 mile jaunt last weekend, then an 18 miler today. The 18 miler was actually an NYRR sponsored event called “marathon tune-up.” Since I am still getting over a cold, I took it pretty easy. Ideally, I would have liked to have gone race pace today, but I’ll save it for Grete’s half marathon next weekend. Here are some stats from the run today:

Distance: 18.0 Miles, 29.0 Kilometers
Date/Time: September 25, 2011, 7:00 AM
Location: Central Park, NYC

Total Finishers: Men – 2009 Women – 1819 Total – 3828

Since I’m now officially tapering (unofficially, I have been for like 2 weeks already, hehehe), I’m going to keep the mileage relatively low this week, and try to do better than a 1:30 on Saturday. Fingers crossed, I’ll bee feeling 100% and get a huge confidence boost from it, going into the Chicago Marathon, the following weekend.

The photo at the top is from last week. Thanks, Brightroom.