We're Having a Party, and Race Report: Boomer's Cystic Fibrosis Run to Breathe 10K

I'm having a fundraiser for Fred's Team, so all NYers are welcome to come on down!  And if you're not a NYer, come on down anyway!

Fast Feet and Fast Fingers -- a Double Benefit for Fred's Team and NYSCRA
July 20, 2011
5:30pm-8:30pm
Ward III, 111 Reade Street

Here's the invite:
Drink. eat, and do good at the same time!

Meet, mingle and have a delicious bespoke cocktail or three prepared by the amazing Michael Neff and the Ward III bartenders. Happy hour prices will be extended for the duration of the event. We get a percentage of the bar, so come thirsty!
Proceeds will benefit both the Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research at MSKCC and the New York State Court Reporters Association's legislative fund.
Drinking cocktails has been scientifically shown to improve speed, both on the steno machine and on the track.
All are welcome -- you don't need to be a court reporter or a runner to come and have a good time!
Click here for the link to the Facebook page!

Hopefully going to go over the top with the fundraising for the triathlon at this event, so fingers crossed.

Saturday was the Boomer's Cystic Fibrosis Run To Breathe 10K in Central Park.  It was also a post-long-run Fred's Team soiree at one of the assistant coach's apartments.   I have a friend with CF who runs with Team Boomer, so of course I wanted to do the race.  But I needed to talk with the Fred's Team crew about the aforementioned party and some of the logistics.  What's a girl to do?

Both, of course.

Before I begin, this was my training week:
Monday (July 4th)  23 mile bike ride, 30 minute excellent swim
Tuesday  attempt at speedwork (no slow twitch muscles left after Monday.)
Wednesday  11 mile bike + 1 mile treadmill (indoors obviously, as I did not bring a treadmill outdoors)
Thursday  5 mile run
Friday  nada

13 miles on the schedule.  Got a late start, thanks to Spot, who somehow konws that I'm getting ready to leave and becomes instantly needy, so of course I must tend to her.  How do cats do that?  Semi-related note -- also, how does Spot take the pill, eat food, drink water, and THEN manage to cough the pill up?  Did she learn this trick at kitty prison?  Don't get it.

I wanted to take the miles a little slow, but I also wanted to get to the corrals for the race with enough time to find my friend.  Also -- and this is not a slam on my friend at all -- my friend is slower than I am, and I knew we'd be walking a bit during the race.  So it was okay if I burned myself out a bit on the first half.

Bought a new pair of VFFs -- even though I'm still miffed at them -- and I wore them for this run.  Now, here's a new discovery.  VFFs aren't really shoes, they're more like socks with a thin rubber sole to keep glass from cutting your feet to ribbons.  That being said, apparently one needs to break them in the same way one breaks in a new pair of actual shoes.  Or to put it another way, one's first run in brand-new VFFs should not be 13 miles long.  I developed a blister in the one spot on the VFF that one could possibly get a blister, and that's on the middle of the inside side of the right foot, where the one seam is.

Another new and semi-unfortunate discovery was my new shorts.  At the JackRabbit NY Running Expo, I discovered the Zensah brand of running and compression gear.  Bought a couple of bras and a pair of shorts and fell in LOVE with this brand.   The shorts are snug, they go down to the knee, and they have what I will call an ass pocket, so it supports your tush without mushing it.  Alls I want is more of those shorts!!  Went back to JackRabbit -- not there.  Paragon -- nope.  CitySports -- no.   Bizarrely, no one carries running underwear anymore, either.  Bras, yes.  No panties.  Why is that?   Paragon only had one kind of running panty, and they used to have rackfulls.  Anyways, I digress from my digression.  So I ordered a pair from the Zensah site.  They arrived Friday, and I was psyched to wear them for the 13 miler.  Turns out Zensah doesn't even carry those shorts anymore.  The ones I bought were plain old compression shorts.  They have since been redesigned or discontinued, and what I got instead was a high compression short, which meant that instead of my thighs being gently squeezed and supported, they felt like two sausages stuffed into a too-small casing. 

Oh, yes, the race.  Do my seven miles and make it to my friend's corral as the singer is finishing up the Star Spangled Banner.  Ordinarily perfect timing, so there's no real cooldown between the run and the race.  Bad timing when trying to find a friend, because at that point all the corrals are moving forward, and it's a crush of people.  Grr.  I look around and can't find him.  Okay.  I figure I'll catch him on the run.  Enough time, since it takes so long to really get moving, I sit down on a post and, for lack of anything better to use, attempt to stuff a Jolly Rancher wrapper into my shoe to cover the blister.  

Start walking forward, and wouldn't you know it, my friend, who is much smarter than I, is waiting closer to the start line, outside the corral, watching for me.  So he jumps in and we take off.

It's a humid day, and warm, and that didn't help anyone, least of all my friend.  Still, we get a fair bit up Cat Hill before the first walk break.  We do a combo run/walk through the race (one full loop of the park) , and my friend keeps apologizing to me for being slow and this not being a good race for me.  Okay.  First of all, blister and sausage legs.  Second of all, went out too fast for first seven miles.  Third and most important of all, he's my friend, and STFU.  It's a much better race slow and with his company than fast and without it. 

We stop at the south end of the reservoir to meet my friend's friend, a fellow runner with CF, who runs with an oxygen tank, and waited with him while he changed tanks.  What's my excuse not to work out?  Don't have one no more.

Anyways, we cross the finish line, and head over to the VIP tent to try and meet Boomer himself, but the imperious lady guarding the tent wouldn't let us pass, even though Boomer was standing right there.  We probably would've got by had my friend been wearing his Team Boomer shirt.  Alas, not so.  Denied.  However, where we were standing, we got to see the friend with the O2 tank cross the finish line, which was pretty cool.  Then we went over to the Boomer Esiason Foundation tent and bought t-shirts (performance fabric AND tagless -- way to go, Boomer!) because we were both very sweaty and heading directly to other events -- he with fellow Team Boomer people, me with fellow Fred's Team people.

We crossed the finish line in about 1:20, which, had we not stopped to wait, would have been more like a 1:15, which is, let's face it, not that shabby a time, especially since my friend has not been keeping up with regular running and the conditions were difficult for folks without breathing difficulties. And quite frankly, on my own, I probably would have only been about 10 minutes faster and not had nearly as much fun. So who gives a crap about time?  Not me.